The suggestion certainly fits broadly in with my current thinking. We simply cannot keep going as we are now. It is simply not sustainable.
I think wide/universal use of masks would allow more economic activities to resume. I think that needs to start being a focus (and can be without competing with a resources for getting treatments, vaccines and general sars-cov-2 research) I think this is an area where we do have slack that can be applied to the current binding constraint on “normal” economic life.
It doesn’t need to be a complete solution right out of the box. For instance, the suggested masks could be used within the effort to increase the supply of the masks and improvements to them We might really want to have full face respirator masks that provide the eye protection as well as respiratory protection. If the first slice still includes some exhaust valves the second round can work on solving that—mask with exhaust is still better than no mask.
With increased supply all those currently at risk but working in essential industries—food production and distribution, power/utility/communications and some transportation (gas and oil) services.
As long as we have something that can be reasonable expected to produce the same level of spread as is occurring with the existing shutdown and social distancing we have a good zero start point. We can work on improving that and so allowing increased economic activity to follow. That starts getting us to the “good” spot. We can keep the economy going, keep people working, and getting others back to work. Debts get serviced. Perhaps at some point even larger social gathering can be supported (Think sports events without the beer and food maybe).
That happens while we are improving the the spread, keeping hospitals from being over loaded (and perhaps providing the health workers better tools for protecting themselves).
Now we can have a functioning economy and controlled infection spread so time to work on more difficult solutions (vaccines, treatments to cure/assist the body’s efforts).
I think the more important point here is that we need to attack multiple problems here and they are not always competing for the same resources so are on the production possibility frontier. The approach we’ve been under doesn’t quite appear to be doing that it’s too virus-centric (and that was the critical starting point so not a bad thing, but we need to move forward).
Responding more to the other post but seems perhaps more sensible here as this seems more visible.
The use of these masks has have serious drawback in the case of verbal communications. So, out of the box off the shelf these would not be a long term solution—assuming worst case and no cure/vaccine and the virus stays around for years and years. However, we can use written communications if needed. Moreover, it would not be that hard to put communications into the mask some way.
One, just a cheap internal mic and and external speaker. You could also integrated it via bluetooth and your smartphone or just dedicated bluetooth ear buds/head set getting paired with the internal mic. Obviously some new protocols for dealing with a a multi device setting would be needed but I cannot imagine that we don’t already have solutions that are 80 to 90 percent ready to be apply to the specific setting.
The upside here is that such innovations to the mask may well have positive value in existing use cases as well.
Verbal communication through such masks is a minor drawback; voices are muffled and require only slightly more concentration to be understood while using one.
More expensive versions of respirators have already mostly solved even that inconvenience, with diaphragms that allow for sound to escape about as well as without a mask.
The suggestion certainly fits broadly in with my current thinking. We simply cannot keep going as we are now. It is simply not sustainable.
I think wide/universal use of masks would allow more economic activities to resume. I think that needs to start being a focus (and can be without competing with a resources for getting treatments, vaccines and general sars-cov-2 research) I think this is an area where we do have slack that can be applied to the current binding constraint on “normal” economic life.
It doesn’t need to be a complete solution right out of the box. For instance, the suggested masks could be used within the effort to increase the supply of the masks and improvements to them We might really want to have full face respirator masks that provide the eye protection as well as respiratory protection. If the first slice still includes some exhaust valves the second round can work on solving that—mask with exhaust is still better than no mask.
With increased supply all those currently at risk but working in essential industries—food production and distribution, power/utility/communications and some transportation (gas and oil) services.
As long as we have something that can be reasonable expected to produce the same level of spread as is occurring with the existing shutdown and social distancing we have a good zero start point. We can work on improving that and so allowing increased economic activity to follow. That starts getting us to the “good” spot. We can keep the economy going, keep people working, and getting others back to work. Debts get serviced. Perhaps at some point even larger social gathering can be supported (Think sports events without the beer and food maybe).
That happens while we are improving the the spread, keeping hospitals from being over loaded (and perhaps providing the health workers better tools for protecting themselves).
Now we can have a functioning economy and controlled infection spread so time to work on more difficult solutions (vaccines, treatments to cure/assist the body’s efforts).
I think the more important point here is that we need to attack multiple problems here and they are not always competing for the same resources so are on the production possibility frontier. The approach we’ve been under doesn’t quite appear to be doing that it’s too virus-centric (and that was the critical starting point so not a bad thing, but we need to move forward).
Exactly! :)
Responding more to the other post but seems perhaps more sensible here as this seems more visible.
The use of these masks has have serious drawback in the case of verbal communications. So, out of the box off the shelf these would not be a long term solution—assuming worst case and no cure/vaccine and the virus stays around for years and years. However, we can use written communications if needed. Moreover, it would not be that hard to put communications into the mask some way.
One, just a cheap internal mic and and external speaker. You could also integrated it via bluetooth and your smartphone or just dedicated bluetooth ear buds/head set getting paired with the internal mic. Obviously some new protocols for dealing with a a multi device setting would be needed but I cannot imagine that we don’t already have solutions that are 80 to 90 percent ready to be apply to the specific setting.
The upside here is that such innovations to the mask may well have positive value in existing use cases as well.
Verbal communication through such masks is a minor drawback; voices are muffled and require only slightly more concentration to be understood while using one.
More expensive versions of respirators have already mostly solved even that inconvenience, with diaphragms that allow for sound to escape about as well as without a mask.
Exactly! Mic and so on is not necessary and too complicated.
Yep, Check off one of the “might be problematic” aspects of using masks as an alternative to stay at home/social distancing in limiting spread.
Seems to get back to production output constraints and general validation of efficacy.