Please check your cabinets for dust masks. The designation is n95. Here in Boston they are in desperate need and I’m sure elsewhere has the same shortage. A doctor of my wife whose specialty is about as far removed as you can get, might get called in to help in the ICU and they don’t have enough masks to make through the coming weeks. I just found 10 N95 masks in my shop still in a bag. I’ll drop them off tomorrow.
Please, please do all you can.
Good request Bill.
Wish I had some masks to donate to my local medical facility. Hopefully, as large as my local one is, they’ve got an adequate supply.
No one has an adequate supply. With so many of the top hospitals and med schools you would think there would not be an issue but even here they are will be overwhelmed within a couple of weeks. The singular most important thing anybody can do is stay away from all others. You can’t tell if you are sick…or they are sick until it is five days too late. While most of us may eventually get the bug, you want to hold off long enough so the hospital systems have recovered and perhaps there is a therapeutic. Stay safe.
This in Times just now … March 19, 2020 Updated 10:18 p.m. ET
Here in Sweden an IEKA store discovered 50 000 masks in their storage and donated to the hospitals.
This problem is as serious as death. It is LITERALLY a matter of life and death. The Dr. to whom we passed our extra masks said she was keeping one. Her friend who was an ER nurse came by and picked another because they have none in ER. The rest of the masks are going to the ICU. Drs and nurses are putting their name on their mask, taking it home at night and sterilizing them.
My wife has started to make masks from cotton from a pattern the CDC approved. (I guess the droplets carrying the virus are relatively large.) If anyone wants the link, let me know.
Please help. Look again for masks in your shop. For those of us who are health and without wood allergies, inhaling some saw dust because of no mask is a small sacrifice compared to the death of an ICU nurse or doctor serving our community.
*"inhaling some saw dust because of no mask is a small sacrifice compared to the death of an ICU nurse or doctor serving our community."
Can’t believe I’ve just read that! By all means pass your spare masks to the health care professionals but don’t then make yourself a casualty by then breathing in sawdust. Some woods are known carcinogenics but even pine is not good. If you give up your masks stay out of the woodshop, find another distraction.
I gave all of my unused n95 masks to a nurse who works at a local nursing home. They were most grateful! I kept the ones I had already used - not safe to use for health care!
Wow, I think I’ll keep the few I have. Today for example scraping what is most certainly lead based paint.
This dust might just destroy the Wuhan Red Death.