Health Dept pushes cloth face-covering usage
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) is recommending all persons to wear a cloth face covering if they must leave their home or report to work for essential operations. A few examples include:
- Shopping at essential businesses, such as grocery stores or pharmacies
- Picking up food from a drive thru or curbside pickup
- Visiting your health care provider
- Interacting with customers, clients, or coworkers at essential businesses
Dubois County Health Department, with support of Dubois County Commissioners, is strongly recommending essential retail and grocery stores to have employees wear cloth face coverings and also consider restricting entry of customers not wearing cloth face coverings. Essential businesses must urge their employees to wear cloth face coverings while working in a community setting.
We encourage employees to take any concerns to the company Human Resource Director. Employees and concerned citizens can file an anonymous formal complaint with the Department of Labor at this link https://www.in.gov/dol/3144.htm.
Wearing a cloth face covering is done to protect those around you if you are infected, but do not yet show symptoms of COVID-19. When you wear a cloth face covering, make sure you can easily breathe through it and that it covers your nose AND mouth. Also wash after each use.
The Dubois County Health Department is reminding ALL that cloth face coverings are NOT a substitute for social distancing and should not encourage a false sense of security to leave home. Social distancing, staying at least 6 feet away, is still needed. Face coverings are effective only when used in combination with frequent hand-cleaning with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.
“We all need to assume that every person you encounter is potentially spreading this virus,” said Dr. Ted Waflart, Dubois County Health Officer.
We want to make sure ALL measures are being implemented in keeping our community members safe. STAY HOME, PRACTICE SOCIAL DISTANCING AND GOOD HAND HYGEINE. #INthistogether
The cases of COVID-19 in Dubois County remain at 14 according to the health department. They have not released any information regarding recoveries.
Where can I find, purchase a face mask in dubois county!!!
There are easy instructions of how to make one available online. Also, you may check any pharmacy for their availability as well. In addition, a good ole bandana tied around the face like a train robber will suffice.
Check this online store. Best deal I’ve found and quick shipping.
https://stores.customink.com/health-wellness/products/1842
Cloth masks will not stop any virus. The only ones that will work right are the ones that we aren’t allowed to wear.
Nobody has suggested that wearing a home-made face mask will stop Covid-19. What has been said by the CDC, is that wearing a mask – any type of mask – in conjunction with maintaining 6-feet of social distance and engaging in thorough and frequent hand washing, etc. when in public may help protect others from you if you are carrying the virus. It’s simply another line of defense. A face covering can also help serve as a barrier should one touch a potentially infected object (like a door knob, shopping cart, etc.) and then touch one’s face/nose—a known method of transmission of most viruses. For that reason, the CDC states that one should treat any mask as contaminated when removing it.
Because carriers of Covid-19 can be asymptomatic, and because this particular virus is so contagious and so deadly (unlike others that we have seen the past few decades), the safest way to slow and limit the spread in our community is to assume you are a carrier regardless of whether or not you are exhibiting symptoms and take some very simple but effective precautions to help keep others from catching it. And that includes wearing a face covering.
Midwest Cafe and Market is selling facemasks for $10.00.
Great sharing of accurate information, Kevin.
If you are concerned about the quality of mask, then purchase a N95. That is what I am using and you are not prohibited from having it, as suggested. Make sure you have a tight seal around that stubble. They are on the shelves at both pharmacies and hardware stores. Good luck and have fun!
As I’ve understood it most recently, the CDC has had a change in their original thinking and recommendation on this practice from that which you correctly described. They’re now suggesting that wearing a cloth or other material in mask/cover form – even a simple but ample bandanna – may indeed help prevent or minimize the transmission both ways. That’s part of the reason, now, that everyone has been recommended to wear a mask/covering over nose and mouth when going out shopping for groceries or other essentials of food, pharmacy, doctor, etc., plus for those essential employees, also. But alas, this – like the other/former – is still not as consistently clear from/by all sources as it could be and therefore can be interpreted differently. It needs to be said, however, with all the fear-mongering and over-reaction apart from facts, that this virus is not nearly “so deadly” as the regular/typical annual flu seasons here in the U.S. that kill many more each/every year than has this c-bug, or likely will. Stopping there for now, but there are many more facts that have been blown/twisted into monstrous untruths contributing to the fear and over-reactive, one-size-fits-all measures that we’re now trying to deal with and overcome much more than the virus.
That is not true. According to the CDC the current Covid-19 deaths are at approximately 31k deaths (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html) as of this date, which beats the 2011-12 (12k) and 2015-16 (23k) influenza deaths in the US (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html). We are inching up on the 2013-14 and 2016-17 flu season deaths of 38k and will likely exceed them by Monday and that is with the extraordinary containment measures in the US. At current rates even with the attempt to reduce the spread, we are looking at exceeding any influenza season in the past decade by the end of this month. That makes it more deadly than the flu.
I would also like to point out that the influenza typically has a death rate of approximately 0.1%. According to Indiana data from the ISDH (https://www.coronavirus.in.gov/) there are currently 477 deaths in 51115 cases. The is a death rate of approximately 5% (though that rate is much above what is expected for Covid-19 indicating that infections are likely under-reported). Which is 50 TIMES as deadly as the flu.
I believe that makes your statement an ‘untruth’ as you call it. I would recommend looking at actual data and taking any headlines with a grain of salt, and definitely assume anything stated by our President is at least partially false, as is proven by his track record. The health officials have been fairly consistent in their recommendations, I would recommend listening to them.
Thank you for your reply, and thank you for providing sources to demonstrate why this is NOT equivalent to what we experience each year due to influenza viruses.
We need fewer people who, by either deceit or by ignorance, spout off lies like “it’s just the flu” – and we need more people like you who look to the experts for facts.
Indeed. Pretty frightening and sad state of our society that you would even have to say “look to the experts for facts”. The ignorant and/or deceitful percentage of our country is growing day by day, in no small way thanks to our ignorant and deceitful president.
Stanford University researchers conducted a study (ending on April 4th) in one particular county in California (that has been fairly hard hit with COVID-19) where they concluded that the reported number of confirmed positive cases in the county on April 1 was 50- 85 fold lower than the number of infectious predicted by their study. If that is the case, the 5% approximate death rate you reported would be closer to .5%-1.0%, which would be much closer to the death rate for influenza. Do not underestimate the number of asymptomatic carriers .
Yes, the actual death rate (if we knew the actual infection rate) would likely be be closer to 1 or 2 percent of all infected – assuming we keep the spread somewhat checked with the measures recommended. I said as much in my post in that infections are likely under-reported (from lack of testing). Did you know that even 1% would still be 10 times, or 1000% as deadly as the average flu? An order of magnitude is significant in my opinion. Plus the average hospital stay for someone with SARS-COV-2 is about twice as long at for the influenza (10-13 days vs 5-6 days for flu https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-guidance-management-patients.html in the clinical progression section) that means not only do more people die (1% of US population is over 3 million people, btw), but also people fill up the hospital faster and for longer. You should also know there is a finite number of hospital beds, medical equipment, and trained personnel in the US. Did you also know that if those limits are exceeded, not only will people with SARS-COV-2 be affected, but also anyone who needs medical care? Fun facts! That is why those of us who care and have empathy for our fellow Americans want to try to continue to slow the spread of this disease: to keep it within our ability of health care. Yes, we can’t contain it and need to have some economic activity, but we can’t go about our normal way of living just yet if we don’t want to deal with worse outcomes – both in lives lost and economic impact from excess lives lost.