Face masks aren't a sure bet against swine flu
Though sales have increased worldwide, the coverings weren't designed to protect wearers from an airborne virus. Health officials say their value is limited, at best.
By Shari Roan And Rong-Gong Lin II
April 30, 2009
Don't count on those disposable masks to protect you against swine flu.
Residents of Mexico City, as well as travelers to and from Los Angeles, have turned to mouth and nose protection of one type or another in recent days in an attempt to stop errant airborne viruses from entering their respiratory tract.
3M, a major producer of face masks and respirators, said that worldwide sales have increased significantly, and some Los Angeles pharmacies have reported selling out of masks. In the drugstore at Tokyo's Narita International Airport on Monday, mask sales were up 30%. Even recent 99 Cents Only Stores ads touted the devices' potential to "Prevent the flu!"
Kanna Kanzaki, 36, a resident of Yokohama, Japan, donned a mask before heading to baggage claim this week at Los Angeles International Airport. "I'm very concerned," she said. She had arrived for a vacation and was taking no chances. "I went to see a doctor this morning and got Tamiflu to prevent the virus."
Most travelers at the airport were wearing face masks, which are loose-fitting and designed largely to help stop the spread of droplets from the person wearing the mask, not to protect the wearer from the virus. Respirators -- more close-fitting, pricier masks -- are designed to reduce exposure to airborne particles. But there is general uncertainty, even among health professionals, about the value of wearing either during a flu outbreak
Masks may give people a false sense of security, said Dr. Laurene Mascola, director of acute communicable disease control for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
"You would have to wear it 100% of the time that you are outside," she said of masks and respirators.
Further, face masks and respirators shouldn't replace other precautions.
"Somewhat lost in all the excitement is that we continue to need to take standard control measures," said Dr. Paul Holtom, associate professor of medicine at USC's Keck School of Medicine and a hospital epidemiologist at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and the USC University Hospital.
To avoid infecting others, ill people should stay home, avoid crowds, cover their mouth when they cough or sneeze, and wash their hands before touching eyes, nose or mucus membranes. Those who want to avoid infection should do the same.
According to 3M, standards show how well respirators filter out particles in industrial settings, but there are no established exposure limits for biological agents such as swine flu virus.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has nine classifications of respirators based on their ability to filter particles. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends respirators classified as N95 for healthcare workers and caregivers with a respiratory infection.
CDC officials, however, said Monday that they don't know how helpful either type of covering is in preventing swine flu infection. The best CDC could offer is that, if used correctly, masks and respirators might reduce the risk of getting influenza.
A study published last year in the journal PloS One found that respirators are more efficient than surgical masks at reducing the transmission of respiratory infections to healthy people, but that surgical masks are more efficient than homemade masks.
Another study, published online last week in the journal Risk Analysis, concluded that N95 respirators combined with the use of humidifiers and ventilation in a household improves infection control by 20% to 70%, according to a mathematical model. The authors, from Stanford University, said wearing surgical masks with nylon hosiery or another device to "reduce face-seal leakage" is an alternative if N95 respirators are not available.
But even for people willing to wear such a contraption, there is no single action that will provide complete protection in areas with confirmed swine flu cases, health officials said. It isn't practical to wear a mask all the time, even a quality mask, and the devices aren't foolproof.
"Once they get moist, they are no longer useful," Mascola said. "Your saliva is going to be pooling in that mask. That will make is not useful because germs will be able to permeate."
Taking a mask on and off contaminates it and makes it less useful, as well. It is effective "only for a 20-minute to a half-hour period," she said. "Even in those places during the SARS epidemic, they found hand-washing as effective as wearing masks."
Face masks and respirators are probably most useful for people who are in crowded settings, such as classrooms or airplanes, or people who are in close contact with an infected person. "Close contact" is defined as 3 feet or less by the World Health Organization and 6 feet or less by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
If you want to use a face mask on a crowded plane, though, it's best to bring your own.
Scott E. Ross said he wanted a face mask when he was leaving San Diego on Sunday for a flight back to his home in Florida. But face masks weren't provided by airport security or the airline.
After Ross boarded his flight, he noticed that the young man sitting next to him was sweating and coughing. Then he vomited into an airsickness bag.
"I was rather uncomfortable sitting next to him," Ross said.
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Swine flu may be hitting the young the hardest
There were more signs Wednesday that those hardest-hit by swine flu are the young.
U.S. health officials said the median age for confirmed hospital cases in the United States is 15. And in Mexico, new figures showed that almost half of the 42 confirmed swine flu deaths were of people 29 and younger.
Some experts have speculated that older people exposed to more flu strains in the past have built up greater immunity.
At a briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control, said older people’s immunity might be one possible explanation. Or he said it might just be that younger people have tended to get sick first in the outbreak.
During the regular winter flu season, elderly people and those with chronic health conditions are the most likely to be sent to a hospital.
The age range of those in U.S. hospitals with swine flu is eight months to 53 years. There are 35 people hospitalized with confirmed cases of the new flu in 14 states, the CDC says.
Besser said the CDC has little information on other medical conditions of hospitalized patients that might have made them more vulnerable. So far, no single health problem has emerged as a dominant factor, he said.
On Tuesday, Mexico’s Health Department released figures showing Mexicans 19 and younger accounted for more than half of those confirmed ill from the virus.
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Swine flu creates controversy on Twitter
(CNN) -- The swine flu outbreak is spawning debate about how people get information during health emergencies -- especially at a time when news sources are becoming less centralized.
Buzz about swine flu on Twitter is stirring conversations about how people get health news.
Some observers say Twitter -- a micro-blogging site where users post 140-character messages -- has become a hotbed of unnecessary hype and misinformation about the outbreak, which is thought to have claimed more than 100 lives in Mexico.
"This is a good example of why [Twitter is] headed in that wrong direction, because it's just propagating fear amongst people as opposed to seeking actual solutions or key information," said Brennon Slattery, a contributing writer for PC World. "The swine flu thing came really at the crux of a media revolution."
Twitter's popularity has exploded in recent months, and Slattery said it's a new development that a wide number of people would turn to the site in search of information during an emergency.
A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, said that the online buzz about swine flu is a good sign. It means people are talking about the issue, and that's the first step toward learning how to reasonably protect yourself.
"I think it's generally a useful development, but I would encourage people to look to other sources, especially established, recognized medical authorities," said Glen Nowak, chief of media relations at the CDC. "It shows that people are engaged and they care and that it's caught their attention -- and those all are good things."
Several dozen cases of swine flu worldwide have been confirmed by the World Health Organization and hundreds more are feared. That information needs to be put in context by journalists, especially given the fact that so many deaths from the common flu occur each year and go underreported by the news media, said Al Tompkins, who teaches broadcast and online news at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists.
About 36,000 people die from flu-related symptoms each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The fast pace of new swine flu cases and their relevance to global public health policy makes the situation newsworthy, Tompkins said.
Tompkins said there is a tendency for television stations to hype health emergencies to boost their ratings, but so far coverage of the swine flu outbreak has been responsible. Coverage of the story is just ramping up, though, he said.
Of the swine flu news on Twitter, Tompkins said, "Bad news always travels faster than good news. I'm sure that was true in smoke signal days."
Unofficial swine flu information on Twitter may lead people to unwise decisions, said Evgeny Morozov, a fellow at the Open Society Institute and a blogger on ForeignPolicy.com.
For example, some Twitter users told their followers to stop eating pork, he said. Health officials have not advised that precaution. Read about how the virus is transmitted
Morozov said there's incentive for Twitter users to post whatever is on their mind because it helps them grow their online audiences.
But in an emergency, that tendency means people write about their own fears of symptoms and widespread deaths, which can create an uninformed hysteria, he said.
The debate about swine flu on Twitter is not one-sided, however. And the site is not the only place online where people are talking about the outbreak.
Some Twitter users have expressed concern that the swine flu story is being hyped. Several media outlets, including the BBC and CNN's iReport.com, give readers and viewers a chance to express their own views about the outbreak.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also maintains its own Twitter account where official government information is given straight to the public.
And on Monday, President Obama seemed to try to calm national fears by saying the outbreak is "cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert" but is not a "cause for alarm," CNN reported.
Twitter traffic about swine flu has been strong. According to Nielsen Online, swine flu has worked its way into about 2 percent of all notes posted on the site on Monday. You can follow that Twitter conversation here.
Chatter about swine flu is also loud elsewhere online. About 10 times more people are writing online about swine flu than wrote about the salmonella and peanut butter scares from this winter, Nielsen says.
An interactive map created using the free Google Maps service lets Internet users see where outbreak deaths have been confirmed and where they are suspected. See a CNN map
Slattery, the PC World contributor, also criticized television news stations like CNN and Fox News for hyping the story and adding to public fear.
He said he generally was excited about Twitter until recently. Now, it's changing, and he finds the site to be "an incredibly unreliable source of information."
Nowak, of the CDC, said the media has done a good job of informing the public about the outbreak. He said some headlines, however, have been a bit sensational.
Tompkins said people who post information on social media sites should think about the credibility of their sources before they pass something on.
That's the "online equivalent of washing your hands," he said.
"Before you pass it on, wash your hands a little."
My reaction
1Swine flu creates great demand on medical disposable mask which help stimulate economic during crisis and health concern to publics.
2Face mask is the most common thing to use since the outbreak. There is less medical testing of the mask whether it can absolutely help protect against new airborne flu such as swine flu or not. 3Most of the mask user does not know how to wear it correctly such as not tight-fitting; or the mask cannot cover nose or mouth. Face mask cause nuisance to users because of unfamiliar to their daily lives.
4Medical mask is the part of prevention from the flu and washing hands is the other ways to deal against the virus H1N1.
5U.S. health official report that more than half of people who died from initial flu are 29 years old and younger.
6Older people tend to have more immunity to be protected from the flu.
7There are lots of facts and myth among swine flu outbreak which spread out on Twitter, a micro blogging site where user can post not more than 140 characters in order to update the blog to their followers.
8The Centers For Disease control and Prevention is impress to see online goers discuss about Swine flu issue on the cyber world. The organization afraid of false information which will lead people to unwise decision such as people can be infected by eating pork which is not true; the expert had already confirmed that eating cooked pork will not transmitted the H1N1 virus into human body. Online goers should received news from official sites for accurate news.
9Mainstream Medias create hysteria toward audiences about swine flu by focus on news about number of dead and infected. Public should limit their media exposures sometime.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Swine flu or H1N1 outbreak changed world in both good and bad way. Medical mask and hand washing soap becomes must-have product in household, that’s the good sign that people also alerted to prevent themselves from the swine flu and activate spending power again after current economic downturn. Publics is automatically pay attention to medical news, announcement and advisory via mainstream Medias while misleading rumors leaked through the internet and cause health scare toward public. Internet user should receive media by using their own consideration and give weight if it’s believable or not and don’t stampede since first hear and wait until the official news released.
