Lesson 3 - Masks!

Before You Begin

Discuss with your tutor or reflect to yourself:

• Do you think it is helpful to wear masks in public? Why or why not?
• What questions do you have about why we wear masks?

Watch - Video 1

After You Watch Video 1

Discuss these questions with your tutor, and/or write a response in one or more paragraphs:

• ​What can you do to make your mask a bit safer? Can you reinforce it with some shop cloth?
• COVID-19 is a respiratory infection. This means it infects our breathing system, and we most often catch it by breathing in viral particles. Given this, do you think it is more important that people wear masks or clean surfaces often? (NOTE: Both are important! People can become infected by touching germy surfaces and then touching their mouth, eyes, and nose. However, scientists say that most infections happen when people breathe in viral particles.)

Glowing Droplets

Check out this background information before viewing the next video:

• When we talk, we put out liquid droplets into the air that are usually too small to notice. These droplets can contain viral particles.
• In this next video, experimenters use laser light-scattering to make some of these droplets visible.
• First, experimenters use this method to observe droplets while a person talks with no face covering. Next, the person talks with a slightly moist towel over his face. 
• Our masks naturally become a little bit moist as we breathe, which is why a slightly moist towel is used to represent a face covering.
• What do you think will happen? How do you think the face covering will affect the amount of droplets released into the air?

Watch - Video 2

Takeaways

• What did you think of the video? Were you surprised by the results? Did it show what you predicted?
• Based on what you saw in the video, do you think we wear masks mostly to protect ourselves from infection or to protect others?
  
• As we saw in the video, cloth face coverings can help stop us from spreading infections to other people. There are medical masks, called N-95 masks, which are specially designed to keep the wearer healthy. But cloth and disposable masks are mostly meant to help protect other people. We can never be sure if we are carrying the virus without showing symptoms. The more people who wear masks, the safer everyone is.
• Remember: Mask-wearing is not 100% effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19. In the video, there may have been other particles expelled that were too small to show up through laser light-scattering.
• This is why it is important to take other precautions along with wearing masks. These include limiting the amount of time we spend with people, social distancing, not touching our faces, and seeking indoor spaces that are large, uncrowded, and with good airflow.

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