Culture Vulture

The MASK of T.O. Fear

Yesterday, I was standing at the corner of College and Spadina. A blue van slowed to a crawl and stopped. A greasy looking, curly-haired man, wearing a surgical mask rolled down the window. In his thick, grubby fingers he was dangling six or seven surgical masks. You, know, the good kind of surgical mask that is moulded in the shape of a cup. The NG95 "respirator model" that the hospitals are short of right now.
"Hey lady!" he shouted. "Wanna buy a surgical mask. Only 15 dollars."
I shook my head "no."
"O.K. lady. Well you could die..."
I couldn't help but note that how on the right people, those masks turn the wearer into a kind of bandit!
His partner at the wheel put the pedal to the floor and the van screeched around the corner. It pulled to an abrupt stop to accommodate a desperate man in his fifties who ran up to their window pleading "Wait! Wait!" He was waving a fist full of bills.
I was too shocked at the pre-apocalyptic surrealness of this event to have the presence of mind to get the licence plate of these two creeps. My impression is that the van was stuffed with boxes containing these masks. My first thought was "where the hell did these two highway robbers get themall? Starkman's surgical supply has been sold out of them for weeks. According to a Canadian Press story people stood in line-ups 12 deep on March 27, to get the NG95 mask and cleaned the store out of its stock of 10,000. So where did they get them? Did they rob a teaching hospital? Is someone going without a life-saving operation right now because these selfish pigs decided to make a buck or two? Or did they have the foresight to buy them up from some kind of supply store before everyone else?
I have to say that this whole event made me very angry. First of all these two entrepreneurs fall into that category of leech that I like to call the "Merchants of Death." They play on our worst fears to make a buck. In the meantime people who really need those masks could be dying or going without. According to a story in the Toronto Star, the demand for those surgical masks has doubled since the beginning of the SARS outbreak, a development that I noticed caused a certain insensitive CFRB radio talk host to comment "Gosh! I wish I had bought stock in that!"
The online website called Stockline states that as a result of mounting global concern over the sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), AMS Homecare has sold out of its initial inventory of surgical NG95 masks WORLD WIDE. That is how rare these masks are.
Health Canada guidelines for protective NG95 and surgical masks, states, "Masks should filter particles one micron in size, have a 95-percent filter efficiency and provide a tight facial seal (less than 10-percent leak)." AMS Homecare's surgical masks offer a 99.5-percent filter efficiency and filter particles down to one-half micron in size.
However the sad reality is that the mask may not be protection against SARS and the only thing it may be good for is moral. As SARS is said to be transmitted like the cold virus, mainly through the touching of objects, we are now facing the danger of purchasing contaminated masks off street vendors.
According to AMA Homecare, the trouble with the mask is that if it is to prevent surgeons spitting and breathing their possibly disease-bearing organisms over patients, it must cover the nose and come well down on to the chin. It must be changed frequently and should not be handled AT ALL once in position. It can become so waterlogged with condensed breath, spit and nose dribble that it not only fails to filter the expired air, but also becomes a reservoir of organisms.
In theory masks do not merely remove the impurities and organisms being breathed out but also filter out those being breathed in. It is doubtful if they could do more than inhibit the passage of viruses, but they may exclude some bacteria if worn properly and changed frequently. So in order for these masks to be effective you would have to change it a couple of times a day! At 15 bucks a pop that could add up. The suggestion is that the virus that causes the infective pneumonia is akin to a coronavirus, responsible for many varieties of the common cold. And you must be dealing with bacteria, not a virus for these masks which were invented over a hundred years ago to be effective. Hello? SARS is a VIRUS, not bacteria! If you buy a mask off the street there is no guarantee that the masks haven't been worn. For all we know, those guys dug those masks out of a hospital dumpster!
Several victims of the pneumonia virus were medical staff who must have sustained a particularly heavy viral load while handling their patients. Possibly they didn't wash their hands carefully enough after removing an organism-laden mask.
My question is, how are we going to prevent ourselves from being terrorized or exploited by the merchants of fear in the meantime? I have one suggestion. Don't buy into it!

Publication Date: 2003-04-13
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2593