Los Angeles County Public Health officials urge county residents to use layered protections to reduce COVID-19 outbreaks as individuals return from holiday activities and travel.
In lieu of all the recent wildfires, Chelan-Douglas Health District is giving out free N95 masks, available at various distribution centers all over Chelan County.
to be done. we need probably 2 to 3 billion tests a months, not hundreds of millions. billions of tests a month, if we want people in america to take, say, two tests a week before gatherings and other things. and then you have masking. we have to upgrade from sort of flimsy cotton masks to really serious k95, kn95 masks. wear them indoors. wear them outdoors if you re going to a crowded situation. then we have ventilation, which has not been well publicized here, getting hepa filters and making sure that the air is better and filtering out the virus particles. so those are the four things. and the fifth thing we re waiting on is, for the merck and pfizer drugs that really shorten the impact of getting an infection to be authorized by the fda. that should happen pretty soon. and then getting them out to people who are infected is going to be a very big and important task.
emergency medicine physician in boston, author of the inside medicine newsletter. great to get your perspective on things. let s talk about updated guidance from the cdc. they re recommending the n95, kn95 masks. what do you think of timing of the decision. does it seem like this could have come sooner? thanks for having me back, boris. it could have come sooner. better late than never. we are seeing a contagious variant. it is more contagious than the previous one. if you live in an area where hospitals are yes, we have a contagious variant, and masks can help. i think that people are tired of guidelines changing. the message is we re tired of the virus. let s do everything we can to stop it, get back to normal. we re not there yet. wearing a better mask in a
disease, kidney disease, lung disease as well as liver disease. this is a different virus. this is like no other respiratory virus. so avoid it. the way to avoid it is to vaccinate. i think it s just really hard to work in a hospital where you see so many children coming in who are unvaccinated, knowing this is all preventable. this was hard enough last year when we didn t have a vaccine. now we can prevent all this suffering and hospitalization and occasional death. it s infuriating, i would think. counties in new york, michigan, utah are giving out free kn95 masks to the community. do you think the federal government should make n95 or kn95 masks free, like free testing has become the norm? emphatically, yes, jake. when we talk about pandemic preparedness or we talk about what is an adequate and appropriate and equitable public health response, we need to talk about systems, federal government included, getting into the hands of average americans. those things that will keep them