"CDC considering recommending general public wear face coverings in public":
"Should we all be wearing masks? That simple question is under review by officials in the U.S. government and has sparked a grass-roots pro-mask movement.
"... Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering altering the official guidance to encourage people to take measures to cover their faces amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it is an ongoing matter of internal discussion and nothing has been finalized.
"CDC guidance on masks remains under development, the federal official said. The official said the new guidance would make clear that the general public should not use medical masks — including surgical and N95 masks — that are in desperately short supply and needed by health-care workers.
"Instead, the recommendation under consideration calls for using do-it-yourself cloth coverings, according to a second official who shared that thinking on a personal Facebook account. It would be a way to help “flatten the curve,” the official noted.
"Such DIY cloth masks would potentially lower the risk that the wearer, if infected, would transmit the virus to other people.
"...At the daily White House briefing Monday, President Trump was asked if everyone should wear nonmedical fabric masks. “That’s certainly something we could discuss,” Trump said, adding, “it could be something like that for a limited period of time.”
"In recent days, an assortment of scientists, health experts, pundits and influencers has vigorously advanced their position that everyone venturing into public or crowded places should wear a mask or face shield — even a homemade one — to lower the rate of transmission of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
"Thomas Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in an interview the CDC should urge people to use nonmedical masks or face coverings."
"“I think it would be a prudent step we can all take to reduce transmission” by people who are infected but have no symptoms, he said. DIY coverings — like the ones his children just fashioned from old clothes for his family — aren’t perfect and should not be used as an excuse to stop social distancing, he said.
"Prominent among the people pushing the idea is Scott Gottlieb, an internist and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in the Trump administration. Gottlieb was the lead author of a pandemic-response plan published Sunday by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning Washington think tank, and framed as a road map for restoring the economy gradually to normal. The road map said that, during this initial phase of rapid community transmission of the coronavirus, “everyone, including people without symptoms, should be encouraged to wear nonmedical fabric face masks while in public.”
"On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Gottlieb was more specific: “A cotton mask — we should be putting out guidelines from the CDC on how you can develop a mask on your own.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...3e495c-7280-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html