Adapting to New Pandemic Variants

You already know I don’t get all my information from mainstream media (or, heaven forbid, social media). I also read some of the published studies, and I have a handful of professional sources in the medical profession who are directly involved in coping with the pandemic.

I’ve been asked not to share anything from the latest pre-publication document I’ve seen. I have to stick with what is publicly available. But I can tell you what my current thoughts are about how I and my businesses should adapt to the new variants of the virus that are spreading so quickly.

It’s simple. Carry on with all the usual precautions. Avoid people outside your household as much as you can. When you must be around other people, try to limit that contact to outdoors with ample social distancing.

Here’s where the change comes in. When you must be indoors in a space where other people have been within the past couple of hours, or even worse where people are inside with you (such as a supermarket), you wear a face mask, don’t you? Now it’s time to change how we “mask up.”

I began double masking this month. A cousin is a doctor at a hospital that gets all the COVID-19 patients in her state. She has been double masking throughout the pandemic. I borrowed the idea from her. Underneath is a N95 or FFP2 mask. On top is a cloth mask made to WHO recommendations with a filter pocket and a folded-over paper towel in the pocket. Both masks are well fitted with a sturdy nose bridge shaper.

Watching Joe Biden’s inauguration, you may have noticed a lot of people who attended the ceremony in person also double masked. Biden surrounds himself with people who think and who pay attention to science, and some of them have access to information you and I can’t see yet. This is what they are doing, based on what they know.

If I couldn’t double mask, I would want the N95 or FFP2 mask. Early in the pandemic my household gave away all but two of our box of FFP2 masks, a few to friends and most to a home health care agency that couldn’t find any. Supply is still a little tight, but no longer catastrophically short. We can get multi-use masks (I see some that can be used 20 times) to avoid tapping the supply heavily.

Why take up tougher masking now?

Because the variants transmit so much more easily than the original virus. Until now, ordinary cloth masks were protective enough. I want to make it extra hard for the more contagious variants to get through to me or go from me to someone else.

I want this for anyone who works for me and has to be around other people or around each other, too.

We’re coming up on a transition that could be delicate. Government, schools and business will be eager to ramp everything up again as soon as possible. We have seen country after country and business after business try to rush back toward “normal” when it wasn’t yet safe enough to do so. We can’t do anything about that.

We are not helpless against pandemic variants that are more contagious. By “masking up” in a tougher way, we can do a lot to block the variants ourselves. I’m doing it. You can too.