>> Steve: There's little doubt that most of us never imagined going about our daily lives
wearing a mask.
But here we are.
Is there an end in sight?
Or is the new normal now just...
normal?
Let's ask in the nation's capital, Raywat Deonandan.
He is an epidemiologist and associate professor at the Faculty of health sciences at
the University of Ottawa.
And he makes occasional -- one might even say regular -- appearances on this program to
explain the inexplicable to us from time to time.
Dr. "D" it's good to see you again how are you doing?
>> Raywat: Great to be here good to be back.
>> Steve: Good to see you.
Is it time in your judgment now that 80% of us are now Vaxxed to get rid of wearing masks?
>> Raywat: No, it's not time.
We're still in a wave and we still have a fair number of people who are unvaccinated.
We still have numbers climbing and we have to use all the tools at our disposal to curtail
transmission.
Possibly the simplest best return on investment we have is mask wearing.
So it's not time to ditch that particular tool.
>> Steve: How often in your travels do you have people say to you, you know, it's been
about 19 or 20 months of wearing these things, I'm sick of it and I don't want to do it anymore.
>> Raywat: It used to be nor common to hear that earlier on in the pandemic.
People have become accustomed to it and now you feel almost naked out one if you are going indoors
or taking it off in a restaurant you might feel a limb exposed.
So we -- little exposed we can become accustomed to things.
>> Steve: I still see considerable mask wearing outdoors we're in mid-town
Toronto.
I still see a lot of people wearing maskings outside.
Do you recommend that still?
>> Raywat: I don't recommend that.
There's no need for it.
But if it makes you feel safer and it signals to other people that you take the disease
seriously it has social value and as the winter months come it can make you feel warmer.
There are benefits to wearing a mask outside but not for curtailing COVID.
>> Steve: What do you say to people who are not yet convinced that this virus is contractible
through the air and, therefore, you should wear a mask.
>> Raywat: That's a big one, right?
The experts were slow to come on board with this way of thinking as well.
I think now we're at the point where the consensus belief, conclusion is that COVID is
airborne.
Not just airborne but probably aerosol transmission has been dominant mode of transmission.
That's a big statement.
The reasons we know that to be true is in addition to the laboratory studies of things
like animals being deliberately exposed to air solve generating ordeal and showing infection
that way.
We have some evidence from the real world.
People in quarantine hotels and cruise ships who are sequestered in their own rooms and yet still
becoming infected because of a shared ventilation system.
We have situations in hospitals, for example, where people are wearing masks regularly, certain
quality of mask and yet still become infected because COVID is airborne.
We have situations where people become infected by other people who have left the premises but
have exhaled infectious particles that linger in the air longer.
That is a signature of aerosol, airborne transmission.
So that's the reality we're in right now.
>> Steve: You mentioned quality of masks so let's pick up on that right now.
I have seen everything from people wearing the sort of, you know, bottom of the barrel cloth
mask to N-95s to some people who just actually take their scarf and hike it up over their
face and just cover their face with their scarf.
And I guess think they does the job.
Do you want to comment on the advisability of all three options?
>> Raywat: First of all, any mask is better than no mask, that's pretty obvious.
There are study that is show the relative contribution, value of those quality of masks that you
talked about and depending who's wearing it, the source of potentially in February, person
or the receiver, the potentially person who's receiving infection and depending upon who's wearing
what, the time it takes to receive infectious dose varies.
And I phrase that a certain way, right?
Because we're not saying that mask wearing is going to guarantee that you won't be
infected.
What we're saying is that mask wearing diminishes the probability substantially that
you will be infected.
So the cloth masks, the scarf, that doesn't do a whole lot.
If this disease were transmitted by large droplets that emerge from your respiratory system and
fall to the ground within two metres then those kinds of masks might trap those droplets and
prevent them from going the full two metres.
The three-ply masks do a better job of could be entertaining aerosol droplets but they're
baggy around the sides of your mouth.
So they're escaping from the sides and tops and bottoms.
If you imagine an aerosolized disease like cigarette smoke.
Cigarette smoke is an air poll partner and imagine something.
Does it get through?
It does.
Not all of it but most.
If you are imagine smoking behind a surgical mask, does the smoke come through the mask?
Most of it doesn't but much comes through the sides and bottoms.
If someone is wearing a fitted mask how much gets through and how much escapes?
Not a lot.
Aerosol milieu in the reality of an aerosol, airborne virus, the fitted mask is the best possible
protection.
And I think that's what everyone should strive to wear.
>> Steve: That's the best option, the N-95.
Does that mean you are advocating that everyone go out and start wearing N-95s budget
allowing?
>> Raywat: Yeah, I am.
When I talk about N-95, I'm talking about the family of masks.
Specific high quality medical tested mask is best for health care workers and you might have
a difficult time finding them.
And N-95 has passed certain standard that is are relative for American and Canadian mental
health care operation.
But there are other things in the family like the KN-95s, for example, which pass the
Chinese standard but are just as good for you and I to wear.
They're not fit tested.
Health care workers have to have the fit tested to make sure they're sealed around your
mouth.
But you and I -- it's okay if they're just snug against your mouth.
I think everyone should wear that calibre, that quality of mask.
I do.
My family does.
>> Steve: You do under what circumstances?
>> Raywat: All the time.
Whenever I'm going -- well, not when I'm going to bed.
[Laughter] But if I'm going indoors in places with people whose status,
infectious status I'm not aware of like grocery stores or stores of any kind, I wear an N-95
calibre mask.
>> Steve: Good to know.
All right.
I'm going to set up this next question by saying I refuse to confirm or deny whether or not
the circumstances I'm about to describe apply to yours truly.
But let's just say for argument sake that in a family where everybody's negative, right?
Nobody's got COVID, maybe some mask sharing happened on occasion because somebody didn't
notice that the initial that was put on the mask wasn't his initial but maybe belonged to
somebody -- anyway, you get the drift here.
This is obviously not advisable.
But is it harmful?
>> Raywat: Honestly, if it's in your own family, people you live in the house with, you are
already sharing each other's aerosol and germs, sharing a mask is not going to cause much
increase in risk to my mind.
My spouse and I have shared masks inadvertently as well -- don't tell her that.
She's probably hearing this for the first time.
I don't think that's a big deal.
The point here is to protect yourself from other people's exhalations and to protect other
people from your exhalations.
Presumably you are already not protecting each other from each other because you're sharing
other intimate aspects of your life.
>> Steve: I think that makes me feel a little bit better that I'm not the only I had yacht out
there who's done that -- sorry, I didn't mean to.
>> Raywat: I'm totally on board.
[Laughter] >> Steve: Again, this is a bit of an odd one.
But we have these cloth masks as part of our lives now as never before.
And eventually after a few uses I guess they're ending up in the garbage.
This may not be your area of expertise but are we kind of setting ourselves up for an
environmental problem down the road that we might not have anticipated because we're
throwing out all these cloth masks now?
>> Raywat: It does fill me with great sadness when I'm walking the dog and see piles of masks
reminds me of the cigarette butts from the 70s when people tossed butts everywhere.
It's not great.
I don't think there's any way to get around the fact that the pandemic is having a deleterious
effect on the climate in general.
N-95 masks are made with POLYPROPYLENE.
There is an indication that heating them to sufficient temperature can allow you to
re-use them.
There are ways to minimize the impact.
I don't think you can get around that this will be bad for the environment in some capacity.
>> Steve: Admittedly I am in the middle of the biggest city in the country here.
I see masks discarded on the side of the street ever I are day.
And it does kind of surprise me and borderline tick me off.
What do you say?
What do you think when you see it?
>> Raywat: I think I can't wait for this to be over so we don't see this any more and also I
wish people had a better respect for the environment and for the technologies that we're
investing in them to protect them.
So do you throw tissues away on the street after you have you've blown your nose.
Some people do most people don't.
This is kind of the same thing.
It's not exactly a biological hazard.
But it shows a fundamental disrespect for the communal good.
>> Steve: Okay.
Let me come at this story from a different angle which is I guess to say it was right near the
beginning when we didn't know a whole lot and when we got parcels coming to our home or
mail coming to our home or if we use a door in public we were very careful to wash the mail,
wash the parcels.
Leave our shoes outdoors on the front stoop for a few days before bringing them inside.
We did a lot of stuff.
In hindsight was all of that pointless?
>> Raywat: Was it pointless?
At a social level, no.
It showed the extent to which we conformed to public health guidance.
It probably curtailed transmission of the flu, common cold and other respiratory
viruses to an extent.
It was the right thing to do in absence of solid evidence otherwise.
But yes, it is pointless because that's not how you curtail the spread of COVID.
You control the spread of COVID by controlling an aerosol disease which means high quality
mask wearing, ventilation and air filtration.
Those are the best tools in addition to testing vaccination.
In addition barriers are the high impact tolts we need as much as mask wearing
ventilation.
>> Steve: Let me do a follow-up on mask wearing.
I don't know if you notice this but I certainly do.
I notice a lot of people who still wear masks up to here and they leave their noses exposed
because let's be honest it's a lot easier to breathe when you don't cover your nose than when
it is.
I don't know if that's because they don't know how to wear it probably properly if they've
decided half the face is enough.
>> Raywat: I see it all the time.
I think it's a function of wanting to comply with the guidance to the letter but not
to the spirit.
The letter says you must wear this thing around your face to gain entry into the store but
really the point of it is to prevent the spread of exhaled aerosols and hopefully to some
extent prevent you from inhaling someone else's aerosols.
We produce these small droplets from our respiratory system and they're exuded from our mouth
and nose.
It's important to prevent that from happening.
I don't know what to tell people other than to tell them do you breathe solely out of your
mouth?
I don't think so.
Most people.
>> Steve: Right.
Let me ask you about schools.
Of course the Province of Ontario has insisted that it has flowed funds in order to make
sure that our schools have better ventilation and that, therefore, they not become
breeding grounds for Covid-19.
Based on what you know, is that, in fact, happening?
>> Raywat: I don't know if it's happening.
I have heard stories from some schools that have taken measures.
I think they're in the minority.
And frankly I know of schools like windows painted shut, for example, you can't even get a
cross-breeze in there.
It is probably a fair investment to upgrade a filtration system to the high quality MERC-14, 16
standards.
That's an engineering term.
I'm not an engineer.
There are things you can do.
There are things called ROSENTHAL boxes taking filters of a certain quality.
Slap them together and create a cube and that is sufficient to filter a room.
We're not doing everything we can do to curtail a disease.
Especially now that we accept it's airborne.
I can't say that enough.
Those are dirty words, if COVID is airborne and we have to run with that and build our
mitigation strategies around that reality.
>> Steve: Okay.
That's schools.
What other places do you think we need better solutions as it relates to ventilation,
airborne, et cetera?
>> Raywat: Believe it or not, hospitals.
Hospitals have the highest level filtration which is the HEPA filter.
But we still have people wearing blue surgical masks if you go in for any kind of medical
procedure wearing an N-95, they will tell you take that off and put on this crappy, lesser
quality mask which is infuriating that's just their policy.
So what we need is to have N-95 quality respirators worn across the board in hospitals where
people are most likely to be infected and infectious.
So, yeah, that's a strange one.
I would count hospitals as being the place that needs to look at their infection practice and
control measure as bit more closely.
>> Steve: While we're on that subject can you tell me why they do that?
I have done it myself.
I walked into the hospital to get a PCR test.
I'm wearing a brand new N-95 mask.
I walk in the door.
They say take that off hand me a cloth mask and say put this on instead.
Why do they do that?
>> Raywat: I have asked them and the answer I get is two fold.
One is we can't be sure that your masks is good.
We have your word wore for it and the second is some people have an allergy to the mask you
bring in.
I don't really buy either one of those arguments.
I think it's more adherence to the letter of the rule and someone is afraid to break the
rules.
>> Steve: I know you're not a political scientist but I will ask you a political question any
way.
We have seen in the United States the simple act of mask wearing is well beyond a public
health issue it has become a political issue in a major way.
In your travels in this country, do you see that?
>> Raywat: To a lesser extent.
And there is, if you have a VENN diagram of the COVID deniers of the Anti-Vaxxers and the anti
maskers it's almost a perfect circle.
There is going to be some overlap obviously.
Not all people who are vaccine hesitant share these beliefs but there is a large overlap.
I think it comes from a political view point that holds independent, individual free
many dos as the highest possible value.
And I can respect some of that to some extent but it ignores the fact there are community
responsibilities that come with our freedoms.
And I think we're going to have a few years of deep introspection in this country to
establish what really are the fundamental Canadian values.
Do we value community well-being above the sacrosanct nature of individual rights?
I think we do.
>> Steve: That's Dr. Raywat Deonandan.
Epidemiologist and researcher at the University of Ottawa whose visits to the program we really
do appreciate.
Thanks so much and take good care.
>> Raywat: Thank you so much.