The technology exists to allow us to go on with our daily business while preventing the transmission of the virus.
To lock down or not to lock down? This is the question dominating public debate as Australia tries to find its way through the COVID-19 pandemic. The pros and cons are laid out daily in the media: surging unemployment, falling GDP, and vocal protesters aggrieved by the limitation of freedoms on the one hand, but on the other we have the spectre of mass deaths internationally and local outbreaks to remind us of the consequences of losing control of this virus.
But what if there was another answer, a technological solution, which allowed us to go on with our daily business while preventing the transmission of the virus? Something cheap and lightweight that could turn each person into their own, mobile "lockdown bubble", locking the virus down without locking down the human. Something that would stop the viral particles from leaving one person's mouth and nose and entering that of the next person ...
You see where this is leading. The technology exists: it’s called a mask, and there won’t be any Nobel prizes awarded for the discovery that it reduces the transmission of COVID-19. It works if you are a cafe worker – two dozen patrons of a Starbucks cafe in Seoul were infected in August after a person with COVID-19 visited; none of the four mask-wearing employees was infectedduring the outbreak on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, 81 per cent of crew not wearing masks were infected versus 56 per cent of those wearing masksin February, 41 healthcare workers in a Singapore hospital were exposed to an intubated patient having procedures known to be at very high risk of causing the spread of COVID-19 droplets .
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