In our office we require everyone to wear masks – patients, practitioners and staff. We also use face shields when treatment necessitates that heads are close to each other. In addition, we run HEPA air filters all day and for two hours following the last person in a room. It simply makes sense, given that there is a worldwide pandemic involving a virus which can aerosolize and spreads via respiratory droplets.
Dr. Jieyi Zhang, an acupuncturist colleague from China, was kind enough to put together further information for us about why it is so important to wear masks.
Please note that at the bottom of this article are multiple useful links for further references. Don’t miss these!
Below is from Dr. Zhang:
“I include below some articles and links relating to our discussion about COVID 19 topics. I have been following up with this virus since February this year. I have family members in China. I have put a lot of time into researching other countries’ responses and the results of their actions. It is so interesting that we have the hot debate about infection mitigation measurements here in the US when we have the worst infection numbers and the highest death numbers for a country in the world.
In the US, we think this virus affects us like a bad flu. However, in Asian countries, people do not want to get pneumonia with long term side effects of pulmonary fibrosis or other multiple organ damage. The motivation to contain this virus is obviously different with the perception of this same virus. I am totally going for building immunity and correcting the nutritional deficiency to resist the effect of this virus with high virulence. However, host resistance is just one factor in the infection equation (see below).
With my knowledge about COVID 19 and cross-culture experience so far, I am very concerned about some views and actions within our alternative practitioners. They are not taking all necessary preventive measurements and even put patients’ guard down in preventing the infection. When they emphasize building host defense, they seem to either forget that prevention is a very important part of maintaining optimal health, or they don’t really understand the full picture of infection diseases.
When a virus has such detrimental effects on people’s life at such a fast speed, we need to pay attention to what frontline scientists and doctors have learned so far. It is that we don’t want to put our patients in harm’s way with long term health consequences due to our limited knowledge on this virus. First do no harm.
The bottom line, there is no perfect solution as long as we have the pandemics and not get in control of it. We can do something to reduce the side effects from wearing masks, like hygiene practice, plan our activities so that we don’t need to wear masks. I ask my patients to wash their cloth masks with soap preferably every day. The main purpose of universal masking is preventing spread of infection from asymptomatic carriers.
Here are the links to related articles and resources:
Asymptomatic transmission of coronavirus appears to be worse than SARS or influenza — 5 reasons you should care
This 3-D Simulation Shows Why Social Distancing Is So Important and mask effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=BoDwXwZXsDI&feature=emb_logo
Mask effect, material, disinfection
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-masks-virus/
Masks materials
Scientific evidence for masks to fight Covid-19
https://www.todayonline.com/world/masks-prevented-major-coronavirus-outbreak-hair-salon-study
I hope that the information here helps you and our doctors to be safe for themselves and help their patients safe and healthy.