There have been plenty of mixed messages given about face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic — but masking up could be one small way we can all help out.
By Trevis Gleason
For Life With Multiple Sclerosis
Last Updated: April 29, 2020
For people living with a chronic illness such as multiple sclerosis (MS), it can be difficult to find answers to the questions we have about the novel coronavirus. Specific advice about protecting ourselves from the virus, treatment with disease modifying therapy (DMT) during the pandemic, and more can be found across different nations’ MS societies’ websites. But even these sites vary in how much coverage they give to COVID-19.
The National MS Society, MS Ireland, and the MS Society of the UK, for example, all offer information on COVID-19 for people with MS, but they vary in the depth to which they cover the topic and link to other sources of information.
One area that seems to be rarely addressed, if ever, is specific advice on masks for people with MS.
The science of combatting SARS-CoV-2 (the virus behind COVID-19) is a fast-moving target. Different countries have quite different strategies for coping with the pandemic. Add that to the impression that science, politics, and the media seem to be more often colliding than collaborating, and you have a recipe for an underinformed (or worse, misinformed) public in this time of crisis.
The general use of masks for healthy individuals in the community (mass masking) is one such international divergence.
A recently published article in The Lancet called out the disparity. The World Health Organization (as of April 6) and Public Health England (as of April 23), for example, have not yet made recommendations for mass masking by healthy people.
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