We’ve all heard the old story about coming into the kitchen and finding the water on and the sink overflowing — the first thing to do is turn off the water. That’s what we need to do with the coronavirus: turn off the flow of the virus into the environment so we can greatly reduce the number of new infections.

Our prescribed methods for turning off the faucet are: staying home, practicing social distancing and washing our hands. These methods do work, but they are slow and incomplete, and they are quickly destroying our economy and our bank accounts. We need a better way to stop the transmission of the virus without stopping social interaction and without demolishing our economy.

Infection control experts agree that the primary method of transmission of the coronavirus is when infected individuals spew virus covered droplets into the air as they cough, sneeze, talk or sometimes just breathe. We now know that some people may be infected, but show few or no symptoms. Any of us could be infected, spewing the virus, and totally unaware of the danger we present to others. On April 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started advising that wearing simple cloth masks or even bandanas out in public may be of some value to reduce the spread of infected droplets. But, certainly the United States of America can do much better than homemade masks and bandanas.

With the help of a few experts, a cloth mask could quickly be designed to be comfortable, washable, inexpensive and effective at stopping droplets from being expelled into the environment when the wearer sneezes or coughs. If everyone were to wear such a mask, the rate of transmission of the COVID-19 virus would be drastically reduced. The more people wearing a mask, the greater the reduction. Everyone wearing a mask would be like turning off the water — it would slow the flow of infected droplets into the air to a tiny dribble. In addition, the masks could be designed to filter out some airborne droplets from other people. Mask wearing is a very powerful weapon in our arsenal to fight COVID-19 — let’s all use it.

Some people may resist wearing a mask, but the promise of getting back to normal activities sooner would be a powerful incentive. Which would people prefer: cabin fever and going broke, or wearing a simple mask in order to return to work/school/church etc., much sooner? Hand washing, surface disinfecting and social distancing would still be needed. Testing and tracking of infections, quarantine and isolation would still be necessary, but they will be much more effective with far fewer cases to be followed.

The cost would be a small fraction in comparison to what we are spending now. With everyone wearing an effective mask, we could start getting people back to work, school, sports events, church, et cetera, sooner. The question we need to ask ourselves and our elected officials is, is there a better, cheaper, quicker solution?

David Lane

Ashland, Ore.