Birdflu Mailing List: Re: Pandemic Flu Facemask Guidelines

[Sue Tincher (suetincher]

Bill-

I would ask one of the experts whom you've gotten to know. I would certainly
value their opinion. What is the state of MN recommending? Speaking for
myself, it seems alarmist to recommend that people stock up on face masks
and stay six feet from one another. My feeling is, if a pandemic strikes,
people will hole up in their own homes. I foresee the drama of the pandemic
playing out in homes and in hospitals, not in the places where the public
normally gathers, which will be emptied.

Sue


-----Original Message-----
From: William Weir [mailto:weirwilliam [at] msn.com] 
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2007 3:25 PM
To: Sue Tincher
Subject: [Birdflu] Pandemic Flu Facemask Guidelines

Here is the URL for 

Interim Public Health Guidance for the Use of Facemasks and Respirators in
Non-Occupational Community Settings during an Influenza Pandemic - issued by
US - CDC 5/3/07 - 10 pages

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/community/maskguidancecommunity.html<http://
www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/community/maskguidancecommunity.html>

and a two-page summary of the above

http://www.cdc.gov/Features/MasksRespirators/<http://www.cdc.gov/Features/Ma
sksRespirators/>

What do you think?   

Do we recommend that our congregations stock up on N-95 respirators
(the kind that many house painters wear)?

Or N-99? N-100? Or something better?  

Or a surgical mask (intended to stop the surgeon's exhaled germs from
reaching the surgery patient, but which lets the surgeon breathe unfiltered
air)?  This may best be used by someone who may be infected, not by someone
trying to avoid becoming infected.

Do we prepare to show our employees and members how to make the M-95 mask
fit snuggly
(so as not to breathe unfiltered air)?

Notice on the last of the ten pages that social distancing now means SIX
FEET !!! Not as previously only 3 feet.
Close contact is anything less than six feet !!!  Right?

Bill
Chair of Comte on Emergency Preparedness at FUS-Mpls

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