The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions new crisis guidelines to health care workers says that where no face masks are available, homemade masks, made of bandannas or scarves, for instance, can be used as a last resort That’s how desperate they are, that they said that. Livingston says. Cloth masks aren’t ideal. A 2015 study of over 1,000 healthcare workers in Hanoi, Vietnam, found that those who were assigned to wear cloth masks were more likely to get a respiratory virus than those who wore medical masks, made of thick fibers that catch a range of particles. That study appeared in BMJ Open.

The mask needs to strike a balance between filtering capabilities and breath ability. Some materials, such as vacuum bags, are better at filtering than others, a 2013 study in Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness suggests. But vacuum bags are hard to breathe through. Cotton … Read the rest