InPark Magazine: There’s a shortage of medical gear in the COVID-19 pandemic, with protective masks for healthcare workers one of the oft-cited items. And there have been calls to action across a spectrum of communities including professionals, makers and home crafters. But fabricating masks that protect against a virus is not the same as knitting scarves for soldiers. Is this an area where suppliers in the visitor attractions industry can help?
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The part that the nation and to a major extent, the world, is low on the supply of the protective masks is not hidden. This is not because less of those were produced but because the demand for these masks is way above the supply of these masks, due to the present conditions. At this point, both healthcare personnel and civilians have limited or no access to these masks.in this case it makes sense for people to try to come up with ways to help with the situation.
This article lays out the things that people and professional costume shops can do to help with this low supply of masks. There methods include professional shops to make these masks, for people to reuse their masks when they can, and for people to make masks for themselves so to leave the supply of masks in the market available to the healthcare professionals for use in helping to treat and stop the spread of corona virus.
The efforts that people are putting into this are really commendable given that they are going out of their way to help as many people as they can as the world is struck with a pandemic.
This pandemic has exposed the horrific nature of individualism and capitalism in this world. Now more than ever we need to work together, but manufacturers are raising prices of life-saving equipment as demand rises and people are desperate to be paid. If we adopted some of the more “socialist” policies of other developed countries this might not be such a huge issue, but nevertheless it is good that people are using their skills to donate PPE to nurses and doctors in need. I am hopeful that hospitals are willing to pay struggling theaters for these masks when possible because theaters are financially suffering much more than the hospitals. I wonder, though, how effective these handmade masks are as PPE consider the holes that obviously occur as mentioned in the article. It is good that legislation is coming out fast enough to protect people who are donating masks. Hopefully these masks will work well enough to slow the spread in hospitals.
I have seen so many articles and stories of people, especially in the theatre costuming world, come together to make masks for nurses and doctors. I have seen equally as many, such as this one, that are telling people to not do this. On Tuesday in class we had the opportunity to talk to a Carnegie Mellon School of Drama alumni who now works in the medical field and is actually the chief of her hospital's Covid unit. We asked her about this topic as we had all heard so much about it. She said that making the masks is actually beneficial because the doctors and nurses can keep their one n95 mask that actually benefits them but cover that with the hand made masks. This way the cloth protects from flying saliva and excessive wear on the n95s. I can see how this is beneficial in the short term, but I don’t know how useful a week old n95 would be after a full busy week of caring for hundreds of patients.
I remember discussing the topic of disposable respirator and glove shortages in class before this epidemic impacted the United States as bad as it has now. I have seen a lot of articles about how people can make masks in their own homes with scrap material. While I am a little skeptical about how easy this seems, I am sure that any masks at this point would be better than none. Additionally, I have seen commercial scene shops release statements that they have the facilities and skill to manufacture masks and some companies have even offered to help produce ventilator systems for hospitals for patients that are in critical condition. I do like how this article touched on the topic that while these finished goods are hard to find, so are the raw materials needed to produce these masks. While these times are a little scary and incredibly uncertain, leave it to the people in the artistic community to offer a helping hand.
This period of panic is something that will certainly make the history books. It has mobilized the entire world towards a common goal, whilst simultaneously bringing on a massive economic crisis. People continue to help even despite this. Now that I think about it, it kind of reminds me of the stories of the women who mobilized to sustain businesses and industry during WWII in the US. The article talks about people who have been sewing, 3D printing (I have a friend doing this one), and molding masks for medical workers to help cover the shortage caused by panic-buying at the beginning of the crisis. It is moving to see so many people making an effort to help. Even though these homemade masks are not necessarily filtering the way that a respirator mask would, I would think it is better than not having any PPE at all. I have seen photos of nurses wearing trash bags because they ran out of aprons. I think they appreciate literally anything they can get to protect themselves while they are risking their lives to help people.
This article provided another layer to the puzzle of homemade masks not previously mentioned which was the challenges in getting supplies to make the masks. The usual suppliers of materials for costume industries are mostly overseas and getting stuff shipped here has been a challenge. I wonder if it would be a significant cost difference to ask other fabric suppliers such as Joanns to provide low or at cost fabric for mask making. Possibly utilizing the powers of social media to reach out. On the note of shipping, Other than amazon taking much longer I wonder how other shipping is affected by this whole thing. Historically has the postal service ever needed to pause for global emergencies? Is that a possibility given the current situation. I couldn’t tell what the conclusion of this article was. Did it want the public to make masks? Or did it want to point out how the public cannot make N95 masks?
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