It’s time for better masks in sport

This is the latest way in which sport has become the microcosm of U.S. Masks as the most powerful weapon in combating the spread of the virus, with vaccines still weeks or months away. for most people, while most protective masks are no longer as rare as they were in the early days of the pandemic.

But many Americans still cling to the most available or comfortable masks as if they were also the most effective. They are not.

Now some doctors, scientists and health officials believe that it is no longer enough to tell people to wear masks. It’s time to tell them to start wearing better masks – or two masks.

“Use the best mask you can when you’re close to someone,” said Jeremy Howard, a research scientist at the University of San Francisco. “It doesn’t make sense not to wear high-quality masks. ”

It makes the least sense for a highly regulated sport that has spent millions of dollars to find valuable resources such as fast daily test results and protect the billions of dollars at risk of Covid-19.

Enforcement of league mask rules is not always as strict as their strict protocols suggest. Players often stretch the mask under their chins and let it fall under their noses. The sight of coaches removing the mask at the very moment they are useful – when chatting with players and screaming at referees – remains a horrible sight for doctors and researchers who are obsessed with mask literature. . Some even say they would like to see athletes wearing a mask while competing.

But what they would like to see is teams in a better mask.

The reasons they say high-quality masks should be part of sportswear for the coming months are both economic and epidemiological. The supply is there and it could be bigger. With highly effective vaccines in the race against more infectious changes, they say the demand should be there as well.

“I think we should push harder to encourage the manufacture of high quality masks and do more to get better masks in the hands of consumers, especially those at risk. higher from Covid, ”said Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, who has won bipartisan praise for his pandemic advice. “The new changes are exacerbating the crisis here. ”

So what kind of mask is best?

Some experts believe that high-density masks such as the N95s worn in medical settings should be the focus of an ongoing manufacturing push. Abraar Karan, an in-house medical doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, wants to get such a mask in every home. It has made an effort with the National Hi-Fi Mask campaign to make more of them and supports the use of the Defense Representation Act to scale access.

The NBA says “N95 masks are not” necessary or recommended “for players, who are tested at least twice a day, to maintain the provision of health care and essential personnel. The league currently prescribes a face mask such as a surgical, medical or multilayer dressing mask, but these rules are regularly reviewed in consultation with infectious disease experts and the players’ union, he said. NBA spokesman.

While the NBA bans neck gaiters, they are more common in the NFL, where better masks are less necessary because games are played outdoors. No one went through more mascara drama than Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid. A season started with Reid fighting a smoky funny wing ends with masked Reid coaching in the Super Bowl. A mask of choice in NFL playoffs: a light red mask, apparently upside down a triangle decorated with his team’s logo.

The field is not the only place where football teams interact. At the end of November, with nationwide skyrocketing conditions, the NFL laid down a rule: The league required players and coaches to wear N95 or KN95 masks on the bus or on the plane when travel

But masks don’t have to be N95s or foreign ones to be more protective in dangerous indoor situations, says Monica Gandhi, a doctor of infectious diseases and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

For crowded indoor environments – say, a basketball game – there are other simple options. Gandhi recommends double chewing with surgical masks and cloth or sandwiching the two pieces of cloth mask around high-efficiency sieves as an empty bag. These additional layers are strong because they inhibit viral particles in various ways to provide maximum protection.

The NBA could benefit from better masks off the court, too. The league has recently tightened their protocols in response to an uptick of issues and a burst of delay but maintains that most of the distribution has not been traced back to basketball. Instead, referrals have been linked to heavy activities such as socializing on the road and even doing car work.

Gandhi and Linsey Marr, a professor of engineering at Virginia Tech, had another important message about masks in a recent statement: It is important that high – profile figures lead by example.

The coronavirus diagnostic protocols of sports leagues are logically expensive and complex. Masks are far more affordable. And it’s helpful that NBA players don’t have to put out a film for public service about masks because people are already watching them on television every night. “They all have a big role to play in modeling,” Gandhi said.

That logic extends to outdoor activities as well. Some of the lights that served the outdoors wore high-gloss or doubling masks. The next major television event is another opportunity for a large audience to sell better masks: the Super Bowl.

Among the 22,000 fans at next week’s game will be 7,500 vaccinated healthcare workers. But the fans, “vaccinated or not, wear the KN95 mask we give them,” said NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills.

Write to Ben Cohen at [email protected] and Louise Radnofsky at [email protected]