Éirígí Video - Covering Your Face Protects Older Citizens And Those At Higher Risk
Éirígí For A New Republic has produced a new video encouraging people to wear face coverings where social distancing is difficult or impossible to implement. Such settings include public transport and shops.
The SARS-Cov-2 virus primarily spreads through tiny droplets that are expelled when an infected person coughs, sneezes, clears their throat, spits, talks or even breathes heavily. When an infected droplet come into contact with the mouth, nose or eyes of a non-infected person the virus within the droplet latches on and replicates itself, thus infecting a new ‘host’.
SARS-Cov-2 is thus able to spread rapidly in situations where lots of people are close together, in settings like public transport, shops, offices, pubs, concerts and so forth. The spread is made all the easier by the fact that human beings have no pre-existing immunity to a virus that was only found in the animals up until six months ago. And easier still because many infected people, who are spreading infected droplets, do not display any symptoms of disease themselves.
Face coverings, where factory or home made, catch many of the droplets that we all expel as we go about our daily business - droplets which may contain SARS-Cov-2. They also offer the wearer some protection as they filter virus-containing droplets that have been expelled by others.
Face coverings, even scarves or homemade cotton masks, offer a cheap, effective way to help slow the spread of SARS-Cov-2 and the Covid-19 disease that it causes. Face coverings save lives, with little economic cost or interruption to daily life.
Face coverings are widely worn in every country that has successfully slowed the spread of the virus - in China, South Korea, Japan and closer to home in Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic and other European countries.
They are one of the tools to be used to defeat Covid-19, alongside hand-washing, social distancing, testing, tracking and the isolation of the infected.
Covid-19 represents a very real and very significant threat to the health and lives of Irish people over 70 years of age and younger people in higher-risk groups.
Protecting these citizens is a patriotic duty that all other citizens needs to fulfill. There is no place for hype-individualism and mé féinism is the battle to protect the most vulnerable members of the Nation from a new and deadly pathogen.