Personal Protective Equipment: Necessary vs Overkill

Last week I got a chuckle when a local radio personality sounded terribly muffled, as though he was talking through a wall.  I had tuned in a bit late, what was the joke?  Low and behold not a joke, the man was wearing a HAZMAT suit to protect himself from potential Ebola exposure.  While I’m sure even the average layperson living in what I’ve been jokingly calling “the hot zone” of Akron is fully aware that this is overkill, it occurs to me that there will be a few people out there willing to go full Breaking Bad if they are forced to venture out in public.  Before you don your plastic suit and Ebola-safe helmet with anti-viral mask, consider the repercussions of dressing in this fashion to go get your groceries or return your movies to Redbox.

Check it out at roverradio.com here

Lifelong Shame from Friends and Family

When this is all over, it’s going to be brought up at every family gathering.  They’re going to want you to pull out the HAZMAT suit and wear it around.  Maybe you can stick some feathers on the rear and be the HAZMAT Thanksgiving turkey.  Put some boots and a fuzzy red hat on it, tada, HAZMAT Santa!  Fourth of July coming around?  What makes a family BBQ more fun than a guy in a HAZMAT suit and an Uncle Sam hat pointing and saying “I want YOU for the CDC!”  Nothing at all.  When we get the disease under control, and yes we will, it’s going to be something to look back on and chuckle about.  Remember West Nile Virus?  SARS?  H1N1?  Did you contract that?  Did you die?  You’re reading this so I’m going to assume that you didn’t.

The Public Menace

After we laugh and giggle about you and strangers stare at you and point and laugh in public, we’re going to have to take a breath, calm down, and clean up the mess you’ve just created.  Like it or not, not everyone out there in the public is completely calm about the Ebola virus.  If regular people start seeing spacemen running around in HAZMAT costumes at work, at school, in the grocery store, etc, they’re eventually going to get worried.  When people get worried in large groups, they start to panic.  A large group of panicking people is not unlike a large group of panicking cattle – they are very loud, very strong, and rather destructive.  At this point, rumors begin to spread, misinformation runs rampant, and we end up with a situation worse than the one we’re already in.  Now that’s scary.


You’re Only Hurting Yourself

Not only is it “Ebola season” right now, it’s cold and flu season.  Those little buggers are floating through the air, living on surfaces, and incubating inside of your friends and neighbors (unlike Ebola virus.)  In order to have immunity from a disease, your body needs to have been exposed to it.  This is how vaccines work – we infect the body with either a dead virus or a synthetic form of a virus so that our body then learns to form antibodies to it.  If you’re out running around in a plastic suit and not coming into contact with small amounts of these little guys in order to boost your immunity to them and stay healthy.

So what is appropriate to be wearing?  I’ve noticed that a lot of people want to don N-95 respirator masks when in public places.  Being again that it is cold and flu season this will probably protect you from the flu virus and a lot of colds, but against Ebola that is just silly unless you have some sort of fetish for people sneezing and coughing on your face.  (See previous post regarding Ebola and air) Gloves are also not a necessity if you practice good hand washing and hand sanitizer use.  If you’re going to be in a high traffic public place like a shopping mall or an airport and would feel more comfortable wearing some sort of protective equipment however, gloves are the way to go – they’re less noticeable, easily changeable, and not super expensive.  Again, wear them only if you have to in order to prevent yourself from having some sort of panic-induced public meltdown.  No one wants to witness that.

As a member of the general public, if you are not in direct contact with a potential Ebola patient then full PPE is overkill.  It is expensive, you look silly, and you’re making other people nervous.  If you have to come in contact with someone who may have been exposed and is experiencing symptoms but has not yet been quarantined then yes, please put on a mask and gloves if you have them.  Otherwise let’s all put the HAZMAT suits back in the closet for a few weeks and save them for Halloween.

If you are a healthcare worker, my next entry will re-address all of this for you, because obviously this is different for your daily life and work environment.