Wichita City Hall hands out makeshift paper-towel masks for COVID. But do they work?
A series of speakers assailed the Wichita City Council on Tuesday over its ordinance mandating protective facemasks to fight the spread of coronavirus, including one objecting to the makeshift masks handed out at city facilities to those who don’t bring their own.
“This is literally a paper towel,” said Scot Pierce, holding a mask he was given as he signed in for the council meeting. “Your entity, the people who represent you, folded paper towels and stapled it with rubber bands.”
And they didn’t even do that well, said Pierce, a former Sedgwick County paramedic who has a degree in biochemistry.
“This paper towel . . . is actually dirty,” he said. “This has greasy thumbprints, hand prints on it. And my guess is the maintenance man who probably made these did not wash his hands before he put these together. I would not put this on my face and this is not an adequate filtrate to any kind of viral micron.”
The masks in question are made from thicker-than-normal blue paper towels of the type commonly sold at auto part stores. They’re folded to two layers, with rubber bands stapled on for ear loops to hold them in place.
The “no-sew” masks were promoted on YouTube and elsewhere as a stopgap measure during critical shortages of personal protective equipment early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Council member Jeff Blubaugh questioned City Manager Robert Layton about the paper-towel masks.
“Bob, could you clarify, with the amount of PPE money we’re getting, are we having a maintenance man take paper towels and staple rubber bands to them and provide them for our guests that are speaking?” Blubaugh asked.
Replied Layton: “What we are providing are temporary mask coverings, prepared by staff. I can’t tell you who’s doing it (for Century II). In (City Hall) it is our security that’s doing it as part of their responsibilities. But it’s only intended to be temporary for those who don’t bring their own mask into the space.”
Blubaugh: “What kind of research have we done that says this?”
Layton: “We did initial research when we first introduced those . . . the speaker is correct it doesn’t have maybe the same impact as some other mask coverings but it does provide some protection.”
Actually, testing by University of North Carolina researchers last month found that shop-towel masks were more effective at protecting their wearers than cloth masks or the common ear-loop masks worn by medical personnel.
“The shop towel masks were about 50 percent effective, but when we doubled the material to make a two-ply version of the mask, the filtering efficiency increased to about 75 percent,” UNC researcher Phillip Clapp reported on the university’s website. “While neither the cotton or shop towel masks reached the effectiveness of N95 respirators, the data suggests they will provide some protection for the wearer and even more for those in the immediate vicinity of the wearer.”
Mayor Brandon Whipple, the leading supporter of the city’s mask mandate, said the filtration efficiency of the masks in protecting the wearer is largely irrelevant.
The point of the masks is to prevent infected people from exhaling, coughing or sneezing coronavirus-laced spittle into shared airspace, he said.
“What the mask is to do is to stop the droplet that carries the virus,” Whipple said. “The mask that is made out of a paper towel will absorb that droplet and absorb the virus cell with it.”
Council member Brandon Johnson questioned Pierce about whether the city should renew the mask ordinance when it’s scheduled to expire next week if it protects vulnerable individuals.
“The concern is that as other folks live freely without their masks, it still puts at risk some of our older populations or . . . those who had other (health) issues,” Johnson said.
Pierce replied that it’s not his responsibility to protect others and that they should protect themselves.
“When the World Health Organization in early March declared this a pandemic and a public health crisis, this thing got political legs,” Pierce said. “And it became sort of now my responsibility to mitigate risk for you, when ultimately it should have been mitigating risk, personal risk, for myself.”
Pierce was one of four public presenters demanding an end to the mask mandate and a return to business as usual before the pandemic.
Several brought up recent news reports quoting Centers for Disease Control data that said 94% of people who died with COVID-19 had underlying medical conditions.
“I’m not sure you all are aware, but last week the CDC updated their COVID death numbers,” said Emily Coello. “Did you realize that only 9,210 people in America died from COVID alone? That’s just six percent of the total number of deaths that we have been fed all summer. The other 94% had two to three other serious illnesses.”
Contacted after the meeting, Dr. Thomas Moore, an infectious disease specialist affiliated with Wesley Medical Center, said that’s a misinterpretation of the CDC data.
He said almost all death certificates list one or more contributing conditions, which doctors call comorbidities.
In the case of COVID-19, many of the comorbid factors such as pneumonia, lung disease, kidney and heart failure are actually caused by the coronavirus infection and the patient wouldn’t have had those if they didn’t catch the virus.
Additionally, many people with common pre-existing conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure or diabetes would have lived for years or even decades if they didn’t catch COVID, he said.
For example, he said, almost 40 percent of Americans are considered clinically obese and two-thirds are overweight. Add in other comorbidities and it’s a broad majority of the population.
And, “For those who think they’re in the 6% range where they don’t have any comorbidities and they’re just fine, the problem is they will transmit (COVID) to those who do,” Moore said.
“I would challenge anybody who thinks it’s nothing to come on down to the ICU,” he said. “I’ll be happy to show you what nothing can do.”
With council chambers closed to the public due to the pandemic, members of the public spoke from a conference room at the Century II Performing Arts Center, the default location the city has provided to address the council by remote teleconferencing.
Of the six people in the room during public comment, only one wore a mask: Anh Tran, who came to advocate for the city to support chemical castration for child molesters.
Resident Tonya Hudson compared the mask mandate and other COVID restrictions to domestic abuse.
“Imagine a man who forced his wife to stay away from her friends, family and job,” she said. “Imagine he told her she should not leave the house unless absolutely necessary and to cover her face and avoid people if she does go out. Imagine he threatened her with punishment if she didn’t submit.
“I would imagine we would all agree this is abusive. This does not stop being abuse when it comes from the government.”
Coello said the original purpose of coronavirus restrictions, to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, has been met.
“But now when the City Council, County Commission and school board meet, everyone is talking about their desire to lower the case numbers,” she said. “And then, in a never-ending nightmare, each body passes more restrictions on our population.”
She criticized Whipple for advocating for more federal aid to fight COVID-19 and help the local economy.
“The only thing we need in Wichita, sir, is for the economy and schools to fully reopen without restriction,” she said.
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 4:59 PM.
