#Masks4All during #Coronavirus #COVID19 Pandemic

Watch more by USF Data Institute professors, data scientists, software engineer, and ethicists, fast.ai co-founders, Jeremy Howard and Rachel Thomas:

https://bit.ly/masks4allfast

Compelling reference coming from the Czech Republic here: https://bit.ly/czechcampaign

Masks are common sense. As much as I love Dr. Sanjay Gupta (CNN Medical Correspondent who I respect), I’ll have to disagree here. I wear my mask if I have to shop for my parents’ groceries (I’d prefer and have been pushing them for delivery).

We are in lockdown mode, I had to stop walking the dogs wearing masks and don’t really want to go out at all. For SF folks they’ve been in single digit quarantine numbers, but I’ve been shelter in place since almost every tech conference I RSVPed for or was going to speak at got cancelled or rescheduled or I had asked them to cancel, reschedule, or move online, that was weeks before everyone started complaining about social distancing and many people months before told me I was crazy spreading misinformation on Facebook when really I was concerned for my cousins who are nurses and they by coincidence had the first coronavirus case in the South Bay at the hospital they work at in Mountain View.

My parents worked at Roche for decades (my Dad is toxicologist and my Mom is a molecular biologist and practicing veterinarian), so they know what they’re talking about. They asked me at age 19 to lobby tech investors to donate to the Philippine Pathology Center which does R&D (research and development) on SARs and the avian flu. Roche is working with the federal government on coronavirus btw, so that's a credible company.

So finding a vaccine is extremely important and anyone telling you this will be over in 2 weeks or a few months has no certainty to what the situation actually is and probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about. No scientist or medical professional can say with absolute confidence we will be business as usual by Easter, that’s fake news and ludicrous.

So inform, protect yourself and your family, shelter-in-place, social distance (of course wash your hands), and wear a mask (no-brainer). ??

tl;dr: #Masks4All: Wear A Mask! For East Asian and East Asian Americans, wearing masks is normalized and seen as protecting yourself, not as an identifier for being sick. For many Filipinos, nursing is a common profession, so this is common knowledge along with standard social distancing practices aInform and protect yourself and shelter-in-place. Stay healthy and safe!