Atlas All Access

Wear a mask, help fight Covid-19, stop coronavirus - Atlas All Access 124

Wear a mask, help fight Covid-19, stop coronavirus - Atlas All Access 124

Wear a mask. Save a life.

It's frustrating to us to see basic science, not to mention healthcare, be turned into a political statement. This is not about that. What we do want to focus on is the importance of wearing a mask. There's a lot of false information out there. So let's go over the facts. What's the truth behind wearing a mask? We've worked with thousands of nurses, techs, therapists, and healthcare professionals around the country, we regularly talk with some of the biggest names in the healthcare industry and some of the most recognized medical facilities in the country — and they all say you should wear a mask. Healthcare professionals, of course, already know all this. But if you have been trying to find a piece of content to share with a family member that is *not* political, but does go over the facts of wearing a mask ... well, we hope this helps. Stay safe out there. Wear a mask and protect your fellow man. Look out for each other.

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WHO Myths

Wearing a mask causes oxygen deficiency. -- Nope. -- Otherwise nurses and docs who wear masks for 8-12 hour surgeries would collapse.

Drinking alcohol prevents the coronavirus. -- No, but nice try. You might feel better about things, though.

Hot sauce and hot peppers protect you from getting Covid-19 -- No. Otherwise our ICU nurses would be injecting patients with 10 CCs of Cholula and epi-pens loaded with Tapatio. (Don't inject hot sauce, kids.)

5G causes Covid-19 -- No. -- But it might give you a better mobile signal to research facts from the WHO or CDC.

Extreme heat (or cold) kills the virus. -- Also no. Do not blast a blowdryer up your nose.

Injecting bleach or cleaning agents stops the virus. -- No. Unless you count that it will kill you. Do not do this.

Rich Smith: Can't see the smile here, can you? But that's okay. On this episode, we talk about this: wearing a mask. This isn't for our regular audience. This isn't for our healthcare professional friends. This isn't for the people that work for us. It's for their families. It's for the people that are around them. It's to the people that they love the most. On this episode, we talk about wearing a mask and everything that goes into it. Atlas All Access starts now.

Rich Smith: Okay. Well, my glasses are fogging up and if anybody has a trick to how to stop that from happening, especially our healthcare friends, I know that probably is something that you struggle with, wearing a mask all the time. Like I said, this is not for our regular audience. This is not for our traveling healthcare professionals that are working in hospitals right now. This is for their friends, their family members, their loved ones, for our internal employees and their friends and their family members and their loved ones. It's come up, there are so many states that are mandating it out in public. When I was just on vacation in Colorado, everywhere we went, we had to wear a mask. Like if you had to sit down ... You went to a restaurant, sat down and take your mask off, you can eat, whatever. You had to get up and go to the bathroom, put the mask back on, go to the bathroom, come back, sit down.

Rich Smith: So, and I thought it was important that we talked about it and why we're doing it, why you should do it, because there's a whole lot of bad information out there. Facebook is filled with it. So many pretend healthcare professionals out there that want to give their opinion about how they believe their rights are being taken away or whatever. And we'll get to that. I don't want this to be a political statement. The information that I have comes directly from the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic and UCSF. So, I think these ... That's where the information comes from.

Rich Smith: So the very first line in the Atlas Way, which is something that every employee gets from the beginning of Atlas to now, when they start training, is called the Atlas Way. And there's a number of different things in there, and you may have seen it, a number of different things. The very first line in it is, "Treat each other with respect." And in the end, wearing a mask while you're in public is a sign of respect, and that's really all it is. Does the mask protect you from breathing in particles? I mean, this cloth mask here, this was made by one of our employees. Does it protect you? No, I don't think there's any evidence that proves that at all. But what it does, is it protects others if you are asymptomatic of breathing those particles out into the air and then breathing it back and them breathing it in.

Rich Smith: So cloth masks don't protect you from the virus, because you're touching your face and you're picking stuff up, and I get it. I've heard it all. It protects others. It protects the people in the grocery store. It protects the people that you're passing by, it protects others. The evidence is overwhelming that shows that droplets that are expelled from your mouth as you talk, are blocked by the mask as you talk; it's blocked on the inside here.

Rich Smith: Now that means you got to wash this thing, right? And these are fully washed. It's just a cotton ... I mean, she used all kinds. She did some special clearly for me and my son. There's a couple of those going around.

Rich Smith: So as businesses reopen and employees return back to work, having these masks is pivotal to ... Even as I say, pivotal and I spit a little bit and I can see it, right? If my mask had been on and I said that, it would have been blocked by the inside of the mask. It's pivotal to block those particles coming out of your mouth and block the spread of the virus. The more people that are wearing a mask, and I'm reading this, this came directly from the Mayo Clinic here. "The more people that are wearing a mask, the less viral particles are making it into the space around them and thus decreasing the exposure and risk."

Rich Smith: It's just basic science. And over the past few years, it just seems like we've abandoned science. And it's not a total fix at all. No one's saying that this is a total fix. This is probably nothing compared to an N95 mask or a surgical mask or whatever; it's not, but it helps. And like I said, it's a sign of respect to the person that you're passing by. Wearing a mask, and this came from, I believe this came from a Cleveland Clinic article. "Wearing a mask is a true sign of respect for others. It is not an impingement of one's freedoms." I don't want to get into a political argument here. That is not my place whatsoever. But it's just like wearing shoes or socks or a shirt, that no shoes, no shocks, no service. When you go into a place of business is a thing that's been around for a long time. No one's saying that their rights are being impinged on because they have to wear a shirt in the Walmart.

Rich Smith: Okay. Walmart is a bad example, because there are people that don't wear shirts in Walmart. You've all seen the people at Walmart; I get it. Target, we'll say Target. Any random person's small business, your rights aren't being impinged on because you're asked to wear a shirt in there. Same thing. It's the same thing. Wearing a mask, tells a person that you pass on the street, you share an aisle within the supermarket, or march alongside on a peaceful protest, that you respect them as a fellow human being. That's it. That's it.

Rich Smith: We're protecting others from what we expel out of our body. Whether you think you have it, or you don't, you don't know. Unless you've been tested, you don't know. In the end, we aren't wearing the mask for ourselves, we're wearing them for others; for our loved ones, for our family members, for a random person that I'm walking past in the store. It's just a sign of respect. That's it. That's all there is to it.

Rich Smith: And being on this side of the desk for 16 years now, I know I can't be on your side. I've said that so many times. I do not have what it takes to be a healthcare professional, to be a nurse. I don't have it. It's not in my body. Okay. It just isn't there. I need to do my part to keep people out of the healthcare system. They need to stay out. We're seeing it already in Arizona and Texas. We're we're seeing, I don't know if it's a second wave or whatever it is, cases have gone up, more people going into the hospitals. We've seen job orders increased because of it. ICUs are getting, I wouldn't say overrun, but they're getting pretty full. And I got to do my part to keep people around me out of the healthcare system so it isn't overwhelmed.

Rich Smith: It's no different than how we're staying at home right now. And I miss everyone so much in the office. I miss the noise and the buzz and seeing people every day and talking to people. I miss every single one of our employees that I would normally see every day that I haven't seen since, I don't know, early March when we shut it down. So it's the same exact thing. This is not a political statement whatsoever, it's just my opinion based on some facts by some pretty big hospitals that you would probably go to if you had something wrong with you, regardless about how you feel about a mask or whatever.

Rich Smith: The Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic and UCSF are very large, very, very well respected hospitals. And they're telling you, "It's just a sign of respect. You're just blocking the particles that come out of your mouth as you talk." Just like I said, as I've talked, I have a little spit and it just happens. It just happens. And you can say that you don't when you talk, everybody does.

Rich Smith: So here's a couple of fun ones. I thought I would end this on a fun note. I went to the World Health Organization website, and they've got some myths on there about the virus. And you want some fun reading, there's some fun reading on there. So here's a couple of myths. This one's not so fun, but it's actually been passed around as truth.

Rich Smith: Prolonged use of a medical mask when properly worn does not cause CO2 intoxication or oxygen deficiency. People actually believe this. If you wear this, it's going to cause oxygen deficiency. It doesn't, it simply doesn't. If that's the case, then there are doctors and nurses and OR techs that are in a 6, 8, 9 hour, 12 hour surgeries, that would be falling down dead, because they wear a mask the whole time. So, okay.

Rich Smith: And this one's fun. This one's a blast. Myth: drinking beer or alcohol prevents or cures the disease. Prevents was the biggest thing. It may make a bad situation better, it doesn't prevent the disease at all. Here's another one. Adding hot pepper to your soup or meal prevents or cures the disease. It does not. It does not. I like hot sauce. Frank's Red Hot, I think is my well, that's not true. Cholula is probably my favorite. So if I just add Cholula to everything that I eat, it will protect me from the coronavirus? No. I don't know where that came from.

Rich Smith: 5G mobile networks cause the spread or have caused COVID-19. Okay, whatever, fine. No. Extreme heat and cold kills the virus. Like in environments, Arizona or, "Oh, once it gets hot or once it gets cold." We found that that is not the case either. So you can't just go to Florida and hang out on the beach and not get it. I think we're seeing the exact opposite of that, quite honestly.

Rich Smith: Finally, please do not introduce bleach or a clean agent into your body. It does not cure the disease. Well, I guess it kind of does, because it kills you it. Oh boy. So anyway, there was some fun myths. It's a whole lot more. Like, mosquitoes do not carry the virus. It doesn't necessarily live on your shoes. There's a whole thing about shoes and stuff on there.

Rich Smith: So I know this one ran a bit long. I just, I feel strongly about this, because one, I just want to get back to normal. I think we all do. And two, I think we all need to ... We're staying at home, and as I'm in the office right now, it's my turn. As the rest of the world kind of stays at home and we social distance and the six feet apart, this is just one more layer of security that will get us back to normal sooner rather than later. And it's really not that much of an inconvenience. My glasses fog up. If anybody's got something for that, please let me know how to fix that. But yeah, especially with the cloth mask, my glasses fog up, so that's the most inconvenient part of the whole thing.

Rich Smith: So anyway, that's it for this week. Again, not political whatsoever. Please don't send your political thoughts to [inaudible 00:12:26]. That's not what I wanted. Like I said, I just want to get back to normal. And my glasses fogging up because I'm wearing a mask, is just a very small inconvenience to get us that much closer to getting us back to normal.

Rich Smith: So take care of yourselves, be safe and we'll see you next week.

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