[geomark]

It seems strange to me as well. I am in Thailand and, in Bangkok at least, most people wear masks, carry disinfecting hand gel and are very wary about close contact with people and surfaces. Stores like Makro (Thai version of CostCo) have mask-wearing guards at the store entrance that take your temperature and provide hand gel, while cleaning crews wipe down the handles of shopping carts with disinfectant.

To be fair, many people in Bangkok already wore masks because of the pollution. So there is no stigma. But it seems that the Thais started taking Covid-19 serious right away, so maybe that's why Thailand, which was on the leader board in number of infections early on, has reached only 114 confirmed infectinos with 1 death as of yesterday. But only time will tell if all the precautions can slow down the spread since it only takes a few infected but symptomless highly social spreaders to really blow things up. And it looks like that may have happened in the last few days.

[ncallaway]

> It seems strange to me as well.

We don't have nearly enough masks, and the authorities are trying to ensure that as many masks as we have can go to a healthcare setting.

It's why they're giving us incongruous messages: both "masks don't help reduce the risk of transmission", AND "we need to save masks for health care workers". Obviously, since we're trying to preserve the supply for health care workers they do have some utility in reducing the risk of transmission.