wearing a mask

What do you do when a masked woman comes up to you?

Today’s health writergoes undercover —well, behind a mask —to see how people react Weekend • February 7, 2009Eveline Gan
eveline@mediacorp.com.sg

DID you know a sneeze can launch approximately 20,000 droplets containing millions of germs, up to a distance of 3.7 metres?

But not even that unnerving bit of scientific knowledge and my phobia of germs could make me wear a surgical mask in public, even if it meant reducing my risk of flu by up to 50 per cent — a finding in a recent study by the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. While donning a surgical mask is de rigueur for anyone who is ill in places such as Hong Kong, not many Singaporeans wear them in public areas.

Like most people I know, I’m too self-conscious to do anything that may attract unwanted attention. What if everyone laughed at my silly mask, or recoiled from me? Or worse, my facial adornment caused mass panic?

To verify if my worries were warranted, I decided to conduct an experiment. Putting my vanity on hold for a day, I donned a surgical mask and traipsed through a crowded hawker centre and a shopping mall, then hopped on public transport at lunchtime to test the public’s reactions. And to ensure I got into the thick of the action, I made sure D-Day was just two days before Chinese New Year.

AT A HAWKER CENTRE Just as I had expected, the well-known hawker centre at Bedok Central was packed with factory and office workers, and families, at lunchtime. As I made my way through the food centre, I expected the crowd to part like the Red Sea when they saw me. But apart from a few quizzical stares, no one seemed overly bothered by the mask on my face. Interestingly, I also found Singaporeans to be a rather polite bunch. In spite of their curiosity, most of them would quickly looked away after sneaking a glance in my direction. Unwilling to leave empty-handed without any worthy anecdotes, I decided to make a frail-looking elderly man and a middle-aged lady, who were seated, my first “lab rats”. I ordered a bowl of dessert, sat down at their table and coughed. No one budged. So, I faked another hacking cough and sneezed several times before removing my mask to tuck into my dessert. The lady continued slurping up her tang yuan as if I didn’t exist. But the elderly ah pek on my left hurriedly covered his nose with his hand. He was right to be worried about catching flu germs from me.

After all, people over the age of 65, as well as children, pregnant women and those with certain chronic conditions, are more susceptible to health complications arising from a bout of flu, said Dr Lim Poh Lian, a senior consultant at the department of infectious diseases and head of the Travellers’ Health and Vaccination Clinic at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. But what the ah pek probably didn’t know is that by covering his nose with his hands, he was unlikely to prevent himself from contracting the flu virus (see box to find out why).

PUBLIC TRANSPORT Happy that the old man had fallen for my realistic coughing fit, I proceeded to a crowded bus stop where I positioned myself between a woman and middle-aged man. Both were waiting for a bus. Similar to my earlier experience, neither recoiled at the sight of my mask. Neither did my coughing and sneezing frazzle them. To my surprise, the woman, who appeared to be in her 30s, suddenly turned around and offered me a piece of tissue. “Have some of my tissue. You look really ill,” she said in Mandarin, before going on to insist that I take the entire packet. I was touched and humbled by her gesture. Things got a little more interesting when I boarded an east-bound MRT train. A young woman sitting on my left began inching away from me discreetly. On my right, a middle-aged lady covered her nose with her palm through my 10-minute train ride. Most of the other commuters also avoided standing too close to me.

AT THE MALL My next stop was a heartland shopping mall, which was teeming with last-minute Chinese New Year shoppers. By then, I had become less self-conscious about being masked-up in public. After all, most people seemed more focused on their shopping bags and tasks at hand than the visible mask on my face. So were the shop assistants, who attended to me in a courteous and professional manner. If they were worried or fearful in any way, they certainly didn’t show it. By mid-afternoon, I decided to pull off one last stunt in the confined spaces of a lift before calling it a day. As I jostled and shoved myself into a crowded elevator, I let out a fake cough. Ironically, a teenager with a terrible wheeze stole my thunder when he let out several phlegmy coughs. Most of the people in the lift covered their noses. Trapped in the cramped lift, I was all too glad that the insidious microscopic germs would have no way of getting into my mask-covered nostrils.

Thus ended my experiment and with it, my fears of wearing a face mask in public when I’m ill.

WEEKENDVTRA