Face coverings recommended, but Trump says he won’t wear one

President Donald Trump announced new federal guidelines Friday recommending that Americans wear face coverings when in public areas to greatly help fight the spread of the brand new coronavirus. The president immediately said he had no intention of following that advice himself, saying, “I’m choosing never to do it.”

The new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages people, especially in areas hit hard by the spread of the coronavirus, to use rudimentary coverings like T-shirts, bandannas and non-medical masks to cover their faces while outdoors.

The president exempted himself from his administration’s own guidelines, saying he could not envision himself covering his face while sitting in the Oval Office greeting world leaders.

“It’s a recommendation, they recommend it,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to wear one myself.”

The new guidance, announced as states are bracing for critical shortfalls like those that other areas of the world have experienced, raises concern that it might cause a sudden operate on masks.

Trump and other administration officials sought to minimize any burden by stressing the recommendations did not total requirements and that a range of homemade coverings were acceptable. Federal officials said that surgical masks and N95 respirator marks should be left for all those on the front lines of fighting the spread of the infection.

Friday’s announcement capped an evolution in guidance from the White House that officials acknowledged has sometimes been inconsistent.

“I want to unpack the evolution of our help with masks because it has been confusing to the American people,” said Surgeon General Jerome Adams.

Adams, who had repeatedly and publicly advised against the necessity for face coverings, said Friday that although and he other public health professionals initially believed wearing a mask wouldn't normally have a substantial effect on curbing the spread, the most recent evidence makes clear that people who don’t show any observeable symptoms can nonetheless pass on the virus.

“We've told you that from the beginning that people are evolving our recommendations, and new tips will come as the data dictates,” Adams said.

First lady Melania Trump embodied the contradictory messaging with a tweet endorsing the new guidance even as her husband chooses to disregard it.

“As the weekend approaches I ask that everyone take social distancing & wearing a mask/face covering seriously,” she tweeted.

The administration has said states must have done more to stockpile medical supplies, but it’s not yet determined if anyone is prepared for the potential rush that could ensue if persons make an effort to obtain medical masks for themselves.

In rural Florida, Okeechobee Discount Drugs has been sold-out of face masks for nearly two weeks, and “we don’t know to purchase any masks at this time,” said Stacey Nelson, among the pharmacy’s owners.

“It’s very hard to get the products, but persons want them,” Nelson said. “They’ve been getting mixed messages and persons aren’t sure if they should be wearing masks in our daily lives. It’s very confusing. Put them on, or don’t put them on?”

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as for example fever and cough that get rid of in two to three weeks. For a few, especially older adults and persons with existing health problems, it can cause more extreme illness, including pneumonia, and death.

In fashioning the recommendations, the administration is apparently striving to balance political concerns about attempting to preserve as much normalcy as possible with public health concerns that some infections are being spread by persons who seem to be healthy.

The White House has faced pushback against rigorous social distancing guidelines from states with lesser rates of infection. For the hardest-hit areas, where social distancing was already in place for some time, the White House coronavirus task force thought there will be less risk of men and women ignoring the other guidance if they covered their faces.

The CDC is recommending that persons wearing cloth face coverings in public places, such as food markets and pharmacies, where “other social distancing measures are difficult to keep.” The guidance especially applies “in regions of significant community-based transmission.”

The White House task force was debating into Friday on the final language of the CDC guidance. CDC scientists wanted to make it national guidance, believing that would do more to slow the spread of the virus.

White House advisers, including Dr. Deborah Birx, wished to limit the guidance to virus hot spots. Birx said Thursday that she feared wider guidance would cause a false sense of security for Americans and lead them to back away from more critical social distancing.

Ultimately, they found a middle ground: a national advisory with special emphasis that those in hard-hit areas should wear masks. Two people familiar with the discussions outlined the inner debate, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to spell it out it publicly.

Much like other public health guidance, the recommendation on face covering has been a moving target for the administration. Beneath the previous guidance, only the sick or those at high risk of difficulties from the respiratory illness were advised to wear masks.

Adams wrote on Twitter towards the end of February that persons should “STOP BUYING MASKS” and said these were not effective in protecting everyone.

On Monday, he noted that the World Health Organization does not recommend masks for healthy members of the populace. Three days later, he tweeted that though there remains “scant” evidence that wearing a mask, especially improperly, can protect the wearer, “emerging data suggests facial coverings may prevent asymptomatic disease transmission to others.”

Dr. Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief, on Friday acknowledged a “very important and very healthy debate” about how masks are used.

“We still believe the main driver of the pandemic is symptomatic (transmission),” he said, not people who could be infected but aren’t showing symptoms.

“We are able to certainly see circumstances where the use of masks - but homemade or cloth masks - at the city level may help within an overall comprehensive response to the disease,” Ryan said.