Dr. Neil Ferguson, an infectious disease epidemiologist who spoke at the annual AAAS meeting in San Francisco yesterday, touched on one of the mysteries of influenza pandemics -- whether respiratory masks will do anything to prevent infections.
Simply, "we have no data on the effectiveness of masks," he said.
Back during the 1918 flu pandemic, San Francisco mandated that people wear gauze masks. "They may have exacerbated the situation," Ferguson said. "They were misworn and people wearing the masks had a false sense of security as they went around their business as they wouldn't have otherwise."
Still, masks may have some benefit: the CDC suggests that people use certain types of masks known as respirators to protect themselves against avian flu when they deal with potentially infected birds. And if there's no mask available, this report suggests that cutting up a Hanes cotton T-shirt might be the next best bet.
