Masked out

To the Editor;

We needed to buy a new window shade, so I went to my favorite big box store. To go in, I dutifully put on a face mask as recommended, one of those little standard-issue paper jobs with elastics for your ears, just like the one Sara was wearing when she came up to help me. Window shades mostly come in one length and get cut down to the size you want with a big cutting machine. We picked one out. Then Sara went off to change into a different mask. After she vacuumed some old dust from the machine, she ran my shade through the big Trim-n-Go cutter.

What does that tell you about masks? There are masks you wear for social reasons, but when you get down and dirty and really want to filter out dust and all the stuff that can really make you sick, you need the mask they keep behind the counter. If a mask will not spare you from the dust you can see, how much help will it be for microscopic particles … like a virus? Just asking.

David G. Reed

Rockport