Call For Masks to Fight COVID-19

This call for masks (below) to protect against COVID-19 was printed by Professional Boatbuilder magazine, but could easily apply to the car audio industry. We’ve seen that some industry members such as John Schwartz and Jeremy Katz and DD Audio are already involved in fabricating face shields. If you have an idea on how the 12 volt community can help produce protective gear for medical workers or be otherwise helpful email [email protected] See below:

Attention boat builders, repairers, owners, and tinkerers! If you have any spare, or even not-so-spare, “N95” designated dust masks in your shop or inventory, find them today and donate them to your closest medical facility. These disposable facemasks, which protect against transmission of Covid-19, are currently in very short supply at almost every hospital.

I passed my last 10-mask sleeve off to a favorite medical practitioner last weekend. Her gratitude and fear were palpable. Her clinic had one “N95” her size in stock, and the inevitable wave of coronavirus patients in our city had not even started yet. The promised supplies of fresh masks or coronavirus test kits have yet to show up in hospitals, so these nurses, doctors, and other essential staff are left with precious few of the most necessary tools they need to confront the pandemic. Admirably and frighteningly, they will be standing in the breach for the next weeks or months with or without adequate protection equipment.

I know we have some of what they need on our shop shelves and supply rooms, and while the sanding dust, stray microballoons, and laminate filaments are threats to our good health, they pale in comparison to the disaster of widespread infection and crippling of the medical profession precisely when we need all hands on deck. Of course all the builders and contractors in the country won’t have reserves to see medical staff through the entire pandemic wave, but an influx now could buy valuable time and keep people protected until production and distribution of new masks can be stepped up.

If there’s an industry that recognizes a Dunkirk moment when we see one, it is boatbuilding.

The fact is, there’s no real and immediate relief from any level of government, so please give what masks you can to the closest medical facility or your favorite clinician. There are numerous national, state, and city-based efforts online to coordinate mask donations—just do a search for your area. But at this point it’s likely most effective to keep it as local as possible. Find out whether your closest hospital has a designated drop-off area or, as I did, pass them on to someone you know who is likely to be heading into the dangerous arena of the pandemic response. Don’t shake their hands, don’t embrace them, but tell them thank you.

(Thank you TW)

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