Wearing a coronavirus face mask isn't about you

Dr. Fauci has spoken.

It might seem pretty dystopian that top U.S. infectious disease experts now recommend Americans wear cloth masks outside, particularly in places like markets. But there's a good reason why.

As the coronavirus spreads rapidly around the nation, a significant number of infected people may never show any symptoms (perhaps as high as one in four people). What's more, it takes an average of five days after infection for symptoms to develop in those that do eventually have symptoms. So there are likely a lot of unwitting carriers around outside.

Enter, then, cloth face masks — like those made out of T-shirts or hand towels. The new mask guidance is meant to keep you from infecting others.

"Putting a mask on yourself is more to prevent you from infecting someone else," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the long-serving director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told PBS NewsHour on Friday.

"More and more accumulation of data indicate that people who are without symptoms at all can transmit the virus," added Dr. Fauci.

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It's well known that the dogged virus can spread when someone coughs or sneezes. "But importantly, they can do it really by speaking," said Fauci, noting the virus can be expelled a few feet out from the speaker's mouth.

"It is possible for viruses to be released into the air from just talking and breathing," Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne disease transmission at Virginia Tech, told Mashable. "It wouldn't be a lot, but the chance of those viruses landing on someone else or being inhaled by someone else is higher if people are closer together."

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That's why putting up a thick cloth barrier is valuable. Think of a cotton T-shirt, folded bandana, or hand towel.

"It’s not a decision to try to protect me from getting coronavirus," CDC director Robert Redfield told Stat News. "It’s to help modify spreading. And there is scientific data to show that when you aerosolized virus through a cloth barrier, you have a reduction in the amount of virus that gets through the other side."

The CDC lists this research online. Though they recommend staying six feet away from others during the coronavirus pandemic, it's nearly impossible to achieve this level of social distancing in places like grocery stores, where many of us must go.

"You have to get food. You have to get drugs from the pharmacy," said Dr. Fauci.

So, if you're infected and don't know it, a cloth mask can limit the amount of virus you could expel near others.

But, critically, at the moment social distancing remains the most potent tool against the spread of the coronavirus, which leads to the respiratory disease COVID-19. This means staying vigilant about remaining at home whenever possible.

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"It takes an unprecedented public health response to put a lid on this one," Mark Cameron, an immunologist at Case Western Reserve University who helped contain the SARS outbreak, told Mashable. 

"...we actually have one of the most powerful weapons that we need to defeat the spread of this virus," said the CDC's Redfield. "And I know a lot of people may not see it as a powerful weapon, but it is. And that’s social distancing."

It's important that the general public use cloth masks — which can be made in around 45 seconds — instead of finding and hoarding medical-grade masks, emphasized Dr. Fauci. Front-line health care workers need these masks.

But we can help nurses and doctors by doing everything we can to slow the relentless spread of an often serious disease. Get those old T-shirts out, and start folding.