Los Angeles Times - 03.04.2020

A6 FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2020 S LATIMES.COM

tancing and the stay-at-
home order.”
Once the protective head
gear of choice for Asian im-
migrants and tourists,
masks have popped up on
shoppers at Walmart and
Costco, on Justin Bieber and
Selena Gomez, on the girl
next door and maybe
even your grandparents.
BuzzFeed.com and the New
York Times Style section
have published celebrity
selfie galleries. Masks are si-
lencing sneezes from coast
to coast.
The science is far from
settled about the level of
protection they provide.
Still, concerned citizens are
churning out DIY masks in
retirement communities,
suburban ranch houses and
artist studios, using pat-
terns found online or shared
via email. They are giving
their creations to friends
and family members, donat-
ing them to first responders
and helping fill an enormous
protective equipment gap in
the U.S. healthcare system.
And when the co-
ronavirus finally departs our
shores, the pandemic could
leave behind a permanent
reminder: the mask as an ev-
eryday accessory of Ameri-
can life.
“We may be moving gen-
tly at this point toward the
Asian culture where it’s
more a usual thing to wear
masks to prevent the trans-
mission of viruses,” said Dr.
William Schaffner, professor
of preventive medicine and
infectious diseases at Van-
derbilt University. Even af-
ter the coronavirus crisis
ends, “it wouldn’t surprise
me if we don’t encourage this
some in the near term.”
The problem, of course, is
where to find them. The
president may be encourag-
ing the public to wear masks,
but he hasn’t provided any
shopping guides. They are a
rare commodity.
And that’s where Bibi
Sheonarine comes in.
Three days before the
first COVID-19 death was re-
ported in California, the 66-
year-old real estate broker
decided to start making
cloth masks from her Up-
land home.
First, she measured her
face — ear to ear, nose to
lower chin. Then she mea-
sured her husband’s face.
He’s 73. She cut rectangles
out of a bolt of cream-col-
ored corduroy that she’d
planned to use to make
clothes for war-ravaged Syr-
ians. She stitched elastic
bands to the ends — and
voila. The mask was done.
“It took me 10 minutes,”
she said. “I made a simple vi-
deo tutorial so others could
make them, even a child.”
By March 27, she’d made
459 of them. Some went to lo-
cal hospitals, others to fam-
ily members in New York.
And she realized that just
maybe she and her neigh-

bors could make a dent in

the mask shortage. So she

took to Facebook and

Nextdoor, recruiting other

crafty volunteers.

Nearly a week has

passed, and more than 70

seamstresses in the Upland

area have pitched in, cutting

fabric or sewing. Sheonarine

placed a bin filled with

sewing kits on her porch;

each contains instructions

and enough fabric and elas-

tic bands to make 25 masks.

Eager mask-makers pick

them up every day.

Sheonarine spends 20

hours or so each day on this

potentially lifesaving proj-

ect. She created a spread-

sheet to organize the corps

of volunteers, which grows in

number every day. Recently

awoman texted that her

husband could cut the fabric

for her with a laser, which

would speed the process

considerably.

“I was elated,” she said. “I

wrote to her: ‘Laser, laser la-

ser! Come over now!’ ”

The project has taken

over Sheonarine’s house, in

addition to her daily life. Her

dining room is filled with

rolls of yarn and fabric. An

iron rests on the table. She

figures she has about 1,

yards of fabric at home,

some printed with flowers,

others with bears and

stripes.

“I feel like a mini-Ama-

zon,” she said. “Filling or-

ders, picking up orders. But

I feel good. People need

them.”

Summer Johnson

McGee, dean of the Uni-

versity of New Haven’s

School of Health Sciences,

said there is still a lack of re-

search analyzing the effec-

tiveness of using masks to

slow the spread of the co-

ronavirus. But she doesn’t

see how wearing one can

hurt.

“What do we have to

lose?” she said. “Masks may

prevent some transmission,

which is better than not try-

ing to prevent transmission

at all.”

McGee said the initial re-

luctance among public

health officials to push the

general public to wear

masks stemmed from want-

ing to make sure there were

enough for healthcare work-

ers, who are at the greatest

risk of being infected by the

virus.

But recent studies sug-

gest that at least 12% to 20%

of people who test positive

for COVID-19 are asymp-

tomatic and may be spread-

ing the virus without realiz-

ing it.

“Given that we may not

know who is carrying the

virus and spreading it, we

need to try to do whatever

we can to prevent spread, in-

cluding the use of cloth

masks,” McGee said.

Chunhuei Chi, director of

the Center for Global Health

at Oregon State University,

said government leaders

who have called for people to

don masks when leaving

their homes may also have

been influenced by the slow

growth of coronavirus infec-

tions in East Asian places

such as Taiwan, Japan,

South Korea and Singapore,

where wearing masks is

common.

“They got their first cases

much earlier than Europe

and the U.S., but if you look

at the total number of cases,

they have been growing very

slowly,” Chi said. “Wearing

masks is one way that has al-

lowed them to slow the num-

ber of cases.”

Chi said there is a lot of

discussion among public

health researchers as to why

even homemade and surgi-

cal masks, which are not fine

enough to filter out virus

particles, are preventing the

spread of the disease.

Masks can help protect a

healthy person from getting

infected by blocking drop-

lets containing the virus

from entering the mucus

membranes in the mouth or

nose. They can also prevent

asymptomatic people from

passing on the virus un-

knowingly.

“I highly recommend

that people wear makeshift

masks,” Chi said. “If you

have a surgical mask, wear

it, but even a cotton mask is

very adequate for people to

use.”

Health officials in the

San Francisco Bay Area

take that viewpoint to heart.

On Thursday, the San Ma-

teo County Joint Informa-

tion Center recommended

that residents of the region

“cover their nose and mouth

with cloth when leaving

home for essential travel

such as doctor appoint-

ments, grocery shopping or

pharmacy visits.”

Still, Vanderbilt’s

Schaffner has a rather large

caveat. His wife found an old

supply of masks they’d

bought years ago during a

previous viral epidemic.

They’re sharing those with

family and using them when

they go to the grocery store.

If he didn’t have one, he said,

he’d probably use a scarf.

“What’s the downside to

asking people to put on

masks or wrap their faces

with a shawl?” he asked. “It

may make some people

think they’re bulletproof.

Some bozo out there will say,

‘Let’s put on our bandannas

and have a poker party

tonight.’

“That’s what we call, in

my family, ‘d-u-m dumb,’ ”

he said.

Times staff writers

Rong-Gong Lin II, Taryn

Luna and David Lauter

contributed to this report.

Could masks be the new normal?

[Masks,from A1]

BIBI SHEONARINE,a 66-year-old real estate broker in Upland, spends most of each day sewing dozens of cloth masks for donation.

Photographs by Irfan KhanLos Angeles Times

‘I feel like a mini-Amazon.... But I

feel good. People need them.’

—BIBISHEONARINE,

who is distributing mask-making kits from home in Upland

that we don’t drop the idea
of a large-scale, proactive,
predictive program that
tries to catch pandemics be-
fore they happen. Cutting a
program that could in any
way reduce the risk of things
like COVID-19 happening
again is, by any measure,
shortsighted,” he added.
It is unclear whether an-
other five-year grant would
have dulled the impact of the
current pandemic. But the
Trump administration has
come under increased criti-
cism for its past moves to
downgrade global health se-
curity, including proposals
to slash funding to science
agencies and the elimina-
tion of the National Security
Council’s key global health
post.
A spokesman for USAID
said PREDICT was “just one
component of USAID’s glob-
al health security efforts and
accounted for less than 20%
of our global health security
funding.” He also said a new
initiative to stop the spill-
over of viruses from animals
to humans is scheduled to be
awarded in August.
The PREDICT project,
which operated on two five-
year funding cycles that for-
mally concluded last Sep-
tember, enrolled both epide-
miologists and wildlife vet-
erinarians to examine the
types of interactions be-
tween animals and humans
that researchers suspect led
to the current outbreak of
COVID-19.
The pandemic “didn’t

surprise us, unfortunately,”

said Jonna Mazet, executive

director of the One Health

Institute in the UC Davis

School of Veterinary Medi-

cine, who served as the glob-

al director of PREDICT for a

decade. “The work had been

ongoing for some time. And

when the crisis hits, every-

body stands up and takes

notice and says, ‘OK, we be-

lieve you.’”

The PREDICT project,

launched in response to the

2005 H5N1 “bird flu” scare,

gathered specimens from

more than 10,000 bats and

2,000 other mammals in

search of dangerous viruses.

They detected about 1,

viruses that could spread

from wild animals to hu-

mans, signaling pandemic

potential. More than 160 of

them were novel co-

ronaviruses, much like

SARS-CoV-2.

They also took blood

samples from people in rural

China, and learned that, in

living among wildlife, they

had been exposed to co-

ronaviruses — a clear sign

that, if those viruses spread

easily among humans, they

could take off. That “raised

the red flag,” said Mazet.

“Coronaviruses were

jumping easily across

species lines and were ones

to watch for epidemics and

pandemics,” she said.

The program also

trained nearly 7,000 people

across medical and agricul-

tural sectors in 30 countries

in Asia, Africa and the Mid-

dle East to help them detect

deadly new viruses on their

own. One of those labs was

the Wuhan Institute of Virol-

ogy — the Chinese lab that

quickly identified SARS-

CoV-2, Mazet said.

The Wuhan lab received

USAID funding for equip-

ment, and PREDICT coor-

dinators connected the sci-

entists there with research-

ers in other countries in or-

der to synchronize tracking

of novel viruses before

SARS-CoV-2.

The project’s second

funding cycle concluded on

Sept. 30, 2019, less than two

months before the new co-

ronavirus probably began

spreading. It was granted a

zero-dollar six-month ex-

tension — through March

2020 — to write up final re-

ports.

Dennis Carroll, a widely

respected scientist who

headed USAID’s emerging

threats division, oversaw the

initiative for its duration,

but retired around the time

it was shut down. Carroll did

not respond to an inquiry

from The Times, but told the

New York Times last year

that by January 2019, the

program had “essentially

collapsed into hibernation,”

and that its conclusion was

due to “the ascension of risk-

averse bureaucrats.”

Other members of the

consortium included Co-

lumbia University’s Center

for Infection and Immunity

and several institutes that

manage major U.S. zoos.

Earlier this year, as

COVID-19 took off, U.S. law-

makers expressed frustra-

tion over the program’s end.

“Addressing and pre-

venting the spread of co-

ronavirus and potential pan-

demic disease outbreaks is a

serious matter that requires

adequate resources for and

cooperation between ex-

perts throughout the federal

government,” Sens. Eliza-

beth Warren and Angus

King wrote in a letter to US-

AID’s administrator earlier

this year, asking for details

on the decision.

On Wednesday, the PRE-

DICT program was ex-

tended through September

to offer emergency technical

assistance to foreign labs

battling the coronavirus

pandemic. To date, PRE-

DICT-supported labs in

Malaysia, Thailand and In-

donesia are actively testing

for coronavirus cases,

Daszak said, and he has

been sending reagents and

other supplies to assist

them.

Meanwhile, in Rwanda,

scientists who had been

trained in the PREDICT

program triggered early so-

cial distancing measures,

Mazet said. “I do think that

what we were doing has

changed the outcomes for a

lot of countries,” she said.

“But unfortunately, not

our own,” she added.

Daszak said he’s eager to

further examine the hun-

dreds of wildlife samples col-

lected during the PREDICT

initiative over the years,

looking to identify whether

any of them could have been

intermediate hosts for the

virus currently sweeping the

globe.

But with the limited

budget and timeline, efforts

to continue in-depth field

work under PREDICT will

be minimal. Most of the ex-

tension funding will be fo-

cused on squelching the cur-

rent outbreak, not prevent-

ing the next.

“It’s common sense to

know your enemy,” Daszak

said. “Instead, we’re all hid-

ing inside our houses as we

wait around for a vaccine —

that’s not a good global

strategy to battling a dan-

gerous virus.”

U.S. ended pandemic early-warning program

[Program,from A1]

THE USAIDproject that was halted in September trained and supported staff in

60 foreign labs, including in Wuhan, China, before the new coronavirus emerged.

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