SARs respirators

[Marta]

Hi!

I'm writing a short story and have questions about the respirators worn in Beijing during the SARs outbreak. Did Beijing or other city citizens wear respirators in their homes? Or when they were sleeping? Did they have to be worn outside even if you weren't near other people? How long did one respirator last? Does anyone have some information about this or know where I could find it?

Thanks a lot!

Marta.

[trevelyan]

I don't remember anyone outside a hospital and capable of breathing on their own wearing a respirator. Do you mean a mask?

[Marta]

Yes, sorry, I do mean mask, I tend to use those words interchangeably.

[Lu]

Nobody seems to be answering, so I'll just tell you what I know, even though it's not much.

My Korean roommate, very scared of SARS, always wore a mask outdoors, but never indoors. I assume most Chinese did the same thing. I think it would not be a good idea to wear it sleeping, personally I found it harder to breath with a mask on, not a good thing when you're sleeping.

The epidemic started to be known in spring, and during that time many people in Beijing will wear masks anyway, against the dust, so although you could see many, many people wearing masks in the street in that time, some (or many?) of them would have worn masks anyway, even without SARS.

Beijing is a crowded city, there are not many areas where you will walk for several streets without passing other people. I imagine it would be to much mafan to take your mask off every time you can, just to put it back on again 100 meters further, so I don't think people did this. I can't tell for sure though, haven't actually noticed people keeping their mask on or taking it off. What I have seen is people who took their masks half off, or pushed it down on their chin, to be able to smoke a cigarette.

I'm not sure how long one mask lasted. People seemed to just keep using it. There were also all kinds of hip masks for sale, with Hello Kitty and the like on them, or with 'Fight against SARS!' and other slogans.

Personally I detested wearing a mask, tried it out once or twice (I was scared too), but it was very warm on the face, made breathing hard, and it didn't really fit close to my face (must have been the high nose), so I found myself breathing past the mask rather than through it, making it mostly useless.

I hope this helps a bit.