America Was Late to the N95 Mask Party

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The N95 face mask has become a defining icon of the Covid-19 era, highlighting our reliance on both lo-fi personal protective equipment and high-tech virology.

To date, the official advice concerning non-medical use of face masks has been somewhat confusing. 

The World Health Organization states: “If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with Covid-19.” 

However, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently urged “wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.” (That said, the CDC specifically states that N95 masks are “critical supplies that must continue to be reserved for healthcare workers.”)

Below are the Google search trends for “N95” across various countries over the past 90 days. They illustrate which regions showed early interest in face masks (China, Australia, France, South Korea) and which lagged (Spain, the U.S.). And they chart how many days elapsed between the first reported case of Covid-19 and the first time the “N95” search trend peaked over 50%.

Also charted is research for Bloomberg Opinion by Whois XML API that illustrates the surge in new domains registered containing the term “N95.” Some of these domains will, of course, represent legitimate businesses; others (“3mn95masksdirectshipping.com”) may not.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Ben Schott is a Bloomberg Opinion visual columnist. He created the Schott’s Original Miscellany and Schott’s Almanac series, and writes for newspapers and magazines around the world.

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