Memories of COVID-19: The Types of Fitted Face Masks Between Public Health Advice and Personal Choice

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic begins to abate and national public health systems are treating the SARS-Cov-2 virus as endemic, many public health measures are no longer mandated, but remain recommended with voluntary participation. One of these is the wearing of fitted face masks, initially mandated to contain, or at least slow, the spread of SARS-CoV-2 which is primarily transmitted via aerosols emitted while breathing, coughing, or sneezing. While the habit of once wearing fitted face masks recedes into memory for much of the population, so does the knowledge of the various types of masks that were once en vogue. To create a record for the future, this paper provides the first comprehensive documentation of the nature and range of fitted facemasks that circulated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Documenting COVID-19 for Posterity: A Review of the Types of Fitted Face Masks Worn in Albury (Australia)

“…All fitted face masks discussed in this paper were encountered by the author between March 2020 and December 2022 in Albury, a major regional city in southern New South Wales, Australia. This study is based on a total of 3652 different masks which were observed as being worn, lost, discarded, or donated [13,14,[44][45][46][47]. The location can be regarded as representative of communities along the eastern seaboard of Australia as there are no significant differences in mask usage between Albury and the metropolitan centers of Sydney or Melbourne [48,49].…”

“…Soon after the shortage of surgical-type face masks had become evident, public health departments published design instructions for simple masks, [66] while national drapery chains offered sewing templates [67,68]. A wide range of mask types was produced with both pleated (Figures 1 and 27) and one-piece designs (Figure 2) both with (Figure 28) and without nose wires (Figures 29 and 30) [13]. Some artisanal designs even included removable filter layers.…”

“…The high demand for face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic led to the rapidly expanded production and use of non-sterile, surgical-type single-use face masks, the majority of which were sourced from Chinese manufacturers [11]. Since these were far more common than washable masks from cotton and other fabrics [12][13][14], single-use face masks soon posed environmental issues. The quantity of single-use face masks manufactured is staggering, with China exporting more than 200 billion masks in the year 2020 alone [15].…”

The Digital Heritage of the Battle to Contain COVID-19 in Australia and Its Implications for Heritage Studies

“…Between 2020 and 2023, the author systematically photographed, collected and documented examples of material culture associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in Albury, a major regional service centre in southern New South Wales (NSW) at the border to Victoria (Australia) [46,50,[73][74][75][76]. This is the only systematic and comprehensive documentation of its kind in Australia.…”

The Decentralized Generation of Public Knowledge during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Examples from Australia

“…This shortage was exacerbated by hoarding and panic buying [9]. In consequence, a cottage industry sprung up to manufacture face masks made from cotton and other cloth fabric [10,11], which, while better than no mask at all, provided a lower level of protection from SARS-CoV-2 compared to N95 or single-use surgical-type face masks.…”