I’m living in japan and the thing I hear a lot (a japanese people told me this) is that they don’t wear the masks only out of courtesy. It’s also because not only they don’t want to get sick, but because they will lose holiday days if they don’t have doctor’s note. So just having a flu / slight fever is not sufficient reason to get the note.
Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
21–30 of 108 posts
Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
#22Seems to ignore the main reason people in Japan wear masks - Sugi induced hay fever which seems to increase in intensity every year.
Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well also the dust particles everywhere, which literally give you lung cancer. Saigon and Hanoi can have very high AQI (it's no Beijing, but still dangerous)
Surgical masks don't protect from PM2.5 particles.
In Vietnam most don't wear surgical masks. We use fabric ones generally out of cotton.
They do protect against larger dust particles while driving, which is why I wear them, but as said above, Vietnamese mostly wear them to protect skin from the sun. The higher quality masks are really just too hot to wear as they do not breath enough.
There is something called a Lead Ninja, which is a woman on a typical motorbike (Honda Lead), dressed head to toe completely covered... to the point that driving is dangerous because they can't even see where they are going. There was a funny blog post about driving etiquette here a while back [1] that is sadly pretty spot on.
What gets me is the general lack of wearing eye protection while on a motorbike... not only do your eyes dry out more quickly, which affects vision, but the dust and bugs getting into the eyes makes driving almost unbearable. I don't know how they do it here. Solution is literally $0.85 clear plastic glasses found everywhere on the street.
[1] https://matthew-pike.com/how-to-drive-a-motorbike-in-saigon-...
Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
#24Surgical masks don't protect you against airborne viruses, but if you wear one when you have a cold it does help protect other people from viruses in your snot/water particles. The facts about this are fairly well known in Japan now (although there may still be people who wear masks in the misguided hope that they won't catch other people's colds despite), so it's not very accurate to try to imply that use of surgica…
My wife stays the FUCK away from people wearing them - she thinks they are all ebola carriers. I think that alone is what keeps the mask wearers healthy - all the americans think the mask wearer is the sick one.
Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
#25Something that shocked me while visiting Korea was a friend explaining to me that a mask is the only way for her to go out without makeup. The societal pressure on appearance is so high, that just going to the grocery shopping without makeup is seen a socially unacceptable. The simplest way around it is to hide your face, and the best way to do so is to wear a surgical mask. On a side note, in Korea, this is not rese…
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Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
#26Surgical masks don't protect you against airborne viruses, but if you wear one when you have a cold it does help protect other people from viruses in your snot/water particles. The facts about this are fairly well known in Japan now (although there may still be people who wear masks in the misguided hope that they won't catch other people's colds despite), so it's not very accurate to try to imply that use of surgica…
My wife stays the FUCK away from people wearing them - she thinks they are all ebola carriers. I think that alone is what keeps the mask wearers healthy - all the americans think the mask wearer is the sick one.
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Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
#27Very odd angle.. Seems to be written by someone with little on-the-ground experience. I can only speak from my experience in Hong Kong, where masks are worn when you've got a cold or flu to keep from infecting other people. Sure, ideally, sick people should be home in bed, but the pressure to work here is extreme, even when sick, so you'll often see offices full of hacking employees with surgical masks.
As for the pollution, the masks don't do any good at all and people know that. Go up to Beijing, for example, and the masks are mostly not surgical, but rather 3M pm2.5 filters.
Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
#28My wife is Japanese and I lived in Japan for 6 years.
The main reason I've been informed by family and friends for wearing the masks, is to prevent others from catching their cold/flu, as a courtesy.
I don't think that article (which I've read before) is a particularly good one - in my opinion it highlights the 'outlier' reasons rather than what in my experience is the main reason, cited above.
Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surgical masks don't protect from PM2.5 particles.
In Vietnam most don't wear surgical masks. We use fabric ones generally out of cotton. They do protect against larger dust particles while driving, which is why I wear them, but as said above, Vietnamese mostly wear them to protect skin from the sun. The higher quality masks are really just too hot to wear as they do not breath enough. There is something called a Lead Ninja, which is a woman on a typical motorbike (H…
huh after experiences otherwhere in Asia, Vietnam is very void of bugs, compared to Thailand for example. Someone told me it's mainly because of napalm in the war. Who knows
Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)
#30Surgical masks don't protect you against airborne viruses, but if you wear one when you have a cold it does help protect other people from viruses in your snot/water particles. The facts about this are fairly well known in Japan now (although there may still be people who wear masks in the misguided hope that they won't catch other people's colds despite), so it's not very accurate to try to imply that use of surgica…
Kind of a tangent, but in Japan what's the situation with taking time off work if you are ill and sick pay?