We need an agreed upon vocabulary for discussing the two main reasons for masks. Maybe .. “inbound” protection for yourself and “outbound” protection for others.
I think that could also help foster a useful compromise for the shortage problem that has been causing a lot of the disinformation about how Masks Don’t Work: reserve the top-of-the-line N95 masks right now for health care workers who need the most inbound self-protection, while everybody else should be using all other types of masks, which hopefully do a pretty good job of outbound protection of other people.
This distinction would be good for people who want to do the right thing: presently, they are paralyzed between the March warning that civilians wearing masks are bad for the hospitals and the April warning that civilians wearing masks are good for society. So, distinguish between hospital-approved N95s and everything else.
