Today's Reminder

I got into it a little bit with a friend on Facebook - a pleasant enough woman I went to high school with.

She posted that meme of Morgan Freeman saying he doesn't want a Black History Month, and that the way to get rid of racism is to stop talking about it:

So I countered with the meme about weaponizing a famous black guy's words: 

She got a little snippy, saying she just can't believe how quick people can be to lash out, and I countered that with my usual rapier-like wit, born of superior intellect - something like, "Nuh-huh, you greasy twat".

But here's the thing about Freeman's contention on "just stop talking about racism":

IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK THAT WAY

You don't stop child abuse by not talking about it.

You don't cure cancer by not talking about it.

You don't disrupt the cycle of ignorance and poverty and crime by not talking about it.

You don't stop gun violence by not talking about it.

Sorry not sorry, Famous Black Guy, but problems don't magically disappear just by ignoring them.

And apropos of nothing really, I just discovered Omeleto on YouTube, and this one seems to fit - more or less:

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   376,683 (⬆︎ .34%)
New Deaths:    10,293 (⬆︎ .41%)

USA

New Cases:   71,054 (⬆︎ .25%)
New Deaths:    2,404 (⬆︎ .47%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          44.5 million
Total Priority Population: 36.6%
Total Population:             13.4%

Navigating the treacherous waters of getting your shots.

WaPo:

How to master the vaccine-appointment website: A guide for everyone

Five strategies to increase the chances of getting a free shot for yourself or someone you care about

The process feels like something between trying to nab highly sought-after Beyoncé tickets and gladiatorial combat.

Scheduling coronavirus vaccine shots online is causing panic for eligible Americans and the children and grandchildren helping them. That includes me and my parents, hunting for scraps of information on supply and pressing reload at all hours on poorly designed websites. By the time you type in all the required information, available appointments have vanished.

2021 has made being a computer whiz a matter of life and death. Shame on America for asking seniors to beta test bad vaccine logistics software.

We designed this guide to help. There are ways to get assistance if you need it, and strategies to conquer the process if you’re persistent.

Readers' best tips for hunting vaccine appointments online

The short supply of vaccine is only partly to blame for our current chaos. It’s a case study in how more technology is not always the answer.

There are just too many decentralized, overlapping vaccine websites. State governments created systems, many ignoring basics like inventory alerts we’ve come to expect from shopping websites. Local governments made their own too, sometimes just repurposing websites for selling community theater tickets. Then hospitals and clinics offer shots through their existing appointment systems and patient portals.

And starting this week, there will be even more places you need to look for appointments online. Pharmacy chains including CVS and Walgreens are beginning to distribute vaccine supply they’re getting directly from the federal government. In many places, you’ll have to call or go through their individual websites and apps to secure these shots.

Some seniors are adept at extreme online shopping and have turned juggling all these appointment interfaces into a job. But they’re in the minority: An estimated 42 percent of Americans over the age of 65 don’t even have a wired broadband Internet connection at home, according to a new report. Online vaccine appointment systems are particularly under-serving minority and low-income communities.

If you’re helping a senior friend, you’re awesome. But Thomas Kamber, executive director of the nonprofit Older Adults Technology Services, reminded me the job comes with serious responsibility for the likely very stressed-out person you’re helping. “It’s incredibly important to take 30 minutes before you get on the phone to spend some time researching what you’re doing,” he said.

I’ve learned a lot from helping my parents navigate appointments in Massachusetts. Pretty much every state and county process is different, so I’ve also been listening to professionals and volunteers helping seniors secure appointments in New York, New Jersey, Florida and California. If you’ve mastered your local system, I’d like to hear from you, too, via email or my Washington Post Help Desk.

Help Desk: Ask our tech columnist a question

“It pays to be persistent, aggressive, and to follow up,” says Richard Adler, 78, chair of the steering committee at Senior Planet Avenidas, a tech-focused community center in Palo Alto, Calif. Seniors often blame themselves for computer problems, says Adler, but “they shouldn’t feel that way in this case.”

Persistence worked for my parents, who finally nabbed appointments by understanding when and how to grab new slots right as they arrived.

This guide starts with the basics. Keep moving down the list to more advanced suggestions and techniques that might help you increase the chances of getting your slot sooner rather than later.

Begin with the right frame of mind — and paperwork

The system isn’t working as it should, and it’s not your fault.

You might be lucky: Some people are hearing directly from clinics and hospitals to book appointments for existing patients.

Everyone else will have to learn a patchwork of state, local, hospital and pharmacy websites, apps and phone lines. On some of them, you may have to type in a bunch of information to even know if there are new appointments available. Your expectation should be that getting through this will take multiple attempts.

Tip: Experiment. Job No. 1 is just to figure out how the system works. I repeatedly clicked through websites — even when they said they didn’t have any appointments available — just to learn what sort of information we’d have to enter. My mom got up early and pressed reload once every few minutes for hours to see when new appointments came online.

Tip: Prepare for red tape. You’re likely going to have to enter in lots of personal information, including your ID, address and various codes from medical insurance cards. Gather up all of this before you start. (Below I’ve got more advice on how to avoid passing this sensitive info along to scammers.)

You don’t necessarily need fancy computer skills

If you think faster than you mouse, there’s help available. Across the United States, family, friends and “vaccine angel” volunteers are opening their hearts and their tech skills to the people who need it.

Tip: Locate help at the library. If you can’t connect with help from a senior center or church, call your local public library. Ask to speak to a reference librarian, or another librarian on duty. They are usually plugged in to community resources, and many libraries even host their own awesome tech support clinics.

Tip: There’s almost always a phone number. Some states are telling people to use the Web and not call if at all possible. But if you need it, there usually is some phone help available. Some states, like Massachusetts, even have hotlines just to help seniors book appointments. The line could be busy, or keep you on hold for a long time — but it’s worth your patience.

Tip: You’ll likely need email to register online. You’ll use it to set up an account and receive confirmation of your appointment. If someone else is helping you book an appointment, you might need to share identity verification codes sent to your email (or over text message to your phone).

I’ve seen some places also ask you to photograph and upload a copy of your insurance card, but they often let you proceed with a booking even if you don’t.

Tip: A smartphone might speed up your appointment. A provider might ask you to bring proof of your reservation to the vaccination site in the form of an email on your smartphone. But you can also print it out, or forward the email to someone else to print and mail to you.

In some communities, vaccination sites are also asking people to scan what are called QR codes with a smartphone when they arrive. Doing so pops up a screen on the smartphone where you have to enter more information. QR codes are just fancy bar codes: Turn on your camera app and point it toward the sign with the code. But if you don’t have a smartphone, don’t sweat it — just ask to fill out the form by hand.

Information is your most valuable tool

The people having the most success getting appointments are the ones with the best information.

Vaccine appointments work a lot like how concert tickets get sold — released in bunches at a time and usually snapped up right away by people who knew they were coming.

So how do you know when and where vaccine slots are coming?

Tip: Sign up for alerts. State and local governments, hospitals and even pharmacies may have websites where you can enter an email or phone number to have them reach out with information. These are underwhelming in many places, just letting you know when you’re eligible for a shot. But some may evolve: D.C.'s alerts currently say when they’ll be posting new appointments but soon should be more personalized. Walgreens tells me it eventually hopes to be able to send people alerts about when there are appointments accessible near them.

Tip: Hunt for new-stock information. Some vaccine centers, like the Publix pharmacies doling out shots in Florida, post new appointments at 7 a.m. each day. Local newspapers and TV stations often have useful intelligence. Sometimes local officials publish updates on Twitter accounts, too.

Friends can also be a resource, if they’re passing along firsthand knowledge. But be extra skeptical of anything you read on Facebook, which is ripe with misinformation — if someone shares something surprising, ask how they know it is true.

Tip: Look for crowdsourced information. In some places, community groups are trying to help by creating their own websites with maps and updated availability. Just remember they’re relying on other people, not official sources, to stay updated. Ones I’ve spotted include:

California: https://www.vaccinateca.com/
New Jersey: https://vaccinatenj.com/
New York City: https://nycvaccinelist.com/ and https://www.turbovax.info/
Texas: https://www.covid19vaccinetx.com

Tip: Don’t forget the old-fashioned phone call. Humans often have more up-to-date information than websites. That’s the recommendation I heard from the makers of VaccinateCA, the community-made help site in California. They’ve got volunteers calling pharmacies and other vaccine sites to find out when they get new stock. Some midsize pharmacies, they’ve found, aren’t getting booked up because they’ve fallen through the cracks of the online systems.

Be on alert for fraud

You’re right to worry that somebody might be trying to take advantage of the confusion around vaccines to steal your identity or trick you out of money. Unfortunately, some of the usual red flags won’t necessarily help you — even some official websites appear sketchy to me.

Tip: Start with trusted sources of information. Rather than click on links sent to you via email or Facebook, go straight to the source. AARP publishes vetted links to official government vaccine sites for every state here: aarp.org/vaccineinfo. The Washington Post’s interactive vaccine tracker also has links to government information, while our vaccine FAQ offers well-researched answers to questions about vaccine safety and science.

Tip: If you weren’t expecting a message, be skeptical. In some cases, you may hear from a local vaccine program, clinic or pharmacy over email and even text message. But if you’re not 100 percent certain it is legitimate, pause before you click. It never hurts to call your local health department, doctor or pharmacy and ask to confirm. Nobody should be selling you special access to the vaccine.

Tip: Look for the lock. When you’re on a registration site asking you to enter private information, look in the top of your browser, immediately to the left of the Web address. There you should see an icon of a lock, indicating your information is being encrypted in a way that keeps hackers from peering in.

Use tech to move faster

So long as the vaccine remains in short supply, getting an appointment is going to be competitive. Beware disappearing appointment times: Many sites won’t actually hold a time slot for you as you type in all the required personal information.

So borrow some techniques from the tech-savvy people who snap up concert tickets and high-demand gifts like the PlayStation 5.

Tip: Pre-fill your information. On popular shopping sites, you save your address and credit card number to make checkout go quickly. That’s what you also want when you’re trying to nab an appointment before it gets taken by someone else.

Some but not all vaccine appointment sites will let you “preregister,” or create an account to enter in contact and insurance information. At pharmacies including Walgreens, you can create a customer account profile, though that won’t necessarily let you pre-fill all the health questions required by local officials.

Tip: Type fast. Or, avoid typing as much as possible. Save all your critical information in a word processing document on your computer. Then when the time comes, you can copy and paste it into the vaccine appointment website.

If you want to be even faster, install an automatic form-filling extension for your browser, such as Autofill for Chrome. You can tell it to memorize how you fill out fields on the appointment website, and then it will fill them automatically whenever you pull it up.

Tip: Automate redialing. In some places, booking appointments happens primarily over phone lines … which seem to always be busy when you call. Advanced smartphone users can download an app that helps call back a busy line faster than you could press the buttons on your own. I heard a success story with one called Auto Redial, though use caution and check reviews for these apps before spending your money on them.

Tip: Look out for new technologies. The website vaxstandby.com is trying to create a way to connect people seeking a vaccination with pharmacies and clinics with excess supply. Its makers tell me it’s still just a concept, but it’s encouraging to know inventors and civic-minded people are trying to make the vaccine rollout work better for everyone.

Today's Tweet

"Republican does the right thing" is the new "Man bites dog".

This guy better be careful about doin' the right things or he'll turn into a Democrat.https://t.co/k7BWR0wDJ5

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) February 24, 2021

Today's Tweet

How fuckin' stoopid do the voters in Texas have to be?

Sorry not sorry - without stoopid voters, stoopid fuckers like Ted Cruz don't stay in office.

🚨 BREAKING NEWS!! Ted Cruz at the Senate Judiciary Committee questioning Merrick Garland and #Snowflake is in attendance!! #NationalMargaritaDay #SupremeCourt #TedCruzStillADisgrace pic.twitter.com/gPAOSRlO5e

— Top UnTaughts (@FactsPonder) February 22, 2021

Today's Nerds

On July 20, 1969, I made it home just in time to see Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon - we watched it on NBC, on our brand new RCA color TV.

Not quite a week ago, a brand new generation of Super Nerds at NASA showed us how they do it nowadays, after flying a rocket 132 million miles to a planet rotating at 500 miles per hour - and they landed that sucker on a dime - as planned. Stuck the fuckin' landing. Again.

Tango Delta, motherfucker.

I'm thinkin' these folks know what the fuck they're about, so I'm gonna go ahead and trust 'em on that Climate Science stuff too.

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases: 288,728 (⬆︎ .26%)
New Deaths: 6,598 (⬆︎ .27%)

USA

New Cases: 59,257 (⬆︎ .21%)

New Deaths: 1,374 (⬆︎ .27%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations: 44.1 million

Total Priority Population: 36.2%

Total Population: 13.3%

Top 20 States

I included the snapshot of the top 20 states because for the first time in about 5 months, no state reported over 8,000 new cases for the day.

On the day set aside to mourn the dead, that's some pretty great news.

Reuters:

Fauci says U.S. political divisions contributed to 500,000 dead from COVID-19

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said political divisiveness contributed significantly to the “stunning” U.S. COVID-19 death toll, which on Monday surpassed 500,000 lives lost.

The country had recorded more than 28 million COVID-19 cases and 500,054 fatalities as of Monday afternoon, according to a Reuters tally of public health data.

In an interview with Reuters, Fauci on Monday said the pandemic arrived in the United States as the country was riven by political divisions in which wearing a mask became a political statement rather than a public health measure.

“Even under the best of circumstances, this would have been a very serious problem,” Fauci said, noting that despite strong adherence to public health measures, countries such as Germany and the UK struggled with the virus.

“However, that does not explain how a rich and sophisticated country can have the most percentage of deaths and be the hardest-hit country in the world,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a top adviser to President Joe Biden. “That I believe should not have happened.”

While the United States has just about 4% of the global population, it has recorded nearly 20% of all COVID-19 deaths.

“This is the worst thing that’s happened to this country with regard to the health of the nation in over 100 years,” Fauci said, adding that decades from now, people will be talking about “that horrible year of 2020, and maybe 2021.”

For most of 2020, Fauci served on then President Donald Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force, a job that often put him at odds with the president, who sought to downplay the severity of pandemic despite contracting COVID-19 himself, and refused to issue a national mask mandate.

Trump at times even attacked Fauci’s credibility, undermining his public health messaging.

The nation’s failure cannot all be laid at the feet of Donald Trump, Fauci said. “But the lack of involvement at the very top of the leadership in trying to do everything that was science-based was clearly detrimental to the effort.”

His personal low point came when several states and cities disregarded the Task Force’s phased recommendations for how to safely reopen the country after spring lockdowns.

He called that disregard by several governors and mayors “incomprehensible to me (when) you could see right in front of your eyes what was happening.”

“When the American spirit is so divided, that really, really made me sad,” he said.

Fauci said the emergence of more contagious variants of the coronavirus, especially ones from South Africa and Brazil that have been shown to reduce the immunity from natural infections and vaccines, have made it challenging to predict when the nation will be able to put the pandemic behind it.

Fauci and Biden have said the United States should return to something approaching pre-pandemic normal life around Christmas. That could change, he cautioned.

The variants also change the equation when it comes to herd immunity, in which a population becomes protected from infection because of high levels of immunity from vaccines or infections.

Asked whether that is still achievable, Fauci said, “I think we can get herd immunity at least against getting sick.

Today's Tweet

500,000 Dead Americans

A military band plays a soaring rendition of “Amazing Grace” while 500 candles burn to commemorate 500,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/mGQ5tT0IzO

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) February 22, 2021

Uh-Oh, Dude

Everything having to do with Trump (from Trump's end of it) is a matter of Over-Promise and Under-Deliver, which, of course, makes for the obvious flip side, where we experience Over-Anticipation and Under-Satisfaction.

So as we move forward, relishing the idea of finally getting to see somebody stomp the fuck outa that jerk, we have to keep in mind how slippery he's always been, and just as important, the high probability that some very powerful people need him to be their whipping boy - their front guy.

Imagine the wealth that guys like Putin and MBS and Bob Mercer must've amassed that they could afford to make a putz like Donald Trump filthy rich just for playing their patsy this whole time.

WaPo:

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected former president Donald Trump’s last-chance effort to keep his private financial records from the Manhattan district attorney, ending a long and drawn-out legal battle.

After a four-month delay, the court denied Trump’s motion in a one-sentence order with no recorded dissents.

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. has won every stage of the legal fight — including the first round at the Supreme Court — but has yet to receive the records he says are necessary for a grand jury investigation into whether the president’s companies violated state law.

Vance responded to the court decision with a three-word tweet: “The work continues.”

The current fight is a follow-up to last summer’s decision by the high court that the president is not immune from a criminal investigation while he holds office.

“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority in that 7 to 2 decision.

But the justices said Trump could challenge the specific subpoena, as every citizen may, for being overbroad or issued in bad faith.

A district judge and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York found neither was the case.

Trump’s complaints “amount to generic objections that the subpoena is wide-ranging in nature,” the unanimous 2nd Circuit panel wrote. “Again, even if the subpoena is broad, the complaint does not adequately allege that it is overbroad. Complex financial and corporate investigations are broad by default.”

Similarly, the panel said, “we hold that none of the president’s allegations, taken together or separately, are sufficient to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass.”

Vance is seeking eight years of the former president’s tax returns and related documents as part of his investigation into alleged hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 election to two women who said they had affairs with Trump years before. Trump denies the claims.

Investigators want to determine whether efforts were made to conceal the payments on tax documents by labeling them as legal expenses.

But Vance says there are other aspects of the investigation that have not been publicly disclosed. Court filings by the prosecutors suggest the investigation is looking into other allegations of impropriety, perhaps involving tax and insurance fraud.

Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court both of the lower court decisions were faulty. The subpoena was not narrowly tailored, but instead based on one issued by congressional committees. It would cross the line even if it was “aimed at ‘some other citizen’ instead of the president,” wrote Trump’s lawyers William S. Consovoy and Jay Alan Sekulow.

“The court of appeals not only ignored how the district court stacked the deck against the president,” the petition continues. “But it also broke every rule and precedent applicable” to the legal procedure at issue, it said.

Consovoy said it should be easy for the court to at least temporarily put the lower court rulings on hold and hear his case, which in the court’s language is called granting certiorari.

“The President of the United States requests the opportunity to seek certiorari before his confidential financial records are disclosed to the grand jury and potentially the public,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “Once the records are produced, the status quo can never be restored.”

The appeals court panel shot down his claim that the district attorney’s investigation is limited only to the alleged payments made by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. It said that “bare assertion … amounts to nothing more than implausible speculation.”

Vance and his lawyers have said the records are needed for a grand jury investigation, and pledged at the Supreme Court hearing that they would not be released publicly. Since those battles, the New York Times has published a number of stories about Trump’s tax payments and mounting debt based on records it says it has obtained.

“Similarly,” the ruling says, “the President’s allegations of bad faith fail to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass.”

Vance is seeking the records from Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars. In his response to the Supreme Court in the current fight, Vance said that the “obvious explanation for the subpoena’s breadth … is that the investigation had extended beyond the Cohen payments.”

Vance said in his brief to the court that, since the subpoena was first issued more than a year ago, it was time to let the investigation run its course.

“Applicant has had multiple opportunities for review of his constitutional and state law claims, and at this juncture he provides no grounds for further delay,” Vance wrote. “His request for extraordinary relief should be denied, and the grand jury permitted to do its work.”

Yeah, we might get to see some of the real dirt on Trump, but not if it means we get to see the real dirt on the real forces of evil that have been propping him up for 30 fuckin' years.

The Daddy State always has that ace-in-the-hole. Rule 6:

Total criminalization: if we're all guilty, then you can't hold me responsible without the risk of exposing your own culpability.

The corollary is: "I'll protect you as long as it's in my interest to do so - or until I figure out how to throw you to the dogs to cover my own ass."

Still - hope springs eternal.

Today's Video

Be weird enough to keep it interesting.

Neural Jelly:

COVID-19 Update

World
New Cases:    313,099 (⬆︎ .28%)
New Deaths:       6,361 (⬆︎ .26%)

USA

New Cases:   57,225 (⬆︎ .20%)
New Deaths:    1,247 (⬆︎ .24%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          43.6 million
Total Priority Population: 35.8%
Total Population:              13.1%

The 7-Day Rolling Averages for both Cases and Deaths continue to trend downward. It's been 2 weeks since the Super Bowl, and we haven't yet seen a surge, so I guess it's just possible we learned enough not to go out and be stoopid.

When we keep the daily numbers low - by following the simple protocols - we beat the monster back.

A month ago, the averages were high and my simple projection was had us hitting 600,000 dead by Spring. Now that's been pushed back to late April.

When we do good things, better things follow.

Speaking of protocols...

WaPo:

FAQ: Single or double? The latest advice on masks and covid.

At this stage in the pandemic, amid a surge in infections and the emergence of new, more transmissible variants of the novel coronavirus, masks aren’t just a fact of life. They’re a critical tool in slowing the spread of the virus until enough of the population can be vaccinated.

Below we’ve compiled answers to some of the most commonly asked questions surrounding masks and how to navigate pandemic life in them. These recommendations are drawn from previously published Washington Post articles and new interviews with medical professionals and public health experts who have been on the front lines of this pandemic.

[Covid-19 etiquette: A comprehensive guide]

Please keep in mind that as the coronavirus continues to be studied and understood, masking advice may change, and we will update this FAQ accordingly.
Should I be double-masking?

In recent months, a growing number of public figures including football coaches and politicians have been spotted wearing two masks — usually a cloth covering over a medical-grade mask. “If you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective,” said Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, during a January appearance on the “Today” show.

A February report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that double-masking by wearing a multiple-layer cloth mask over a surgical mask is one way to substantially increase fit and protection. The federal health agency also reported that knotting the ear loops of a single surgical mask and tucking in the sides close to the face had a similar effect.

Federal health officials emphasize proper mask fit to protect against coronavirus variants, urging double masks in some cases

Not everyone, however, needs to start wearing two masks all the time, says Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine and an infectious-disease expert at the University of California at San Francisco. Gandhi, who recently co-authored a commentary on the science behind mask-wearing, suggests doubling up on face coverings if you are spending time indoors in crowded spaces or in areas where transmission rates are high. People who are medically vulnerable should also consider layering their masks, she says.

“We do actually have to tailor our recommendations,” Gandhi says. Otherwise, “it will just cut down on acceptability.”
How do I effectively wear a single or double mask?

Fit is key, experts say. For a mask to do its job, it should fit closely to your face, shielding your nose and mouth completely. A number of widely available cloth masks now feature adjustable nose wires and ear loops to help you achieve a better fit.

“If the mask is not fitted well and there are large gaps around your nose or to the side of your cheeks or under your chin, then you’ve defeated the purpose,” says Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group.

When, why and how to wear a mask during this pandemic, according to the experts

The purpose of wearing two masks is to improve fit and filtration, Gandhi says. And if the masks are layered properly, they can closely simulate the effectiveness of an N95 respirator, which many experts consider to be the gold standard. In the January commentary, Gandhi and co-author Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech professor who studies airborne transmission of infectious diseases, recommended two ways people can layer their masks for “maximal protection.”

Option 1: Wear a tightly fitted, multiple-layer cloth covering over a surgical mask. “The non-woven polypropylene material of the surgical mask is electrostatically repulsing the virus and then the cloth mask literally forms a physical barrier with fibers going every which way,” Gandhi says. This was the double-masking method CDC researchers tested.

The CDC does not recommend layering another mask over an N95 or similar respirator, such as a KN95. N95s should still be reserved for health-care workers and the updated guidance recommends using only one KN95 mask at a time.

“N95s and EUA-approved KN95s are intended to perform on their own,” the CDC said in an emailed statement to reporters. “Adding additional masks either on top or underneath these respirators could not only affect how well they fit the face and decrease their effectiveness, but could increase the effort needed to breathe through them.”

Option 2: Wear a three-layer mask with tightly woven fabric outer layers sandwiching a middle layer made out of a “nonwoven high-efficiency filter material,” such as a vacuum bag filter, the article states. The filter material will act similarly to a surgical mask or other medical-grade covering, Gandhi says.

Double-masking shouldn’t be “misconstrued to say more and more layers of cloth,” Gandhi notes. Additional material that doesn’t function like a medical-grade mask “is of no utility and will just make your voice muffled,” which may then cause you to pull your face covering down to speak.