> Once upon a time, I was a U.S. Army surgical technician. Part of my training was in face mask hygiene and sterile technique. In 1966, in an evacuation hospital in Korea, I would do a rotation in intensive care dealing with infectious disease cases. Later, in college, I majored in biology, which included microbiology. Because of this background, I view the world differently from how most do as it pertains to the transmission of disease. So imagine my shock when I went grocery shopping after this viral panic hit. Here were people with face masks and nitrile gloves — their hands all over their face masks, pulling them up and down, rubbing their eyes. They played with their smartphones, touched everything in the store, and acted as if they came from the planet Krypton. Holy moly! This store was full of potential Typhoid Marys. > So now, here we are months later. Has anything changed with these folks? No. Even more unsettling, the experts appear to be grasping at straws, adding more confusion to an already confused populace. One of those straws: face masks.