Infectious disease expert: 'everyone has to wear' masks amid coronavirus outbreak

As global cases of the coronavirus near 1 million, Infectious Disease Expert Dr. Dena Grayson joins Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman to discuss the best ways to curb the spread of the outbreak.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Well, we're shifting to the overarching problem now, which has already impacted our conversations on oil and our conversation that we just had on airlines refunding customers. That, of course, tying back to the growing amount of cases that we're seeing spread around the globe. When it comes to coronavirus cases, we got the update from Johns Hopkins. The unfortunate update that total deaths from the virus has now surpassed 50,000 across the globe as cases continue to rise here in the US as well.

For more on this, I want to bring on our next guest. Doctor Dena Grayson joins us now on the hangout she's a doctor and infectious disease expert. And, Dr. Grayson, when we look at this, I mean, a lot's been made about the slow responses for some of these states. We've heard the idea that it might be better to just issue a nationwide lockdown right now and not have these states play catch up.

We even saw Texas-- the governor yesterday kind of saying that his lockdown order wasn't really a lockdown order. You're still free to walk around if you want to. Kind of perplexing people on the other side here. What do you think about the way that some states have taken a more lax approach, and what we've seen out of California, New York, and the way that they've been able to stem the tide of rising cases?

DENA GRAYSON: Well, I think it's very irresponsible of these state governors that have not locked down their own states. I called for a nationwide lockdown about-- gosh, 3 and 1/2 weeks ago because it was very clear that, look, this virus does not respect borders. It doesn't respect international borders. And it certainly doesn't respect state borders.

And the challenge that you have with this highly contagious, deadly virus is that if you get behind, the virus wins, OK? And once you start seeing cases rolling into the hospital, that's really a lagging indicator that this virus has been spreading throughout your community because oftentimes what happens is that this virus infects younger people initially. And it spreads like wildfire through younger people who generally don't get very seriously ill. You know, they're not going to be going to the doctor.

So by the time that first patient shows up to the doctor who's seriously ill and hospitalized, it's really in many ways too late. And we've heard Dr. Birx echo this. She's on, you know, part of the coronavirus task force. So, you know, I think that-- I live in a state here in Florida where we just started lockdowns. That was as of today. A statewide lockdown. We are the third most populous state. And we have a very high percentage of our population that is older and at much higher risk for very serious illness and even death.

So unfortunately, again, we're seeing cases continue not only to increase, but they're accelerating. And every other country at this stage-- I mean, I put China to the side because they don't accurately report. But every other country at this stage in their own outbreak, we started to see cases really slowing down. And there's a reason they aren't slowing down here in the United States. And that's because, unfortunately, we didn't lockdown soon enough.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, and you raise such a good point there with the idea of those most susceptible in a state like Florida. And that's another state that, again, like Texas, is kind of behind the curve here. When we look at it, through, a piece of it I guess this is some people will point to the unknowns and the fact that we didn't know everything at the outset of this. And maybe that's why we saw states take longer than others.

But one of those questions regards facemasks, and whether or not N95 masks are really what people should be wearing because there's a shortage on the actual front lines for doctors and nurses. But we're learning more and more about how this virus spreads. So it does [INAUDIBLE] people are kind of laying-- at least officials kind of giving advice here are weighing the pros con of not telling people to go out and buy N95 masks because there's a shortage. But also that they couldn't help stop the spread of some of these cases as well. So how do you walk that line? And what should people actually be doing?

DENA GRAYSON: Well, Zack, there's really-- we have to think about masks in two different ways. There is-- one purpose of a mask is to protect the wearer from getting the infection. So that would be, like, your N95 masks. And then the other purpose of a mask is to protect the world from you spreading your germs to them. So when we look at N95 masks, they're really recommended for health care workers and first responders who are in close contact repeatedly with people who have COVID-19, the illness caused by this coronavirus.

So there is a shortage with those masks. We need to make sure that our first responders, doctors, and nurses have those N95 masks because if-- obviously, if they get ill and die, then we don't have people to take care of us. Now for the society at large, you know, your chances of getting this virus through a casual, you know, somebody happens to breathe and you inhale it, is pretty low. The idea is that by everyone wearing a-- you know, some sort of face covering that you're decreasing the amount of germs that you're basically spewing into the environment.

And we-- certainly in other countries, especially in Asia where we see much lower transmission rates of the virus, you know, there's a lot of mask wearing. And it's not the N95 masks. They're wearing surgical masks. They have-- it's like sort of a fashion statement in many of these countries.

So we don't need these fancy N95 masks for the population at large. But I do think that we need to have facial coverings for folks so that-- but everyone has to wear one then so we're protecting others from us.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah. And tough to think that everyone's going to want to wear one if their governors are still kind of behind the curve when we talk about actually describing how serious the issue is. But for now, Doctor Grayson. Doctor Dena Grayson, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.

DENA GRAYSON: Thanks for having me, Zack.