You’re not getting more, so here are tips to make the most of them
Early in March, the administration made the decision to provide each student with exactly five fancy KN95 masks. If you noticed them being offered at the security desk while walking out of the law school, you now possess these renowned objects. Congratulations!
If you usually wear cloth masks or the cheapest barely-medical masks you can find in the grocery store, you will feel honoured to finally hold some powerful KN95s. However, don’t put them on just yet. You have class multiple times per week, and the school will not be providing supplements! You will need to decide when and where to optimally use your bougiest masks, and given the unseen nature of the virus, this is a matter of complex calculation.
This article has some thoroughly researched tips for how and where to best use your KN95s.
- Don’t blow through them all at once
While KN95s, in their great power, last longer than your other masks might, if you spend as long crying in the library as most students do, you will blow through your mask supply in no time. You need to prioritize using your masks on the days you want extra protection. What if there weren’t even any COVID-positive people on campus the day you use a KN95? What a waste!
- Don’t use them all in Jackman—this place is too sterile
Just because the KN95s are provisioned by the grace of the Faculty, that does not mean you have to use them in the law building. In fact, Jackman is so dead inside that it is not a likely place for COVID-19 to hang out. The ghosts of the abandoned souls of 1Ls already provide some protection, and the bust of Bora Laskin seems like the kind of thing that would ward away viruses.
If you must use them at the law school, don your KN95s somewhere warm, poorly ventilated, and not with 100-foot ceilings. Like Falconer Hall.
- Try to guess when there is a lot of COVID-19 around and wear them then
My best advice would be to wear your powerful masks at the peak of a COVID-19 wave. But given the fact that society has abandoned methodological or scientifically informed COVID-19 testing, you can’t actually know when we are in a COVID-19 wave anymore. The best our current testing and reporting system can offer is that when your gut tells you there is COVID-19, it might be time to use one of your KN95s.
Good luck! Your five KN95s give you five shots to be super-protected from COVID-19 for a day. Use them wisely.
