Governor, I'm making this pitch directly to you. It's something that's really important. It's about the mask situation. As I'm sure you've heard, the CDC now recommends that we all wear masks. But this message to you is to tell you that that is not enough. You see, the thing is modeling shows that unless we get 80% of the population to wear masks, this isn't going to work.

If we do get 80% to wear masks, the virus we expect will be completely blown away, transmission will be stopped. That's how important this is to the economy and to people's lives. I'm going to share with you two things now. The first is a segment I just did on CNN, and the reason I'm going to share it is that at the end of the segment, they asked the viewers, would you wear a mask?

92% of a sample of 20,000 said yes. This is a message that Americans can get behind. The problem is, though, we need nearly everybody to actually turn that into action, not just a poll on a TV station. So we need enforcement. I've already drafted up a simple piece of a law.

It's actually based on the law that's already in Laredo, but I've done something extra to it. I've actually added a carve-out for N95. In other words, if you use this executive order, then it will be saying to people, you have to have a mask outside in public, but, well, in shops, gas stations, stuff like that, unless it's an N95 mask.

That's not okay. So if you use this approach, you're actually going to get two things at once. You're going to ensure more supply for the hospitals who really need that vital PPE, because there's no point hoarding something that no one's allowed to use anymore. You're going to save lives and get the economy back up and running much sooner.

So have a look at the segment, and then after that segment, if you're still wondering whether the science makes sense, there's a really great video from a top pathologist who explains why this really is the right approach. If you're interested in talking more about this, please feel free to reach straight out to me.

I've made an email address just for this, policy@masksforall.co. You can see the text down at the bottom there. All right, I hope this works, and the sooner we can do it, the better, because things are changing every day, and actually I'm going to be on TV talking about this pretty soon, and I'd love to be able to show some good news.

Who was the governor in America who was the first to move on this? That would be history-making. Thanks very much for listening. At the height of the HIV crisis, authorities did not tell people to put away condoms. As fatalities from car crashes mounted, nobody recommended avoiding seatbelts, yet in a global respiratory pandemic, people who should know better are discouraging Americans from using respiratory protection.

Jeremy Howard is a distinguished research scientist at the University of San Francisco. He wrote those words for The Washington Post. Mr. Howard, the WHO initially said, "You only need to wear a mask if you're taking care of a person with a suspected COVID-19 infection." How did they get it so wrong?

Well, we now know that about 50 percent of people that are infected have no symptoms. We also know that during the first week is when people are most infectious, when they're least likely to have symptoms. So what the WHO did here was that they did not err on the side of caution.

They weren't quite sure of the science, and so they said, "Don't do it." What they should have said is, "Do do it," because what we now know is, or we strongly guess, is that if 80 percent of people in a community wear a face mask, any kind of cloth cover, it can actually stop the virus in its tracks.

So here is the cloth cover that I am using. I don't know if you can see it. When I wear it, am I doing so to protect myself or to protect you? Primarily, you're doing it to do your bit in the community to protect others. We know that this disease spreads when we talk.

Little droplets fly out of our mouth, so small you can't see them. It just makes obvious sense, and the science shows any kind of cloth cover stops that. It's actually been estimated by Yale researchers this week that each person wearing a single mask has a value of at least $4,000 to $6,000 due to the huge impact it has on transmission.

There's some stunning data that you have provided me represented in graphs. I'll put it on the screen showing South Korea side by side with Italy, pretty self-explanatory. But please provide the background. Well, the really interesting background is that until late February, a lot of folks in South Korea couldn't get masks, and they were also continuing their kind of cultural approach of only wearing masks when they had symptoms.

Everything changed in late February. The government stepped in and ensured that everybody had access to a mask. And you can see what happened. But before that, they were on track with Italy to be as bad as Italy, and then suddenly everything turned around. And now the number of cases there is decreasing without even a lockdown.

I made reference to what the president had to say yesterday, the sort of juxtaposition of announcing this CDC recommendation and then saying that he himself wouldn't be engaging in that behavior. I want to roll a small piece of audio -- video, pardon me -- from this, and then I ask a question.

Show it. This is voluntary. I don't think I'm going to be doing it, but you have a lot of ways you can look at it as follows. The CDC is recommending that Americans wear a basic cloth or fabric mask that can be either purchased online or simply made at home, probably material that you'd have at home.

What does your review of the data from around the globe show as to the issue of cultural difference or even vanity? I know that you looked at the Czech Republic. Right. I was really surprised to find that, actually, there's lots of examples now of countries that have gone all in on this and are in the West.

Israel, it's the law. Czech Republic, it's the law. Austria, it's the law. Slovakia, it's the law. And like in the Czech Republic, not only is it the law, they are so proud now to wear their masks. If somebody is behind you in the shopping line to do your weekly essential shopping and they're not wearing a mask, in the Czech Republic, people will look at that person now and say, why aren't they doing their bit?

We know that COVID-19 is like a silent assassin now. As you walk around the streets, you could be killing people without knowing it. Masks are the closest thing we have right now to this kind of imperfect vaccine. Science just this week in nature shows that in studies, 100 percent of people that were tested, simple cloth covering stopped the transmission of those critical droplets.

To beat the coronavirus, everyone should wear a mask. Hello, everyone. I am Dr. Chris Martinson, and I'm here to tell you how we're going to beat this coronavirus. I've been reporting on this coronavirus for 70 days. I have a PhD in pathology from Duke University, and I want to take you through the logic of why everyone should wear a face mask.

It begins here with all these things that we can do, that we need to do to beat this particular virus. It begins here, but this is one of the most important steps right here, face masks for everyone. Now, why is that? Well, here's what we know. We know that this particular virus, it spreads really quickly and easily from both symptomatic and asymptomatic people.

Let's imagine this woman here, she's got a perfectly normal temperature, but she can have the virus and be communicating it. Here's how you get this virus. Somebody who's infected gets a particle outside of their body, and that goes into your body. We know that very large infectious droplets fall out of the air very quickly.

Smaller ones travel much further, but really tiny infectious droplet nuclei, they travel really far. These can form and they're super small, so they just blow around in the air. I'm going to show you a little bit about that. It's not just that somebody who's sneezing or coughing is passing this to other people.

How do we beat this thing? Very simple solution to a very complex problem. Everybody wears a mask. Here's the logic behind that. Reason one. I'm going to give you three reasons why everyone should wear a mask. Number one is it stops infected people from expelling infectious particles. Remember these things up here?

We want to keep those particles not out in the air. We want to keep them inside our masks. Let's look at the difference here. In this GIF right here, we're seeing somebody who's sneezing just into the air. Look at all those particles flying, and then yes, there is still stuff sneaking around the edges here, but look how much material got caught in the mask material itself.

Here's another great piece of research that came out very recently. This shows the tiny particles that are being spread around when people are just talking. You see big particles falling out. You see little ones floating around. Every one of these is a particle that could be carrying infectious disease particles, viruses in there that could make you sick.

Reason number one, everyone wears a mask, is so that the people who are sick are not spreading infected droplets all over the place. Reason number two that everyone wears a mask is it helps remind you not to touch the insides of your mouth or your nose. What we need to know is that, I hate this saying, don't touch your face because you know why?

Because the virus doesn't come in through your face. It comes in through your mouth, and it comes in through your nose. It's also possible it can come in through the eyes, but a mask at least, if you're wearing a mask that covers up this part right here, you are not breathing those particles in to the places in your upper nose where the virus can bind or down in your lungs where the virus can also bind and begin replicating.

That is reason number two. It helps to remind you not to touch the insides of your mouth or your nose. In fact, it will physically prevent you, that's what a mask will do, prevent you from touching the inside of your mouth and your nose. What's reason number three? Reason number three, really, really important.

Look, if somehow these little particles get out and if you get one of those little particles inside your mask, you will still get ill potentially, but if you are infected anyway, you have a much, much better chance of starting small, that is with a low inoculum, and that gives you a much better disease outcome.

There's an opinion piece in the New York Times by a couple of doctors here, and I love what they said. They say here, "Both large and small amounts of virus can replicate within our cells cause severe disease in vulnerable individuals, such as the immunocompromised. In healthy people, however, immune systems respond as soon as they sense a virus growing inside.

Recovery depends on which wins the race, viral spread or immune activation. Virus experts know that viral dose affects the severity, the illness severity. Viral dose. So, in the lab, mice receiving a low dose of virus clear it and recover while the same virus at a higher dose kills them.

Dose sensitivity has been observed for every common acute viral infection that has been studied in lab animals, including coronaviruses. So that's reason number three, gives you better odds of a lesser illness. If you do get a tiny virus particle through your mask, it will come in, but it'll be tiny.

It'll be a small dose that increases your odds. So the three reasons everyone wears a mask, it stops the infected people from spreading it around. It helps prevent you from touching your mouth and your nose in particular. And if you do get infected anyway, much better odds that you're starting small with a low inoculum and that gives you a better disease outcome, a better chance of fighting it off.

I want you to tune out all sorts of illogical articles out there that say things like this, which is a, well, you know, even masks that fit well against the face will not prevent inhalation of small particles. So this is saying it's not perfect, never let perfect become the enemy of the good enough.

This person is making the argument that homemade masks is all worrying because there's some evidence that fabric masks can increase your risk of infection, but they're quoting clinical studies where nurses and doctors were around super infected people wearing homemade masks. That's not what we're talking about. All right. How do we beat this thing?

Everybody wears a mask. It prevents the spread. It reminds us not to touch our mouth and our nose, and it gives you a better odds of a lesser illness. So what sorts of masks, hey, all kinds of masks, just not the ones with the little valves on them. We don't want those because those allow infected things to pass out of our, our mouths really easily in our nose.

So any of these totally good, but you know what else is good and better than nothing because we need these right now for the medical frontline healthcare providers. Don't get these. Let's leave these right now later when supplies come back and they're ample for everyone. These are the best.

But what do we do until then? Wonderful cottage industry of people making their own homegrown, a sewn mask, home sewn mask here, here with an insert of a HEPA filter. I bet this thing's doing a really good job, but you know what? It's doing a whole lot better than nothing.

Remember people sneezing that stuff all out. And by the way, you can find these face masks and all over the place. People are making them, donating them. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing that's happening here. So this is how we beat this thing. We join together. We create face masks and we always, always, always wear a mask in public, whether we think we're healthy or not, or don't know, or we're sick.

Any reason at all when everybody's wearing a face mask, we will beat this thing. Thank you for listening.