Coronavirus Face masks Health and Wealth Japanese Features

What's Next After Disappered Face Masks? Bad-breath Japanese?

Japanese seem to be really trend-followers.  Once a trend is set, or someone sets a trend, people tend to follow it, blindly believing the fuss, whether it is worth or not!  For example, banana diets are reported as the best to lose weight, all the bananas are gone in the grocery stores.   

Where should we go to get face (surgical) masks?  Now all face masks are gone from the shelves of drugstores, grocery stores, and even from convenience stores.  Especially face masks in boxes, containing 60 pieces, are sold out!  Literally, all have disappeared in Japan!!  This could be another trend in Japan!

Photo by Luan Oosthuizen used under CC

Due to the fear of Coronavirus, people apparently rushed to buy face masks and disinfectant gels, spray, and wet tissues.  Only 10 days ago, when the news of Coronavirus started being reported on TV, a lot of face masks were stacked on the shelves.  People were NOT in panic yet at that time.  We could buy some boxes luckily, but when we sought some more JUST a few days later, we had no luck!!

Worse, masks are for sale for an insanely overcharged price on the Internet.  Also, some auction sites, like Selling App called Mercari, carry insanely overpriced surgical masks for sale.  Some masks cost 10 times more than usual.  Who is benefiting from this?
Yes, no luck at all for the purchase unless you do not mind paying a lot!

This box of mask costs around 600 yen, or 6 dollars for 60 pieces included

What we should do for the disease prevention is "wash your hands thoroughly," and "not touch your eyes and nose at public places" because the virus comes into our body through mucous membranes.  Probably everybody knows this, right?  However, we touch these critical parts unconsciously.  For some people, these touches are already a habit.

We never know when and how we get virus on our hands at public places.  That is why washing hands is said to be the best way against the infection.  A quick and easy way to disinfect your hands is to use disinfectant gels and spray, which is especially effective when you do not have an easy access to bathrooms for cleansing your hands.  Yes, as you can easily imagine, as soon as news media start taking up such effective measures, disinfectants are gone as well!

We wonder what will be gone next.  People have begun to realize that face masks are very effective not to spread virus from the infected persons, but not preventive because virus goes through the masks.  With the mask on, you would feel relieved, but in fact you are doing a favor to others around you, NOT for you.  Of course, it could be better than doing nothing for sure.

Even though we NOW see more and more people wearing masks on the street, this mask frenzy will shift to the very basic of washing hands AGAIN.  Hand soup, either solid or liquid forms, is STILL on the shelves of drugstores and grocery stores, but will be gone soon!  It may be the next target.  We will have to grab it before it actually disappears.  Or, we SHOULD just hope this "public health emergency" is resolved soon.

One more interesting side effect of this face mask frenzy is ....

Japanese people have started realizing that they have to take oral hygienic measures.  Exhaling and inhale their breath under the mask, some come to better understand how bad their breath is.  This understanding may contribute to the sale of oral care products!!   The next disappearance may be toothpaste or mouth wash products!??   What do you think?