From backtoworkaftercovid.com. Madureira knows that the best stuff should go to the front lines. But there’s still a lot that average workers can do to protect themselves.

AV Builder Corp President Tony Madureira is frustrated, and not just because he doesn’t have enough general contracting work for his employees during the shutdown. “I picked up some takeout fast food the other day,” he recalls, “and I looked inside, and there were eight employees stuffed in this little area, getting the food. None of them had glasses on, and some of them were wearing their masks pulled down below their noses. If you know what you’re supposed to do, it breaks your heart to know that for some of these people, it’s not going to turn out okay.”

Madureira knows what you’re supposed to do: “I ran a mold division within my company, and the protocols are the same ones that are used for the virus. It’s all about a being able to control particles of .3 microns or greater to 95%.” Ideally, that means N95 masks, rated goggles, gloves, and a plastic gown. But of course, these are not ideal times. Given the impossibility of outfitting everyone according to protocol, social distancing is the safest bet. But for those fast food workers — and for Madureira’s workers in various circumstances, and for lots of other workers out there in the re-opening economy — social distancing simply isn’t always an option. So then what?

“The CDC and the California OSHA don’t address the six-feet-and-under condition. The verbiage refers you to somewhere else in the depths of government regulation. They’re not stepping up and providing information, which forces guys like me to act like renegades.” For Madureira, that meant putting together backtoworkaftercovid.com — an effort by one private citizen to aid his fellow citizens in “creating interim solutions. I’m not backed by the government, or any authority, but here I am, because I know.”

“Interim solutions” means that if the ideal is impossible, then look for the next best thing. “Look how well California did with tamping down rates through social distancing — most of us probably broke it at some point, but it’s a percentage game. So when we’re talking about outfitting workers to get back out there, let’s at least play the percentage game. Give us the best chance we’ve got with what we’ve got. For the Trump Administration to tell meat workers to get back to work without giving them masks is ordering your soldiers into war without the proper equipment to win the war. And we’re not even telling them what the proper protocol is. My mind boggles.”

If you know the protocol, you can figure out that sunglasses are better than nothing, and ski goggles are better than sunglasses. That a KN95 mask is better than cloth, even if it’s not an N95. That zip-up shirts are better than pullovers, and proper donning and doffing make a difference. “It’s real common-sense stuff,” says Madureira, “but until someone leads you to some level of understanding, you don’t know how to apply your common sense. That’s where the tragedy is occurring. The great experiment is on, and in three to four weeks, we’ll see what it has delivered to us.”