Above: A few of the different designs the Albright family have to select from when making masks for Project 13.
KaiPing Albright watched the spread of coronavirus in March through historic lenses.
She experienced the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in 2002 when she was living in her native Taiwan. Over a two-week stretch Taiwan's original 29 probable cases and no deaths grew to 116 cases and 10 deaths. Numbers increased sixfold – 680 cases and 81 deaths – in a month. Journalist Ying-Hen Hsieh wrote in nature.com that inexperience at containing outbreaks and a lack of expert assistance from the World Health Organization contributed, at least in part, to the outbreak in Taiwan.
Albright watched the progression of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) from her home in Seward. She saw the Taiwanese government's preemptive reaction that led to only 487 total cases and seven deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Then she wondered what if a disease like that came to America.
“We didn't have anything to protect ourselves here,” she said. “The only thing we could do was to make masks.”
Albright started making her first masks on March 26 for four friends going through chemotherapy. They took time but served their purpose. Then she wanted to branch out with no idea how. Nearly half a year later she's streamlined the process and people have started coming to her.
“I think in the beginning we didn't know how important it was to give out masks,” Albright said. “So I tried to make good masks.”
For more of the story, check out tomorrow's paper.
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