” masks as the medical equivalent of hiding under school desks during a nuke strike.”
That’s funny! (And true.)
I was in grade school when the ‘under the desk’ routine was in place. The idea was to get out of line of sight for flying objects like broken glass from the shockwave of a nuke blast I was in school in Fairlington elementary, which is a suburb of DC. Even when transferred to East Tennessee for more grade school the routine was in place as a drill since Oak Ridge was only 120 or 130 miles away, a supposed target of the Soviets. So yeah, the mask routine is similar to the ‘under the desk routine’ in that it is aimed at secondary dangers.