When well-known Nowra surgeon Martin Jones put his mask on in a supermarket the other day, other shoppers put theirs on as well.
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He thinks they felt more comfortable donning their masks after seeing someone else do it.
The 63-year-old surgeon has a lung condition which requires him to take steroids regularly and makes him particularly vulnerable should he contract COVID-19.
"It's important to protect myself and to protect those I come up against," he says.
Dr Jones knows two Nowra people who are now self-isolating because they dined in Batemans Bay, where a COVID cluster has emerged after an infected Sydney pair visited the Soldiers Club.
"Gladys Berejiklian has said if you're not able to be in a safe situation from a safe distancing point of view you should think about wearing a mask, and I think that is very reasonable."
He says the mask offers another line of defence along with social distancing and scrupulous hand hygiene.
"When I've been to Hong Kong they're constantly wearing masks. They've made it appropriate there and I don't see that we should be any different.
"I think [Victorian Premier] Dan Andrews said yesterday Victorians are going to be wearing masks for a very long time, if not forever."
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Dr Jones does not believe the upsurge of cases in Victoria is a second wave in the pandemic, rather the second spike in the first wave.
He says everyone in the community needs to realise they are the front line in the fight against the virus.
That means being vigilant about social distancing and hygiene and being prepared to wear masks - something some people are still reluctant to do themselves and resentful of others who do.
"I saw a person run up to an older person wearing a mask and say 'You're scaring my children.' The older person said, 'Your children have something to be scared about much more than me, madam.'"
Dr Jones is particularly concerned about the lapses in social distancing he sees while out shopping.
"I have in the last three weeks just left my trolley where it is and left. I abandoned my shopping cart. I complained to the person who I thought looked like the manager in charge and I left," he says.
On a trip to Goulburn on the weekend, he travelled through Moss Vale, where he says he was "horrified by the number of people sitting in windows of restaurants so close together. There was no social distancing, there was no four square metres, there was no 1.5 metres, there was nothing.
"I think NSW is no different to Victoria, I just think we're at an earlier stage and we should do something about it. I do think suppression is important. But I don't think we're going to get the suppression at a reasonable level unless we do something the community is involved with."
