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My mask protects you and your mask protects me.
My mask protects you and your mask protects me.
Image from CDC.
CDC recommends that people wear masks in public settings and when around people who don’t live in your household, especially when other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.
Masks may help prevent people who have COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others.
Masks are most likely to reduce the spread of COVID-19 when they are widely used by people in public settings.
Masks should NOT be worn by children under the age of 2 or anyone who has trouble breathing, is unconscious, incapacitated, or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance.
Masks with exhalation valves or vents should NOT be worn to help prevent the person wearing the mask from spreading COVID-19 to others (source control).
Evidence supporting mask mandates work.
Evidence supporting mask mandates work.
Check out #MasksForAll for a comprehensive compilation of the science supporting mask wearing.
Check out #MasksForAll for a comprehensive compilation of the science supporting mask wearing.
An interview with Peter Chin-Hong, MD, about the CDC’s reversal on mask-wearing, the current science on how masks work, and what to consider when choosing a mask.
“I think the biggest thing with COVID now that shapes all of this guidance on masks is that we can’t tell who’s infected,” said Chin-Hong. “You can’t look in a crowd and say, oh, that person should wear mask. There’s a lot of asymptomatic infection, so everybody has to wear a mask.”
A mnemonic that Chin-Hong likes is the “Three W’s to ward off COVID-19:” wearing a mask, washing your hands, and watching your distance.
“But of the three, the most important thing is wearing a mask,” he said. Compared to wearing a mask, cleaning your iPhone or wiping down your groceries are “just distractors.” There’s little evidence that fomites (contaminated surfaces) are a major source of transmission, whereas there is a lot of evidence of transmission through inhaled droplets, said Chin-Hong.
"The study provides evidence that US states mandating the use of face masks in public had a greater decline in daily COVID-19 growth rates after issuing these mandates compared with states that did not issue mandates."
Data “suggest as many as 230,000–450,000 COVID-19 cases possibly averted By May 22, 2020 by these mandates.”
Association of country-wide coronavirus mortality with demographics, testing, lockdowns, and public wearing of masks.
Christopher T Leffler, Edsel B Ing, Joseph D. Lykins V, Matthew C. Hogan, Craig A. McKeown, Andrzej Grzybowski doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109231
Association of country-wide coronavirus mortality with demographics, testing, lockdowns, and public wearing of masks.
Christopher T Leffler, Edsel B Ing, Joseph D. Lykins V, Matthew C. Hogan, Craig A. McKeown, Andrzej Grzybowski doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109231
"In summary, older age of the population, urbanization, obesity, and longer duration of the outbreak in a country were independently associated with higher country-wide per-capita coronavirus mortality. International travel restrictions were associated with lower per-capita mortality. However, other containment measures, testing and tracing polices, and the amount of viral testing were not statistically significant predictors of country-wide coronavirus mortality, after controlling for other variables. In contrast, societal norms and government policies supporting maskwearing by the public were independently associated with lower per-capita mortality from COVID-19. The use of masks in public is an important and readily modifiable public health measure."
"Our analysis indicates that a high proportion of the population would need to wear facemasks to achieve reasonable impact of the intervention. In Hong Kong, 99% of survey respondents reported wearing facemasks when outside of their home. Another human factor that may reduce facemask adoption in Western countries is cultural, because the use of facemasks is not common in public, or there is an implication that the facemask wearer considers others as a threat. In the current emergency, however, it is necessary to change this view, which could be achieved if the message conveyed by a facemask was ‘my facemask protects you, your facemask protects me’. Indeed, it is probable that making facemasks into fashion items may be another route to changing the culture surrounding facemask use in public. A further positive effect from this cultural change would be to reinforce the message that it is necessary to keep to a safe distance from one another. This educational message could be conveyed easily by the government and popular press.
In summary, our modelling analyses provide support for the immediate, universal adoption of facemasks by the public, similar to what has been done in Taiwan, for example, where production will soon reach 13 million facemasks daily, with well-developed plans for N95 respirator production in the pipeline."
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