It probably won’t surprise you that my friends consider me the keeper of the data. About all sorts of obscure things. Mostly because it’s true.
And, so many of them have asked if there were a coherent study that would justify the use of masks- or negate their capability. Oh, sure, we all wear masks when we enter a shop or find ourselves in a crowded outdoor environment. But, to many of my friends, there’s a niggling doubt in the back of their minds as to how effective donning these masks are.
The real problem is that mask wearing is not a personal safety issue- it’s needed for the survival of the community.
I am damned tired of hearing folks declare that wearing a mask is a “personal choice” or “parental choice”. These folks have succumbed to the antivaxxers (and science deniers) who’ve managed to find Republican officials who are desperate to latch onto “popular” opinion. (NOT FACTS!) This has led to GOP sponsored bills to bar public schools from requiring vaccinations and wearing masks.
Claiming that this is a “personal freedom” issue. Can you imagine these folks claiming that same “personal freedom” during WW2 when lights were ordered to be turned off? Or, for those with venereal disease refusing to refrain from sexual contact because it infringed on their personal freedom? (You do recall that the Christian Wrong wanted those with HIV locked up, claiming they were being punished by (their) god?)
Wearing a mask is important for the community, by minimizing the potential spread of the virus. (Along those lines, did you know that the US Postal Service was planning to deliver 5 masks to each household in April 2020? The idea was squelched by the Trump administration.)
I’ve covered a few studies. Ones by Dr. Linsey Marr and Dr. Makison Booth or Dr. Liang. But, now there’s a randomized study (subjects resided in Bangladesh) specifically determining if mask wearing cuts down on community spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Now, this paper is undergoing editorial (peer) review; it’s just a preprint now. But, it’s expected to appear in the journal Science pretty soon now. Drs. Jason Abaluck and Steve Luby (Yale), along with Drs. Laura Kwong, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, and Ashley Styczynski (Stanford) [plus 17 others, mostly from Innovations for Poverty Actions] present their findings in The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh.
Masks were mandated back in Bangladesh in March 2020, but like many places in the US, compliance was sorely lacking. The researchers pushed for better compliance- and the folks did comply, elevating mask use from 13% up to 42%, over 10 weeks (at which point in time intervention/encouragement was no longer required). (Encouragement? That meant delivering no-cost masks door to door, explaining the benefits of mask-wearing, and getting local leaders involved in the effort.)
Some 340,000 folks – from 600 different villages in rural Bangladesh- comprised the study population for the paper. When the (178,000) subjects were encouraged to don masks, compliance was augmented by nearly 30%. (The control group census was about 163,000.) And, this intervention group demonstrated a 9.3% reduction in symptomatic Covid-19 (confirmed by blood work) and 11.9% reduction in symptoms of the disease. The study ran from November 2020 through April 2021
Please don’t read these results to mean that masks are only 9% effective. Because these results were based upon seropositivity and pronounced symptomology. (Not to mention that many of the masks were inferior. Not all the masks were surgical masks.)
There also is a complication to the results. Many of the folks who donned masks also began to ensure that social distancing was observed. (This social distancing was not the norm when folks were in mosques- which also had decrepit indoor ventilation.)
Nevertheless, this study clearly demonstrated the value- and need- for folks to wear masks for effective COVID-19 protection.
Wear them- for you, for your kids, and for your neighbors.
