Masks: Legitimate Safety-Measure or Hoax?
image courtesy of spunout.ie
BY JIAWEI SUN ‘21
Recently in the U.S., face masks or coverings to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have been the center of quite a widespread issue. One side claims that wearing face-coverings helps reduce the spread of the virus while the other argues that the face-coverings, in fact, do not help and are an infringement of their rights. Both sides have garnered a lot of support from the public, and with many disputes present nowadays, each side thinks that the other is being unreasonable and radicalizing the issue.
On July 14, 2020, CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield said that “Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus — particularly when used universally within a community setting.” One argument supporting the wearing of face masks is that they can prevent the airborne spread of the virus by catching droplets when someone is speaking, coughing, or sneezing. While it is true that wearing a cloth or surgical mask does act as a physical barrier that can trap these droplets from spreading into the air, many mask challengers claim that large droplets can be caught by masks, but these masks cannot stop smaller particles like the COVID-19 virus. It is also true that the U.S. Food and Drug administration hasn't approved surgical masks for protection against COVID-19.
Given the quick rise of COVID-19, concrete data and studies supporting effectiveness of cloth coverings or masks are limited. While it could be true that wearing a cloth mask is better than wearing nothing, there is simply no way to prove either argument scientifically at this point.
Mask supporters sometimes look towards proven examples of widespread mask wearing in countries like China. However, it is impossible to attribute China’s successful struggle against Coronavirus to mandated face-coverings. China’s strict quarantine and lockdown procedures are what stopped the virus: when one person in an apartment building tests positive, the entire building or even compound is put on lockdown for 14 days. Other countries have also shown that we don’t need extreme quarantine procedures to stop COVID-19. Singapore’s world-class contact-tracing policy allowed the city-state of 5.6 million to suffer only 27 deaths in a 7-month battle with COVID-19. Furthermore, during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Singapore government required asymptomatic citizens to avoid wearing masks to prevent a shortage, and the shortage of masks in China created entire industries that fabricated counterfeit masks or repackaged used ones. Looking at these examples, I think that the most important way to slow the spread of COVID-19 is not through mandated face masks, but through effective quarantine, social-distancing, and contact-tracing.
In fact, mandating cloth face-coverings might cause more damage than benefits. While wearing cloth masks is probably more helpful than wearing nothing at all, wearing masks can coax people into a false sense of security that could be even more dangerous. If people begin believing that cloth masks are more effective than they actually are, they could start ignoring social-distancing practices: a proven and effective method to slowing the spread of Coronavirus. This complacency can lead to parties or large gatherings during a nationwide pandemic.
Although I am a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and racial equality, I find it difficult to say that the spike in COVID-19 cases is completely unrelated to the outburst of nationwide protests for the BLM movement. Protests in Minneapolis began on May 26, 2020, and in the span of almost two months, the daily reported cases of COVID-19 quadrupled, increasing from 18.9k on May 26 to 77.3k on July 16th. When I bring up this example, I am in no way opposed to the protests that took place nationwide. I believe that racial inequality is a major issue in the U.S. today and that protesting the inexcusable actions of the police officers is absolutely necessary. I am only pointing out an example of what happened when people believed in the supposed abilities of cloth masks and became complacent with social-distancing procedures.
I think that wearing cloth face-coverings is more effective than wearing nothing, but I do not believe that they are a be-all and end-all solution to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, used in conjunction with proper social-distancing practice, masks can become a quite effective precautionary measure.
As per the nature of the U.S., we transformed a purely health-related issue into a political argument. If this pandemic happened in a non-election year, perhaps politically-motivated news sources and politicians would have spent less time worrying about how to vilify the other side and more time worrying about how to deal with this pandemic quickly and effectively. Instead, a politically-charged quarrel where both parties are equally at fault has led to the loss of 200,000 innocent lives.