Well, we finally got a randomized study on masking and it works. Caution on applying it to all situation though (but come on, apply your common sense ). The argument for masking is still easy - masking is easy to do and there is very little downside with good upside. It's not hard. ps. study published recently so not yet peer reviewed (it involves 350k people in 600 villages) The Masks Were Working All Along The randomly assigned pro-masking policy reduced the number of confirmed, symptomatic COVID-19 cases in the intervention group by nearly 10 percent, relative to the control group. That might not sound like a huge effect. But the intervention increased masking from 14 percent to only 43 percent; 100 percent masking would have likely had a much larger effect. Even more impressively, the villages that implemented pro-masking policies saw a 34 percent decline in COVID-19 among seniors, for whom the disease is most deadly. This could be because older villagers are more likely to properly wear masks, or because they are more likely to have symptomatic infections if they come into contact with the coronavirus. ... People with strong opinions about masks should be cautious about how they incorporate this study into their advocacy. On the debate over masking in primary schools, this study doesn’t have much to directly offer, since the surveillance staff recorded mask-wearing behavior only among people who looked older than 18. On the debate about masking in specific places such as movie theaters and crowded arenas, this study also doesn’t directly apply. “Our study can’t distinguish between outdoor and indoor transmission,” Abaluck said. “Given other research, it’s likely that masks are most effective in indoor, unventilated spaces. But our study doesn’t tell us explicitly whether, say, parks or restaurants or schools are likely places for transmission.” ... Wisely navigating a pandemic requires that we marry a healthy skepticism with a willingness to change our minds when presented with high-quality evidence. Based on the results of this study and other observational research, we should go forward with a more confident thesis about face coverings: Community-wide usage of surgical masks clearly reduces the spread of the coronavirus, especially in the unventilated indoor environments where it seems to spread most efficiently.
