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You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Masking matters

Masking matters

by David Anderson|  October 12, 20208:40 am| 11 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, COVID-19

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Several Duke Margolis colleagues led by my friend and co-author, Dr. Brystana Kaufman analyzed infection rates in states that re-opened restaurants with and without mask mandates in a recent issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine:

 

Objective

To estimate excess COVID-19 cases and deaths after reopening compared with trends prior to reopening for two groups of states: (1) states with an evidence-based reopening strategy, defined as reopening indoor dining after implementing a statewide mask mandate, and (2) states reopening indoor dining rooms before implementing a statewide mask mandate.

Design

Interrupted time series quasi-experimental study design applied to publicly available secondary data.

Key Results

On average, the number of excess cases per 100,000 residents in states reopening without masks is ten times the number in states reopening with masks after 8 weeks (643.1 cases; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 406.9, 879.2 and 62.9 cases; CI = 12.6, 113.1, respectively). Excess cases after 6 weeks could have been reduced by 90% from 576,371 to 63,062 and excess deaths reduced by 80% from 22,851 to 4858 had states implemented mask mandates prior to reopening. Over 50,000 excess deaths were prevented within 6 weeks in 13 states that implemented mask mandates prior to reopening.

Case counts are increasing throughout most of the country. The US-Canadian border states from Lake Superior to the Pacific are on fire at the moment. College football stadiums in Florida will be allowed to have full crowds of drunk, loud people in close proximity to each other for three to four hours on Saturdays.

Masks matter a lot.

Masks don’t solve all problems, but they seem to be sufficient to notably reduce transmission which allows for other public health interventions to be more effective.

When you leave the house; mask up!

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Reader Interactions

11Comments

  1. 1.

    Cheryl Rofer

    October 12, 2020 at 8:45 am

    On average, the number of excess cases per 100,000 residents in states reopening without masks is ten times the number in states reopening with masks after 8 weeks

    This is what exponential increase looks like.

    My god.

  2. 2.

    MattF

    October 12, 2020 at 8:49 am

    Masking matters, but I’d bet that wearing facemasks correlates with observing social distancing and various other smaller actions. I suspect that anti-virus behaviors cluster.

  3. 3.

    ant

    October 12, 2020 at 9:05 am

    yup.

    on a per population basis, you know where the highest rates in a region are in the whole world?

    that would be north dakota.

    the second highest region?

    that would be south dakota.

    it’s republicans disregarding any attempt at slowing the spread that is the problem. that fucking motorcycle rally sparked virus fires all across the whole fucking region.

    republicans are pissed about losing, and fucking spreading it on purpose.

    see it in action here: https://dangoodspeed.com/covid/total-cases-since-june?fbclid=IwAR3vVZPaYNBs4MDp1Cqq7pC3QyT4V_lmt7a169Uggw9xmIfpWf7AaiO62KY

  4. 4.

    Mudbrush

    October 12, 2020 at 9:18 am

    I’m glad that there are folks scientifically proving that mask wearing is effective. Not that when you link the study to your republican friends they will actually read it. Or acknowledge it. Or believe that the researchers aren’t part of the deep state.

  5. 5.

    Ohio Mom

    October 12, 2020 at 9:21 am

    I don’t follow the numbers for the entire state all that closely but it looked like Ohio’s numbers started dipping after the governor put a mask mandate in place. That was encouraging to see.

    But we seem to have gotten all the mileage we could out of that, and it’s not enough of a counterbalance for all the stupid things that are on the rise — I feel like an old lady complaining about all the young people carousing.

  6. 6.

    Van Buren

    October 12, 2020 at 9:33 am

    My sons and I went for a 2 day hike in upstate NY over the weekend. About half the people we ran into wear their masks 100% of the time, and about 40% would stop and put on masks when someone was approaching from the other direction. The rest just stayed maskless. We were in the second group.

  7. 7.

    FlyingToaster

    October 12, 2020 at 10:32 am

    In Massachusetts, we just had 40 towns go over into “the red”, dragging the state along with it.

    The map is, um, interesting.  College towns (Boston, Waltham, Worcester, Amherst, Northampton, Lowell, etc), plus the communities where the service workers serving those towns live (Chelsea, New Beford, Lawrence, etc.).

    The colleges that are doing serious population reduction (Harvard, MIT) mean that their surrounding communities (Cambridge, Somerville, Watertown, Arlington, Belmont) aren’t seeing cases rising, either.

    We have universal “indoor” masking, although restaurants and some bars have been allowed to open for indoor dining.  Outdoors is “bring a mask if you leave your property”; if you can’t stay distant, wear the damn mask.  That’s still kinda hit-or-miss.  If I go walking down the bike path, I just keep my mask on, because half of my fellow path utilizers don’t.

    The culprits, like the Labor Day gatherings, seem to be college kids holding impromptu unmasked events, and then spreading it to the service workers on or near campus, who then spread it to their families, and so it fucking goes.

  8. 8.

    D Gardner

    October 12, 2020 at 11:40 am

    @Ohio Mom:  I’ll see your “old lady” and raise you an “old man” from the same state. I too worry that Ohio doesn’t seem to be improving, though our state is in better shape than many others. Ohio, as with almost all states at this point, simply will not be able to return to anything resembling normal at current levels of infection. I particularly notice small town non-compliance with masking when I am out on long bike rides and have to stop to get water/snacks. It’s infuriating that I carry my mask with me even on sweaty bike rides, and these assholes can’t see fit to wear one while buying lottery tickets.

  9. 9.

    Burnspbesq

    October 12, 2020 at 12:41 pm

    It’s not just Americans rejecting common sense. Did you see the crowd at yesterday’s Croatia – Sweden match in Zagreb?

  10. 10.

    Groucho48

    October 12, 2020 at 2:49 pm

    All masks matter.

    Republicans lied, people died.

  11. 11.

    UncleEbeneezer

    October 12, 2020 at 2:53 pm

    When you have a Party that openly denies and shows contempt for science/facts, this is exactly what you would expect. Note, that as we learn more about Covid-19, Dems make proper adjustments to save lives and slow spread, Republicans don’t. #BlueWave2020

    http://dangoodspeed.com/covid/total-cases-since-june?fbclid=IwAR3Ohb15Mc7l50EPblUoC2U6_0MieDpfNZh5m03_doln2opNyYG3vxtbbHk

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