Studies: Masks slow virus, lower COVID-19 deaths
While Logan County may finally be getting a grip on the recent COVID-19 surge, that grip is tenuous at best and completely reliant on voluntary compliance with state health guidelines.
Recent studies show that wearing facial coverings when going out in public is a key to keeping COVID-19 infection rates low and deaths from the virus even lower.
An Oct. 26 report issued by the University of Kansas, another repor t two days later from Vanderbilt University, and an earlier published paper by six scientists from four universities in the U.S., Canada and Poland all showed the same thing.
Donna Ginther, director of KU’S Institute for Policy and Social Research, presented data showing that counties in Kansas that enforced state mandates on mask wearing could expect seven fewer cases per day for every 100,000 people.
“Cases in counties with a mask mandate stopped increasing. They didn’t go away. They stopped increasing,” Ginther said. “And, cases in counties without a mandate, starting in mid-august, just kind of went crazy.”
On Oct. 27, Vanderbilt University released a study of Tennessee counties, titled “COVID-19 Trends in Tennessee: Summer turns to Fall,” that showed virtually the
same thing, and fur ther stated that non-compliance will actually have a negative ef fect on local economies.
The Vanderbilt researchers said they have seen “a consistent pattern of economic participation mirroring community infection;” that is, as cases and hospitalizations rise, consumers’ mobility and spending patterns decline or shift to “safer” activities. The conclusion is that if local and county governments want to help lower COVID-19 infection rates, they need to get their constituents to wear masks and socially distance themselves.
“It is very clear that the best way to manage the economic fallout is to definitively manage the virus using proven strategies that can break chains of transmission,” the study said. “This requires engagement and collective responsibility among individuals and their elected of ficials.”
The study went on to say that the best way to do that is by example, and that public officials should always wear masks when in public.
Those two studies buttress a paper published late in the summer in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. The paper, carrying the paragraph-long title of “Association of countr y-wide coronavirus mortality with demographics, testing, lockdowns, and public wearing of masks,” stated its conclusion rather simply:
“Societal norms and government policies supporting the wearing of masks by the public, as well as international travel controls, are independently associated with lower per-capita mortality from COVID-19,” the study said.