New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Survey: CT men wear masks far less often
Data: Shifting attitudes on virus, income play role as more are vaccinated
With most of the state immunized against COVID-19 and with new infections far lower than the peak of the pandemic last winter, it should come as little surprise that fewer Connecticut residents are masking up these days.
More of a surprise, however, is that men say they wear a mask when leaving the house far less often than women.
The split along gender lines is not a small one:
In a Connecticut-specific survey released Wednesday by the community data cooperative DataHaven, 39 percent of men said they wear a mask “very often,” compared to 63 percent of women.
The results come from DataHaven’s 2021 Community Wellbeing Survey, which questioned roughly 5,000 Connecticut adults about a wide range of topics, including COVID-19, the economy, policing, and housing. The group added questions about the pandemic in 2020, and the results offer a one-of-a-kind snapshot of how mask-wearing habits have changed over the course of a year.
Overall, the percent of adults saying they wear a mask “very often” fell from 81 percent in the summer of 2020 to 51 percent during a similar period in 2021. Divided along racial lines, Black respondents were the most likely to say they always wore a mask in both years, while white residents were the least likely.
DataHaven’s experts believe that difference at least partly has to do with the kinds of jobs people hold. Black and Latino people, for instance, were more likely to need to leave their homes for work than whites, according to the survey.
Don Levy, director at the Siena College Research Institute near Albany, which conducted the survey, noted women are more likely to hold education and health care sector jobs, and masks are more likely to be mandated in those professions. He also suggested an element of privilege is in play, given the wide disparity between men and women masking can’t be fully explained by differences in life circumstances.
“What this says is that men, in multiple aspects of their life, are neither required nor do they feel it necessary to be wearing a mask at a rate that is just greater than other people who are not as advantaged,” Levy said.
Masking is still recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for almost all Americans at the moment, regardless of their vaccination status. The CDC advises wearing a mask in public where community transmission is considered “substantial” or “high.” That includes almost every county in the United States, and everywhere in Connecticut.
Dr. David Banach, an infectious disease physician with UConn Health, said masks are an added layer of protection, but are no stand-in for the protective benefit of the COVID-19 vaccines. He said vaccines are likely making the population feel safer, and they may choose not to wear a face covering as a result.
“The masks were kind of used as a temporary means of protection, before we had vaccines. Now they offer an added layer of protection, beyond the most effective measure, which is the vaccine,” he said. “I would not try to replace vaccination by wearing a mask.”
Masking has been proven to be most helpful when people wear them in crowded, indoor areas in places where the virus is spreading quickly, he added. Banach stressed his advice does not apply to children, for most of whom masking is the best available preventative measure.
The survey also found for the most part, COVID-19 did not discriminate by income level. People in wealthy, suburban and rural communities said they had, at some point during the pandemic, tested positive for the virus at similar rates. Adults younger than 35 were most likely to have been sick with COVID-19, a finding that is in line with official case counts from the CT Department of Public Health. Though more infections occur in younger people, overwhelmingly those who die are in older age groups.
Mark Abraham, executive director at DataHaven, said his organization’s survey stands out because of its “unusually large sample” of people in Connecticut. The program was created about a decade ago by combining multiple surveys being done across the state, he said. Now, the wellbeing survey serves as a clearinghouse for data points specific to the state’s communities.
Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer, said in a statement “the survey provides important insights into the impacts of the pandemic on people across Connecticut,” noting the state government will be able to inform its continuing vaccine roll-out strategy using the results.
“Although Connecticut has the highest vaccination rate in the nation, we are still focused on reaching the 20 percent of eligible people who are not fully vaccinated,” he said. “The survey helps illustrate the concerns these people have and will inform initiatives we have underway to reach them.”
The survey results also lift hopes that more unvaccinated people will seek a COVID-19 vaccine, with one in 10 among the unvaccinated who were surveyed saying they will get one as soon as they can, and another quarter responding that they will “wait until it has been available for a while to see how it is working for other people.”
The study also highlights a grim experience many Connecticut residents now share: Roughly one in six told surveyors they knew someone who died from COVID-19.