COVID-19 is fading, but death toll still climbing
The coronavirus scourge is largely in the rearview mirror, but in some respects, it seems like it’s still 2020.
COVID-19 deaths have been in the headlines again, as California’s death toll surpassed 100,000 last week.
Mask mandates have fallen and there are far fewer people wearing face coverings these days. Yet, the debate over them continues to rage, in large part because of a new study raising questions about the effectiveness of wearing masks.
Disputes about whether coronavirus vaccines work have been settled, but questions about their side effects or whether they should be required have not.
The discussion of these matters has been vigorous, if among a smaller segment of the population than early in the pandemic.
On Tuesday, San Diego County and the state of California officially rescinded their COVID-19 emergency declarations, long after many of the safety restrictions had been dropped. That may have seemed like a technical footnote to many people, if they were paying attention at all.
Folks have pretty much moved on from the coronavirus outbreak, though those directly affected continue to deal with the health, economic and emotional impact.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the discussion of mask mandates and other measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19 has been taking place through the prism of cultural and political perspectives. That hasn’t changed much.
All the while, scientific research has sought to shed light on what worked and what didn’t. Unfortunately, they don’t all agree.
A study recently published by the Cochrane, a respected British nonprofit that conducts reviews of health care data, concluded there was no evidence that mask mandates were effective — contrary to numerous other studies.
The study, which analyzed the combined results of numerous studies, lit up the medical world and beyond. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens raised the temperature of the debate by declaring the study showed “Mask mandates were a bust.”
That’s not exactly what the study said.
“Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness (ILI)/COVID-19 like illness compared to not wearing masks,” according to the study, which also reviewed the effectiveness of hand hygiene in preventing the spread of the virus.
The authors noted that their “confidence in these results is generally low to moderate for the subjective outcomes related to respiratory illness.”
“The results might change when further evidence becomes available,” the study concludes. “Relatively low numbers of people followed the guidance about wearing masks or about hand hygiene, which may have affected the results of the studies.”
It may seem easy to poke holes in the study, given those caveats. But it’s a serious piece of scientific work and needs to be taken as such, ideally free of the familiar political context. It also needs to be read properly, which some people claiming it proves mask
mandates don’t help didn’t seem to do.
Oddly, among the numerous studies analyzed in the Cochrane report was one from Bangladesh and one from Denmark, both of which show masking helped stop the spread of COVID-19.
Certainly, the effectiveness of masks needs to be further assessed to determine how best to keep other possible deadly airborne viruses from spreading in the future.
There have been plenty of other studies that come to different conclusions than the Cochrane study. Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is lead author of the study, broadly dismissed that other research in an interview with medical journalist Maryanne Demasi. Some of those studies, which he called “unacceptable pieces of work,” were also published by Cochrane.
Elsewhere, there have been studies that support the wearing of masks, such as one recently published by the New England Journal of Medicine. That study compared Massachusetts school districts after the state allowed them to lift mask requirements with two
districts in the Boston area that chose not to.
“During the 15 weeks after the statewide masking policy was rescinded, the lifting of masking requirements was associated with an additional 44.9 cases per 1,000 students and staff,” the study said, which noted variables, including age of the school buildings and student demographics, among other things.
Nonetheless, “Our results support universal masking as an important strategy for reducing Covid-19 incidence in schools and loss of in-person school days,” the authors concluded.
San Diego County’s mask mandate didn’t keep COVID-19 cases from spiking, but the question is
whether masks kept the numbers from becoming even larger. It’s tough to isolate whether there was a true cause and effect, given other restrictions and factors were in play — such as people choosing not to wear masks.
San Diego had the lowest coronavirus death rate among Southern California counties, which local leaders attribute to early, aggressive action attempting to limit the spread and severity of the virus, according to Paul Sisson, health care writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune.
But again, the variables make that difficult to assess. Critics say some measures, such as school and business closures, did more harm than good.
Continued study of the pandemic and the actions taken to address it hopefully will reveal valuable lessons for the future.
The quick development of coronavirus vaccines changed the game and could do so again if the process can be replicated when another deadly outbreak hits — or, ideally, before it. The mask and distancing mandates and closures all started before vaccines were available.
There’s mostly universal agreement that the vaccines helped keep people from becoming ill from COVID-19, or lessened the symptoms when they did. A lot of people continue to refuse to get the vaccine for various reasons.
Nevertheless, the vaccines helped reduce the spread of COVID-19, which relieved pressure on the health care system, which at times was nearly overwhelmed during the pandemic.
Next time, effective vaccines may diminish the requirements for masks, distancing, closures and other precautions. But it’s likely they’ll be called for to some degree — and the debate over them won’t go away.