From CNBC.com: “New research on hamsters suggests that surgical face masks can reduce the transmission of the coronavirus by as much as 75 percent.”
Why do some people refuse to wear masks, and why do some people not observe social distancing even after all the news stories and data?
We wear masks to prevent others from getting something from us. Masks have limited ability to protect us from someone else. So WE wear a mask for OTHERS.
But we think it’s the other way around; we think masks “protect us.” Well, only in a roundabout way; the more we all wear masks, the more the virus is brought under control. The more that happens, the quicker we can get back to the new normal—or even get started on what the new normal is going to look like. Have you noticed that we haven’t even been able to make a start at what the new normal will be?
But any number of people don’t wear masks (stats vary from 1/3 to 2/3), preventing us all from making a start on figuring out what new normal is. Even here in liberal Mass. When my wife and I walk in our neighborhood, at least half the people aren’t wearing them.
I would say new normal is mask wearing for the foreseeable future. Just wear your mask and don’t think of it as temporary. Let the future take care of itself. Wear a mask like you wear shoes when you go outside; if you’re just running around in the backyard, no mask or shoes is fine. On the street is another story.
So why not wear one? Why the politicized fuss?
One reason is that it makes us look like bank robbers. And if we consider what exactly we are doing when wearing masks, it indeed requires us to identify (assume) that we are the ones infected. So wearing a mask = telling the world “I have the virus,” if you follow the logic of what wearing a mask actually does.
But, of course, we don’t want to do that. No one wants to become a pariah, and the country is splitting, not only or perhaps mainly along the lines of republican/democrat, but along the lines of infected/not infected. Who would want to be in the former group? No one.
But again, wearing a mask requires we ASSUME in a sense we are in the infected group—even if we know we’re not. (Aha, but that’s the problem, right? We don’t know for a fact we are not infected—even if we never develop symptoms. The only way we’d know is if we test positive, and even then if we remain asymptomatic we can convince ourselves it was a false positive, or that it ‘doesn’t matter.’)
So no one wants to self-identify as infected, and no one wants anyone else to identify US as infected. That’s a huge incentive not to wear a mask.
What’s the incentive to wear a mask? One attraction is that it’s like playing dress up, Halloween (imagine this coming Halloween), or just giving ourselves a feeling—false or not—of security at this oh-so-insecure time; like wearing a seat belt. So wear a mask; it’s actually kind of like a form of affection; self-care, which is really ‘everyone-care.’
Here’s an excellent Atlantic article about all this:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/dont-wear-mask-yourself/610336/