Investigation, Werler and her team used the COVID-19 U.S. State Policy Database to collect policy and demographic data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. When Can I Dine Indoors Again After Being Fully Vaccinated? ", An August 2021 systematic review of 21 observational studies found that all of them "reported SARS-CoV-2 benefits" from mask mandates "in terms of reductions in either the incidence, hospitalization, or mortality, or a combination of these outcomes." By clicking Accept All Cookies, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. Yes Read on to find out whyand to ensure . We categorized the existence of a mask policy as None if there was no requirement for face coverings in public spaces, Recommended if required in all public spaces without consequences, and Strict if required in all public spaces with consequences in the form of fine(s) or citation(s). "Arizona surprised me because they went from having the second-lowest mask adherence in May and June [less than 22%] to the highest level in July and August [greater than 80%]. The black line on the graph shows the weekly rate of Covid cases in all the states with mask mandates that week, while the orange line shows the rate in all the states without mandates. Yes The study also did not measure compliance with and enforcement of mask mandates and prohibitions on dining at restaurants. It is important to note that state level distributions of demographic factors do not account for concentrations or sparsity of populations within a given state. Now, Midwestern states have among the worst outbreaks. Our analysis of state and D.C.-level data does not account for variations in policy, adherence, and demographic factors at smaller geographic levels, such as county-levels. Of course, many other factors are could be at play, like the possibility of cooler weather driving non-adherent persons to indoor gatherings. Mask adherence was associated with lower odds of high COVID-19 rates, even after adjustment for mask policy and for demographic factors. | Sources: Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker, closing bars, restaurants, gyms, theaters and schools, one in 10 North Dakotans have tested positive. Odds ratios indicating protection against high COVID-19 rates remained for all months and policy subgroups, ranging from 0.82 to 0.93 for states with any policy and from 0.60 to 0.95 for states with no policy. This protective effect of mask wearing was evident across four months of the pandemic, even after adjusting the associations for mask policy, distance policy, and demographic factors. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order May 3, 2021. that barred local governments and school systems from imposing COVID-19 restrictions, including mask rules. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); NEXT: The FBI Seized Almost $1 Million From This Familyand Never Charged Them With a Crime. Its a graph that should be required viewing for everyone still wearing a mask and every public official or journalist who still insists that mask mandates control the spread.. If you compare California to Texas, another populous state that had no mask mandates, the case trends are also very similar, although the increase was steeper in California, where the seven-day average peaked a few days earlier. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, notes that the graph for California, which required masks in indoor public settings beginning on December 15, is "strikingly similar" to the graph for Florida, which had no mask mandates. Explaining the justification for lifting mask requirements, governors and public health agencies generally have cited the precipitous decline in daily new cases since mid-January. Our analyses took into consideration the delayed effect of mask wearing and policies on COVID-19 health outcomes. Using an index that tracks policy responses to the pandemic, these charts show the number of new virus cases and hospitalizations in each state relative to the states recent containment measures. Daniella Amato is a biomedical scientist and fact checker with expertise in pharmaceuticals and clinical research. Doug Burgum reopened the state nearly fully in May. Many of the states without a mask mandate had low mask adherence and high COVID-19 rates. Higher mask use (rather than mandates per se) has been argued to decrease COVID-19 growth rates. The book documents how mask mandates were implemented without scientific justification, how they failed around the world, and how public officials and journalists have kept making fools of themselves by pretending otherwise. The information in this article is current as of the date listed, which means newer information may be available when you read this. PLoS ONE 16(4): Based on data from various countries and U.S. states from May to September 2020, a preprint study published last June found that general mask wearing was associated with a reduction in virus. Its been largely delegated to a subnational level, to the states, for example, and municipalities to figure it out themselves.. Based on data from various countries and U.S. states from May to September 2020, a preprint study published last June found that general mask wearing was associated with a reduction in virus transmission. While the downtrend could also have been a result of other countermeasures like social distancing, Kansas' findings mirror observations from other states and countries. After the pandemic, a survey of gains and losses. Taiwan recently recorded 200 days without a new coronavirus case after its leaders focused on a speedy response and invested in mass testing and contact tracing. "Lifting of mask mandates across the board without consideration of the caveats does open the opportunity for another wave," Werler says. The pandemics second year saw slight deviations in both directions, but those reflected the seasonality of the virus and the geography of mask mandates, which remained more common in northern states. Mast mandates may be back on the table for states where the number of COVID cases are once again causing serious alarm for health officials. The requirement is expected to be lifted on March 1. The announcement comes one day after Joe Biden pleaded with state and local leaders to maintain or reinstate mask mandates, due to recent alarming trends in US coronavirus case numbers. Fourteen of the 15 states with no mask wearing policy for the general public through September reported a high COVID-19 rate. JAMA. Indeed, issuing such a policy is not the same as successfully implementing it. Again and again, journalists and public-health officials would single out a state or a nation that had supposedly tamed Covid by forcing citizens to wear masksand then these masks would promptly fail to prevent an unprecedented wave of infections. CNBC called the nations early Covid response a master class in science communication, and last fall it was praised for tightening its mask mandate in an Atlantic article, Four Measures That Are Helping Germany Beat Covid. Its stricter mandate early last year banished cloth masks, requiring surgical masks instead, and the states of Berlin and Bavaria went still further, requiring masks of N95 quality. The masks in Germany obviously didnt beat Covid. From the start of the pandemic through this spring, the cumulative rate of Covid mortality has been slightly higher in Sweden than in Germany (by about 15 percent), but the rate of overall excess mortality has been slightly higher in Germany (by about 8 percent). Laboratory studies indicate that masks, especially N95 respirators, can help reduce virus transmission. Should You Wear a Mask at Outdoor Events? We examined the impact of state-based mask wearing policy and adherence on COVID-19 case rates during the summer and early fall of 2020 in order to quantify this effect. 3.1.2023 9:30 AM, Damon Root Even at small gatherings with unvaccinated people from different bubbles, like graduation parties with relatives from afar and families from the neighborhood, all attendees should wear masks," she says. The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. Containment measures are as of Nov. 1. That second observation requires a caveat, since testing rates affect the number of cases that are recorded. Policy data on physical distancing were dichotomized as any versus no stay-at-home order during the April 1 to October 31, 2020 interval. Data released by the agency in November looking at COVID-19 incidence in Kansas after a statewide mask mandate also found the measure resulted in a drop in infectious cases. Conceptualization, But the "reference period" is defined by the report as the 20 days before mask mandates started. For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click PLOS ONE promises fair, rigorous peer review, Visualization, Study: States With Mask Mandates Saw Fewer Summertime COVID Cases. John Tierney is a contributing editor of City Journal and coauthor of The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249891.g001. Fact check: Masks and vaccines are effective at combating COVID-19 spread. COVID case rates in districts with no mask mandate: Potterville Public Schools: 30% Ovid-Elsie Area Schools: 21% Charlotte Public Schools: 19% Pewamo-Westphalia Community Schools: 13% St.. The graph tracks the results of a natural experiment that occurred nationwide during the pandemic. Our research examines mask wearing policy and adherence in association with COVID-19 case rates. Gov. After reopening early, some Sun Belt states, including Arizona and Texas, imposed restrictions again after case counts climbed. Copyright: 2021 Fischer et al. He Kept Quiet. Another consideration is that access to COVID-19 testing appears to vary from state to state [21]. The global pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 has overwhelmed health care systems, marked by peak numbers of hospital and intensive care unit admissions and deaths [1,2]. Copyright Methodology, As indicated on the graph, surveys during the pandemic showed that fewer than 10 percent of Swedes bothered to wear masks. In the first 20 days after implementingmask mandates, new cases slowed by 0.5 percentage points. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds ratio and 95% confidence intervals for high case rates in the subsequent month associated with average mask adherence (as a continuous variable). In fact, it doesn't study mask efficacy at all. Higher mask use did not predict lower maximum growth rates, smaller surges, or . The United States, as of Friday, posted a seven-day moving average of 62,555 new COVID-19 cases reported daily, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The last time . Many have also done the least to contain the virus. Contributed equally to this work with: here. Some countries that implemented fast, early restrictions and robust test-and-trace programs have seen the most success. For a while, the residents were spared. Both mask policy and mask adherence for states and D.C. were cross-tabulated with high case rates in the subsequent month. Effectiveness of Mask Wearing to Control Community Spread of SARS-CoV-2. The worst outbreaks in the country now are in places where policymakers did the least to prevent transmission, according to the Oxford index. At Humble ISD, 4.59 percent have tested positive for COVID. Given the situation during the omicron surge, there are additional reasons to doubt that mask mandates, even with perfect compliance, had much of an impact. "Nearly a year after California Gov. Jacob Sullum By the time the mandates were introduced in New York and other states in the spring of 2020 (at the left side of the graph), infections had already been declining in those states, and the mandates didnt prevent a surge later that year, when cases rose and fell in nearly identical trajectories regardless of states mask policies. The study concluded that mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level Covid-19 spread during Covid-19 growth surges. The medias narrative about masks extended throughout the world. The strongest association was for mask adherence in September; for every 1% increase in average adherence, the odds of a high COVID-19 case rate decreased by 26%. The claim: CDC study found that face masks have a negligible effect on the spread of COVID-19. Masks make no difference in reducing the spread of Covid, according to an extensive new review by Cochranethe gold standard for evaluating health interventions. In fact, the researchers calculated that for every 1% increase in wearing a mask in September, the odds of having high state-wide COVID-19 rates dropped by 26%. Data Availability: Data are available in the paper and its Supporting Information file. Mask wearing has been advocated by public health officials as a way to reduce the spread of COVID-19. We utilized the COVID-19 US State Policy Database, created by Dr. Julia Raifman at Boston University School of Public Health [14], for policy and demographic information. In contrast, allowing on . Just as in the United States, the mask mandates in Germany produced no net benefits but plenty of inconvenience as well as outright harm. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. They continued to fall over the 100 days analyzed in the study. By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira Over the course of the pandemic, both Iowa and Florida have done better than the national average in measures of Covid mortality as well as overall excess mortality (the number of deaths more than normal from all causes). Over a third of states are ending COVID-19 mask mandates. They looked at data from April to October 2020. As you can see from the lines similar trajectories, the mask mandates hardly controlled the virus. Decreases in the rate of new infections and deaths from the virus were statistically significant, the studys authors found. Miller, who has tracked pandemic trends for the Brownstone Institute, has assembled the damning evidence in Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates. If this is true, we would expect associations between mask adherence and high COVID-19 rates to be even stronger. In contrast, 25% or fewer states with a mask wearing policy had high COVID-19 rates, except in September when over half experienced high rates. "They dont know how well people complied with these mandates or what proportion of the populationwas actually wearing masks.. "At first blush," Jha says, it "looks like their different COVID strategies did not end up mattering much." We calculated the number of new cases in each month, for each state and D.C. Rates were the number of new cases divided by the population in 2019. As you can see from the lines' similar trajectories, the mask mandates hardly controlled the virus. February 28, 2023 at 5:55 am EST. The data we now have conclusively show that widespread use of masks is a very effective way to reduce the spread of COVID-19, CDC spokeswoman Jasmine Reed wrote in an email to USA TODAY. States with the lowest levels of mask adherence were most likely to have high COVID-19 rates in the subsequent month, independent of mask policy or demographic factors. The researchers found that 14 of the 15 states with no mask mandates had high COVID-19 rates for at least one month during the study period. John Bel Edwards emergency order will . Thats what this study was pursuing to try to answer,"said Michael Bisesi, vice dean and interim chair of environmental health sciences in Ohio State University's College of Public Health. Fourteen of the 15 states with no mask wearing policy for the general public for the entire four month period (June through September) reported a high COVID-19 rate. Thats a huge swing, Werler says. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249891, Editor: Wen-Jun Tu, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, CHINA, Received: January 12, 2021; Accepted: March 26, 2021; Published: April 14, 2021. Their cumulative rates of Covid mortality were virtually identical, too (in fact, there were slightly more deaths per capita in the states with mask mandates). Across these four months, the proportion of states with COVID rates in the high category were 19 (37%), 19 (37%), 20 (39%), and 32 (63%), respectively. COVID-19 death rates dropped by 0.7 percentage points in the first 20 days after masks were required. 2 minute read. In addition, Hawaii and Oregon, which have both implemented school mask. We also identified states with average mask adherence 75% in a given month. The mandates typically began early in the pandemic in 2020 and remained until at least the summer of 2021, with some extending into 2022. Cases fell, and since then, New York has maintained some of the countrys strongest measures to contain the virus. Of note, there were no states with 75% in September. Data curation, Discover a faster, simpler path to publishing in a high-quality journal. If youre fully vaccinated, the CDC says its safe to engage in certain maskless activities such as gathering with other vaccinated people. We classified a state and D.C. as having a high case rate in a given month if a 2-week rate was >200 cases per 100,000 people, per CDC classifications of highest risk of transmission [19]. February 28, 2023. We were not able to measure statistical interactions between mask policy and adherence due to instability arising from small numbers. The claim that a CDC study found face masks to have a negligible effect on the spread of COVID-19 is FALSE. In their pre-Covid planning strategies for a pandemic, neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the World Health Organization had recommended masking the publicfor good reason. "Large indoor gatherings without masking among a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons is a recipe for trouble.". When Can I Travel Again After Being Fully Vaccinated? Conceptualization, Jha thinks vaccination rates areanother important factor: While "only 59% of eligible Florida seniors have gotten boosted," he notes, the rate for California is 70 percent. | Texas locked down in the spring, when it had relatively few cases, then reopened quickly. All reviews and studies included in this document report on data collected in a time period prior Parents have pushed for the mask mandate to be lifted for a number of reasons. In Germany, by contrast, more than 80 percent did so, but look at the similar trajectories of the daily Covid death toll in both countries from the summer of 2020 through March of this year. 3.1.2023 9:15 AM, Joe Lancaster And in New York and some other states, those lockdowns came too late to prevent a big outbreak, because thats where the virus hit first, said Thomas Hale, associate professor of global public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, who leads the Oxford tracking effort. In the United States, policies on mask wearing have varied from state to state over the course of the pandemic. Among states and D.C. with no mask wearing policy, 50 to 73% had high COVID-19 rates in the subsequent month. Fully vaccinated people should continue following CDC guidelines, including wearing their masks in crowded areas and when around unvaccinated people. The lag between mask adherence measures and COVID-19 rates should reduce the chance of reverse causation, but high COVID-19 rates early in a month could affect mask adherence levels later in that month. In the summer of 2020, Politico praised Rhode Islands wear-your-damn mask policy in an article headlined, How the Smallest State Engineered a Covid Comeback. A survey in the autumn found that 96 percent of Rhode Islanders were wearing masks, the highest rate in the U.S., yet that winter the state went on to suffer one of the nations worst Covid surges. Even as more and more states encourage or even mandate mask wearing, many citizens still resist the notion. Verywell Health's content is for informational and educational purposes only. Mean COVID-19 rates for states with at least 75% mask adherence in the preceding month was 109.26 per 100,000 compared to 249.99 per 100,000 for those with less adherence. Specifically, we created the following categories: >15% non-Hispanic Black, >15% Hispanic, median age >40 years, and population density >200 people per square mile, which corresponded to 74.5%, 78.4%, 82.4%, and 78.4% of the distributions, respectively. On the other hand, Hawaii and Connecticut had two of the longest mask mandates and also some of the lowest per capita case counts of all the states. Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. To reduce the rate of COVID-19 cases nationwide, Werler says people need to wear their masks. Rhode Island, where I live, has had a mask mandate since mid-December; nonetheless, we saw our January surge rise far higher than any other state. While it controlled for other policies that have been used to try to mitigate new infections from the coronavirus including bar closures, stay-at-home orders and bans on gatherings of 10 or more people it did not account for some others, such as physical distancing recommendations and other types of business closures. We calculated the average mask use percentage by month for AprilSeptember, 2020. The CDC's report is the latestin a growing body of evidence establishing mask mandates as an effective strategy in curbing the virus. North Dakota, for example, made few efforts to contain the virus. Most states imposed tight restrictions in the spring even if they did not have bad outbreaks then. The index comes from Oxfords Blavatnik School of Government, where researchers track the policies or lack thereof governments use to contain the virus and protect residents, such as contact tracing, mask mandates and restrictions on businesses and gatherings. Here's what it could mean for all of us. Indeed, associations between mask policy, adherence and other factors may be obscured in states with many high density and low density areas. Former Arizona AG Found No Evidence of 2020 Election Fraud. Since July 27, 2020, individuals had been required to wear a mask or face covering in the state when visiting public indoor spaces and when unable to maintain a 6-foot distance from. We thank Drs. If you add up all the numbers on those two lines, you find that the mask mandates made zero difference. It also examined the link between allowing on-site restaurant dining and the number of coronavirus cases and deaths. We infer that mandates likely did not affect COVID-19 case growth, as growth rates were similar on all days between actual or modeled issuance dates and 6 March 2021. 2023 Dotdash Media, Inc. All rights reserved, Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. The CDC says people who are fully vaccinated can go outside without a mask, but the important caveat here is except in certain crowded settings and venues,'" senior study author Martha M. Werler, DSc, professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, tells Verywell. 3.1.2023 8:00 AM, 2022 Reason Foundation | Brooks JT & Butler JC. Now, nearly one in 10 North Dakotans have tested positive about a third of those in the past two weeks and one in 1,000 have died of the virus. Five states are rolling back mask mandates. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249891.t003. For each month, the distributions of mask adherence across all 50 states and D.C. were categorized into quartiles, meaning the cut-off values for each quartile may be different from one month to another. But the study did not take into account other policies or voluntary safeguards that may have differed between jurisdictions with and without mask mandates. But the surge is worst now in places where leaders neglected to keep up forceful virus containment efforts or failed to implement basic measures like mask mandates in the first place, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the University of Oxford. Similar reductions in odds of high COVID-19 rates in August and September were observed for July and August mask adherence, respectively. 3.1.2023 11:20 AM, Elizabeth Nolan Brown Louisiana. Over the course of the pandemic, the scientific evidence and our understanding of masks have grown. By contrast, Florida has no statewide restrictions. The list of states with high COVID-19 rates by month shows the initial wave in northeastern states in May, followed by a wave in southern states, and then spreading across the U.S. over the next four months (Table 2). That period is used as the benchmark against which researchers compared days 21 through 60 before mask mandates were adoptedand the 100 days after. Massachusetts. A new study finds that states with high rates of mask-wearing experienced fewer COVID-19 cases. Currently, patients, visitors and staff members at UCHealth are required to wear a mask at all times. Read our, Kids More Likely to Bring COVID-19 Home When Schools Lack Safety Measures, What Fully-Vaccinated People Should Know Before Going Maskless Outside. May 16, 2021 / 7:07 AM / CBS News. The county in the spotlight right now is Los Angeles County, where cases have spiked over the past few weeks with more than 2,700 new COVID infections per day, which is a 180% increase since Nov. 1. Visualization, Fully vaccinated adults are still wearing masks on their solitary walks outdoors, and officials have beenenforcing mask mandates on airline passengers and on some city-dwellers and students. The graph for New York, which also had a statewide mask mandate, looks very much like the graph for California, but with an earlier peak. The. But despite an official infection rate that was virtually the same as California's, he adds, "Florida had 33% more deaths per capita than California" during the omicron surge. Nedghie Adrien, Roles Methodology, "Not wearing a mask in large groups with unvaccinated people still poses a risk of COVID for unvaccinated groups. Because high COVID rates were reported by only eight states in May and four states in June, we did not examine mask adherence or policy in the preceding April or May. In the United States, policies on mask wearing have varied from state to state over the course of the pandemic. Writing review & editing, Affiliation When Can I Go Out in Public Again After Being Fully Vaccinated? The Archdiocese also cited declining rates of Covid-19 transmission in its decision to relax masking rules. 2021. Nationwide, according to theNew York Times database, the seven-day average of daily new cases rose sharply from mid-December to January 17 and has fallen just as sharply since then, which is consistent with the experience in other countries after omicron emerged. Sources: Restrictions tightened as cases were rising. Germanys stringent policies have made it a consistent media darling. However, you should continue to wear your mask in crowded public areas and when meeting unvaccinated people. But then Fauci, like the CDC and the WHO, bowed to political expediency and media hysteria. Beyond the question of how effective masking is in practice, there is the question of what impact mask mandates have on behavior. Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Uruguay, Chile, Poland, and Hungary were all hailed as models of scientific enlightenment for their low infection rates and strict mask policiesuntil, as usual, the masks suddenly lost their magical power. Coronavirus cases are rising in almost every U.S. state. For all 50 states and D.C., data on mask wearing and physical distance policies, mask adherence, COVID-19 cases, and demographics were abstracted from publicly available sources. But as Miller shows in his book, the policies made no discernible difference. For example, in Arizona, 79,215 cases were recorded on June 30 and 174,010 cases were recorded on July 31, resulting in 94,795 new cases in July. She holds a Masters in Psychology concentrating on Behavioral Neuroscience. When Youve Been Fully Vaccinated. This pattern of magical thinking persisted throughout the pandemic, as Miller demonstrates in dozens of graphs contrasting conventional wisdom with cruel reality. A relationship between policies and the outbreaks severity has become more clear as the pandemic has progressed. When the state faced a surge of cases over the summer, the governor closed bars and placed limits on restaurant capacity. 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