No, PLOS is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, #C2354500, based in San Francisco, California, US, Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249891, https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admissions, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-are-the-states-with-mask-mandates, https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-politics/, https://cepr.org/sites/default/files/CovidEconomics43.pdf, https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=mask-use&tab=trend, https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7761, https://data.cdc.gov/Case-Surveillance/United-States-COVID-19-Cases-and-Deaths-by-State-o/9mfq-cb36/data, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/county-level-data-sets/download-data/, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/indicators.html#thresholds, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/index.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fneed-extra-precautions%2Fpeople-at-increased-risk.html. Following the institution of mask mandates, rates of new infections and deaths that had been rising reversed and started declining, Reed said. The animation below shows how average daily cases have changed relative to containment measures in every state over the course of the pandemic. High school students in Seattle staged a protest demanding that a mask mandate be reinstated, and psychologists now deal with the anxieties of children who dont want their classmates to see their faces. According to Werler, Arizona's data was unexpected. If youve been vaccinated and still feel mortally threatened by the virus, please read this. Methodology, The study compared trends among the 81 counties choosing to enforce the mandate issued June 29 but effective July 3, 2020 and 24 counties which opted out as permitted by state law. Privacy Policy | Germanys stringent policies have made it a consistent media darling. Nedghie Adrien, Roles For example, mask wearing in the two weeks before rates begin to rise might be a more sensitive way to measure the association. Outbreaks are comparatively smaller in states where efforts to contain the virus were stronger over the summer and fall potential good news for leaders taking action now. 3.1.2023 9:30 AM, Damon Root Higher mask use did not predict lower maximum growth rates, smaller surges, or . Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. For the period of April 1 through October 31, 2020, less than half of states had issued a mandate for mask wearing in public and nearly a third had not made any recommendation. The claim that a CDC study found face masks to have a negligible effect on the spread of COVID-19 is FALSE. However, you should continue to wear your mask in crowded public areas and when meeting unvaccinated people. So theres a need to make decisions and be decisive, Dr. El-Sadr said. They continued to fall over the 100 days analyzed in the study. Thus, policy and adherence levels in a given month were contrasted with lagged COVID-19 case rates in the subsequent month. Policy data on physical distancing were dichotomized as any versus no stay-at-home order during the April 1 to October 31, 2020 interval. Research suggests that mandatory mask-wearing policies correlated with a lower number of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Many states in the Upper Midwest and Mountain West resisted more stringent control measures, like limits on gatherings and mask mandates. California tested a larger share of its population at the peak of its omicron surge than Florida did, and Florida's positivity rate was higher, which suggests that Florida missed a larger share of infections than California. Over the course of the pandemic, the scientific evidence and our understanding of masks have grown. But it seems clear that anyone who takes it for granted that mask mandates have played a crucial role in controlling the spread of COVID-19 is making a series of assumptions that are not justified by the evidence. She holds a Masters in Psychology concentrating on Behavioral Neuroscience. 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). The 2-week rate in July in Arizona = 43,088 cases/7,278,717 population in 2019 = 0.00592 or 592 per 100,000. Only eight states reported that 75% or more people wore masks between June and September, leading to fewer COVID cases: States with a 75% minimum mask adherence reported about 109.26 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents compared to the average of 249.99 per 100,000 residents in states with low mask adherence. 3.1.2023 11:20 AM, Elizabeth Nolan Brown But there are still settings where wearing your mask is crucial. Conceptualization, Exhibit 4 Sensitivity analysis: ratios of daily COVID-19 case incidence per 100,000 people between matched counties with and without masking mandates, overall and by county type, among a subset of . We abstracted daily percentages of the population who say they always wear a mask in public. Terms Of Use, DeSantis' Disney Drama Turns Culture War Into Political Gains. | 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 promises fair, rigorous peer review, Only one study examined the relationship between lifting mask mandates and population level COVID-19 outcomes, and observed a statistically significant increase in COVID-19 cases 45 days after lifting mask mandate in early 2021. Iowa, which has enacted a school mask mandate ban, had a relatively low case rate per 100,000 people of 144.7. The Bangladesh study, in other words, does not demonstrate the effectiveness of the cloth masks that adults tend to pull out of their pockets when they enter businesses, let alone the masks that children as young as 2 are forced to wear in schools and day care centers. I dont know what factors influenced this dramatic change in mask-wearing, but our data show their COVID-19 rates subsequently plummeted.. Its Legacy Is Disastrous. (Though todays ruling by U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa, declaring the Biden administrations mask mandate for public transportation unlawful, comes as welcome news.) The same basic pattern was seen in nearly every state. That second observation requires a caveat, since testing rates affect the number of cases that are recorded. "Its that simple.. Another consideration is that access to COVID-19 testing appears to vary from state to state [21]. | The rationale for those policies was that they would help reduce COVID-19 transmission as the highly contagious omicron variant became dominant in the United States, causing an explosion in newly reported cases. At Humble ISD, 4.59 percent have tested positive for COVID. Our study accounted for temporality by staggering COVID-19 outcome data after adherence measures. here. Daniella Amato is a biomedical scientist and fact checker with expertise in pharmaceuticals and clinical research. The pandemic planners at the United Kingdoms Department of Health had reached a similar conclusion: In line with the scientific evidence, the Government will not stockpile facemasks for general use in the community. Anthony Fauci acknowledged this evidence early in the pandemic, both in his public comments (Theres no reason to be walking around with masks, he told 60 Minutes) and in his private emails (I do not recommend you wear a mask, he told a colleague, explaining that masks were too porous to block the small Covid virus). Its been piecemeal, Dr. El-Sadr said. At the beginning of November, most states were scoring in the 40s and 50s. A recent study shows that states with high levels of mask-wearing reported fewer COVID-19 cases last summer. Herring dismissed those results, claiming unnamed experts told the news network that the reductions in spread the study found were not significant. I just dont know based on reading the OAN summary how they came to the same conclusions because the CDC conclusions were favorable.. 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. Mandating masks gave the illusion of doing something against the virus. 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249891.g001. JAMA. 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. Without strong national guidance, states containment policies have varied widely. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. In addition, Hawaii and Oregon, which have both implemented school mask. 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.. All reviews and studies included in this document report on data collected in a time period prior In the United States, policies on mask wearing have varied from state to state over the course of the pandemic. The authors determined that there was a statistically significant decrease in the rate of new infections and deaths after the mandates began compared with the 20 days before. More detailed message would go here to provide context for the user and how to proceed. If this is true, we would expect associations between mask adherence and high COVID-19 rates to be even stronger. 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. Massachusetts. States with mask mandates saw higher mask adherence. Visualization, 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. Even if masking works, that does not necessarily mean mandates do. The claim: CDC study found that face masks have a negligible effect on the spread of COVID-19. Prior to adopting mask mandates, those municipalities that eventually adopted mandates had higher transmission rates than the rest of the state, with the mean case rate difference per 100,000 people increasing by 0.32 cases per day (slope of difference = 0.32; 95% CI 0.13 to 0.51). 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). Because stay-at-home order, mask wearing policy, mask adherence, and COVID-19 rates can vary from month to month, we listed those states with consistent classifications across the period April through September (or May through October for COVID-19 rates). 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. Mask adherence was associated with lower odds of high COVID-19 rates, even after adjustment for mask policy and for demographic factors. 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. "They dont know how well people complied with these mandates or what proportion of the populationwas actually wearing masks.. Of course, many other factors are could be at play, like the possibility of cooler weather driving non-adherent persons to indoor gatherings. Our study was also limited by the lack of information on accessibility of COVID-19 testing; if less accessible testing is associated with less mask adherence, the associations we report here may be under-estimates. Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States of America, Roles 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. Thats a huge swing, Werler says. According to Werler, Arizonas data was unexpected. For a while, the residents were spared. But the researchers found no clear relationship between mask mandates and mask use. For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click Writing original draft, John Bel Edwards emergency order will . As you can see from the lines similar trajectories, the mask mandates hardly controlled the virus. Some countries that implemented fast, early restrictions and robust test-and-trace programs have seen the most success. Among states and D.C. with no mask wearing policy, 50 to 73% had high COVID-19 rates in the subsequent month. That's not nothing, but it's a pretty modest effect, and it was achieved with surgical masks worn by adults in conditions that encouraged proper and consistent use. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order May 3, 2021. that barred local governments and school systems from imposing COVID-19 restrictions, including mask rules. I think timing really matters for the decisions.. California's state of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic is finally over, ending on Tuesday after nearly three years in place. So could age demographics: The median age of Florida's population is 42.5, compared to 37 in California. Copyright To calculate monthly COVID-19 case rates, we abstracted the number of new cases reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [17] and state population sizes in 2019 [18]. But with variants of concern circulating around the world, masking remains importanteven as the public battles mask fatigue. Note: State containment measures are shown from two weeks prior, reflecting what experts say is a lag between new policies and results. All the state does is encourage Alaskans to do their part to limit the spread of Covid-19, recommending that residents practice social distancing and wear a mask, without any mandate. On November 8, Utah implemented a mask mandate, as new daily Covid-19 cases continue to rise in the state and across the country. broad scope, and wide readership a perfect fit for your research every time. States in COVID-19 high-risk categories are listed in Table 1. How Are States Responding to CDC Mask Guidelines? Instead of carefully analyzing the effects of masks, the CDC repeatedly tried to justify them by misrepresenting short-term trends and hyping badly flawed research, like studies in Arizona and Kansas purporting to show that infections had been dramatically reduced by the mask mandates imposed in some counties. Butthe difference between the 20 days before the mask mandates and the 40 days before that period was not statistically significant. 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. He adds that the two states "had nearly identical infection rates.". New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, called it a validation of the countrys go hard, go early strategy, in which the country reacts rapidly to signs of community spread. States are issuing a new wave of mask mandates and social restrictions as record numbers of Covid-19 hospitalizations and soaring daily cases strain US medical systems. Its been largely delegated to a subnational level, to the states, for example, and municipalities to figure it out themselves.. Even as more and more states encourage or even mandate mask wearing, many citizens still resist the notion. Former Arizona AG Found No Evidence of 2020 Election Fraud. Monthly COVID-19 case rates (number of cases per capita over two weeks) >200 per 100,000 residents were considered high. After reopening early, some Sun Belt states, including Arizona and Texas, imposed restrictions again after case counts climbed. February 28, 2023 at 5:55 am EST. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 5, ", U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nov. 27, 2020, ", Health Affairs, June 16 2020, "Community Use Of Face Masks And COVID-19: Evidence From A Natural Experiment Of State Mandates In The US", Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America, Dec. 3, 2020, ", U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Feb. 12, ", CDC: Face masks dont prevent COVID-19, study finds masks have negligible impact on coronavirus numbers., Association of State-Issued Mask Mandates and Allowing On-Premises Restaurant Dining with County-Level COVID-19 Case and Death Growth Rates United States, March 1December 31, 2020, Trends in County-Level COVID-19 Incidence in Counties With and Without a Mask Mandate Kansas, June 1August 23, 2020, Governor Laura Kelly Announces Masks Must be Worn Statewide, Differences in rapid increases in county-level COVID-19 incidence by implementation of statewide closures and mask mandates United States, June 1September 30, 2020, Germany to oblige mandatory face masks from Monday, Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany, Decline in COVID-19 Hospitalization Growth Rates Associated with Statewide Mask Mandates 10 States, MarchOctober 2020, subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Investigation, Our research examines mask wearing policy and adherence in association with COVID-19 case rates. In conclusion, we show that mask wearing adherence, regardless of mask wearing policy, may curb the spread of COVID-19 infections. Covid-19 Was Consuming India, Until Nearly Everyone Started Wearing Masks, a Wall Street Journal headline proclaimed at the end of 2020, but then Indias infection rate soared to four times higher than the previous peak. Decreases in the rate of new infections and deaths from the virus were statistically significant, the studys authors found. 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. 3.1.2023 9:15 AM, Joe Lancaster As COVID-19 cases continue to drop nationwide, 49 out of 50 states had relaxed their indoor mask mandates as of this week. We divided the monthly number by 2.2 to obtain the number in a two-week period (43,088). The proportions of states and D.C. with high COVID-19 rates were greatest for those with no mask wearing policy for the general public in the preceding month (Fig 2). 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). Thank you for supporting our journalism. Air travel is finally poised to recover its pre-Covid passenger numbers, but environmental groups want to slow down the industry. No clear relationship between mask adherence and high COVID-19 rates to be even stronger have seen the most success state! The reductions in spread the study to wear your mask in public with..., Damon Root Higher mask use to obtain the number of cases that are recorded mask in.. 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