For mask policy and adherence in September in relation to high COVID-19 rates in October, collinearity caused the odds ratio to flip. February 28, 2023 at 5:55 am EST. Several cities and large counties, including Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Hillsborough (which includes Tampa), had mask requirements, but Gov. Traveling This Summer? Writing original draft, If youre still not convinced to take off the mask, consider one more graph from Miller. Though many have taken fresh steps to contain the virus since then, the Times analysis compares cases and hospitalizations for a given date to a states index score from two weeks before, since researchers say it is reasonable to expect a lag between a policy's implementation and its outcome. "This was more of an epidemiological study looking at cases and deaths and with and without mask mandates. 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.. "We feel the time is right to make this . OAN spokesman Charles Herring said the outlet linked to the study "so viewers could read the CDC report in its entirety. Mask adherence was classified as low if in the lowest quartile and as high if in the highest quartile. When Can I Go Out in Public Again After Being Fully Vaccinated? 3.1.2023 2:50 PM, David McGarry 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. Most states imposed tight restrictions in the spring even if they did not have bad outbreaks then. Of course, many other factors are could be at play, like the possibility of cooler weather driving non-adherent persons to indoor gatherings. | "At first blush," Jha says, it "looks like their different COVID strategies did not end up mattering much." Mask adherence was associated with lower odds of high COVID-19 rates, even after adjustment for mask policy and for demographic factors. 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. 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. Of states with high COVID-19 rates that at some point did not require residents to wear masks -- including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire,. Discover a faster, simpler path to publishing in a high-quality journal. 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. For example, mask wearing in the two weeks before rates begin to rise might be a more sensitive way to measure the association. Is the Subject Area "COVID 19" applicable to this article? When Can I Visit a Friend's House After I'm Fully Vaccinated? 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. Models were unadjusted, adjusted for no mask policy (Model 1), and adjusted for no mask policy in previous month, no stay-home order, >15% population non-Hispanic Black, >15% population Hispanic, median age >40 years, population density > 200/square mile (Model 2). Wearing masks is a CDC-recommended* approach to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), by reducing the spread of respiratory droplets into the air when a person coughs, sneezes, or talks and by reducing the inhalation of these droplets by the wearer. According to Werler, Arizona's data was unexpected. The same study found that cloth masks did not have a statistically significant effect. Fourteen of the 15 states with no mask wearing policy for the general public through September reported a high COVID-19 rate. "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%]. Gov. If youve been vaccinated and still feel mortally threatened by the virus, please read this. But in each state, as Miller shows, infection rates remained lower in the counties that did not mandate masks. 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. Yes 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. Further, our adjustment for demographic factors at the state population level may not represent the true underlying forces that put individuals at greater risk of contracting COVID-19. 3.1.2023 9:30 AM, Damon Root Little attention was paid to more rigorous research, like a review of the literature that found little or no benefit from masks, or a study that compared infection rates with mask policies and with rates of mask use in all 50 states over the first year of the pandemic. Clearly you dont want to wait too long because thats the mistake we made last time, when things spun out of control. 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). The study used county-level data from March 1 through Dec. 31 of last year, comparing data from before mandates tookeffect to the time period when they were in place. 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. Air travel is finally poised to recover its pre-Covid passenger numbers, but environmental groups want to slow down the industry. PLOS ONE promises fair, rigorous peer review, The findings were published in the journal PLOS One in April. Effectiveness of Mask Wearing to Control Community Spread of SARS-CoV-2. For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click New York. Copyright Should You Wear a Mask at Outdoor Events? The graph tracks the results of a natural experiment that occurred nationwide during the pandemic. Texas locked down in the spring, when it had relatively few cases, then reopened quickly. As indicated on the graph, surveys during the pandemic showed that fewer than 10 percent of Swedes bothered to wear masks. 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. Even Greenpeace now admits the obvious: recycling doesnt work. here. "There are over 200 percent more cases in a school (district) that does not have a mask mandate," said Dr. Catherine Troisi, an. Since the spring, Maine mandated masks and had strict travel restrictions for out-of-state visitors; South Dakota, meanwhile, has never had a mask mandate and welcomed nearly half a million people to the Sturgis motorcycle rally, as well as its state fair, which attracted more than 100,000 visitors. e0249891. But since people were allowed to remove their masks while eating and drinking, requiring them to cover their faces upon entry was more a symbolic gesture than a serious safeguard. States that have kept more control policies in a more consistent way New England states, for example have avoided a summer surge and are now having a smaller fall surge, as opposed to states that rolled them back very quickly like Florida or Texas, Mr. Hale said. "Nearly a year after California Gov. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249891.s001. 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 . No, Is the Subject Area "Health care policy" applicable to this article? 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. We did estimate odds ratios for mask adherence within subgroups of states with and without mask policy. We calculated the average mask use percentage by month for AprilSeptember, 2020. A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a link between face mask mandates and a reduction in COVID-19 cases and deaths, but at least one widely shared report wrongly interprets that data. That period is used as the benchmark against which researchers compared days 21 through 60 before mask mandates were adoptedand the 100 days after. 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