> Horwitz believes that mask-wearing may be helping by reducing the initial dose of virus a person receives, thereby lessening the overall severity of illness for many patients.
Now if only we could drill this lesson into everyone's head.
Now if only we could drill this lesson into everyone's head.
As to present numbers...
Well we stopped forcing nursing homes from accepting sick people during the event and not exposing those most at risk does tend to result in fewer deaths.
A lot of deaths could have been avoided if we went out of way to not expose those most at risk but some states actually did the exact opposite.
Full disclosure: An alternative explanation here in Norway seems to be that the second wave mostly hits younger people.
Edit: there's a dead comment saying "citation needed".
As for the "hardly a mask to be seen" that is my eyewitness account based on what I see in shops and gas stations I visit as well as reading and watching the news.
The numbers of deaths / infections can be derived from here: https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/?utm_source=corona-wid...
https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/articles-repor...
Sometimes I just forget too. I accidentally terrorized a young couple at Joshua Tree last weekend, because I didn't have my mask on, I was out climbing and in my 'happy place,' and I completely forgot there was a pandemic and just wandered right by them and waved and said 'hi.' It wasn't until later that evening that I realized why they were looking at me with wide-eyes and edging away from me. So, I wish I had just left the thing on in that case.
So telling people to wear what they couldn’t get was awkward.
There's also completely different base-levels for access to healthcare, different climates, a ton of factors besides masks.
One might as well point at Asian countries like Taiwan, Vietnam or Korea. Those are densely populated countries were mask-use is wide-spread and generally considered to have done best in their response, with the numbers to back it up.