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Comment by Diederich | Hacker News Reader

Countries with dense populations, nearly universal mask wear, and also only minimally 'locked down' have very low Covid19 rates. Examples include Japan, South Korea and China.

In my mind, the above facts are really all that's necessary: dense population + minimal lock down + universal mask wear == low Covid19 rates.

There are many other good reasons as well.

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Indiana has had a mask mandate since May. Our compliance has been great >95%, yet our cases are skyrocketing.

Ouch: https://mackuba.eu/corona/#indiana_united_states.daily?trend...

I appreciate the contrary feedback.

Do you have a link to the high mask compliance in Indiana handy? I've honestly looked for this kind of data and haven't been able to find it, and so assumed fairly poor (US-wide at least) mask wear based on anecdotes.

I've posted this elsewhere, but mask compliance in the United States is ~80%. This is of course subject to error, but both where I live and in my travels, most everyone wears a mask. This includes urban and rural areas, some with mandates some without.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/06/pandemic...

> I've posted this elsewhere, but mask compliance in the United States is ~80%

That's horseshit. I live in lefty, liberal, science-believing Silicon Valley and I see less than half the people walking on the streets wearing masks.

Mask usage is generally targeted at indoor spaces. There has been a great deal of research on outdoor spread, and it is nearly non-existent. Mask use outside is like wearing a condom after a vasectomy. Yeah, it might give you a bit more peace of mind, but it really isn't the main thing that is keeping you safe.

That is to say, I believe the survey is targeted for indoor mask usage, as this is also the mandate in most states that mandate mask wearing (while indoors, or outdoors when 6 feet is not possible)

Minimal lockdown isn't the reason those countries brought the virus under control.

One hard lockdown, supported by incredibly through contact tracing was.

I don't think a single polity in the US, including NYC had a single hard lockdown.

And I know that not a single polity in the US has managed to do effective contact tracing.

Thanks for your feedback.

To be clear: I wasn't saying that minimal lockdown was the reason for low numbers, though how I laid it out is definitely unclear.

My belief is that near universal mask compliance is the main reason some countries have managed to keep the virus under control even though they haven't been forced to do severe lockdowns.

Your point about contact tracing is relevant of course. I know both Japan and S. Korea did a lot of that, and of course the US didn't even try.

It seems that both Japan and Korea did reverse contact tracing, where you figure out where the infected person got the disease. This is in contrast to many other places, which just tried to assess where the infected person could have spread the disease.

This may perhaps (along with masks, and the use of pretty much every source of data by Korea) explain much of the variance in outcomes.

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