Masks are optional across the U.S. Here are 3 reasons you might want to wear one
A federal judge in Florida this week struck down U.S. regulations requiring people to wear masks on airplanes and public transit, marking the end a nationwide COVID-19 health requirement.
But masks likely will continue to be a fixture of public life in many settings now that many Americans have grown accustomed to them, say psychologists and medical experts.
“People are going to continue to wear masks out of comfort and risk aversion,” said Dr. Vanessa Walker, the medical director for the Sutter Valley Area Electronic Intensive Care Unit. “Everyone’s risk factors and health or living situations are different. There are many people all around us who are very concerned about removing masks because they are at high risk of severe disease and death or they live with people with similar risk. The key is to respect everyone around you whether they are wearing a mask or not.”
In an informal poll on The Bee’s website, most readers said they would continue to wear masks on airplanes and in public transit.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new awareness for many of just how easily a disease can be transmitted, said Alison Holman, a health psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, and there are at least three reasons why some folks won’t want to shed them completely.
Indoor health
Face masks, especially in confined spaces, seem like a no-brainer to people who want self-protection.
Research has shown that certain types of masks — N95, KN95 or KF94 — do an especially good job of containing the spread of germs from the people wearing them and offer those around them some protection against taking in germs.
In a modeling study done at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, researchers found that passengers sitting in the same row or an adjacent row as someone infected with COVID-19 were at high risk of catching the disease. Those who wore masks, however, cut their risk by 54%.
“There are people who are judicious and take personal responsibility and protect themselves because of that, and that’s great,” Holman said, “In so doing, they’re taking care of themselves and other people, which is in their own interest. Even if they don’t think of it that way, it is in their own interest, ultimately.”
Some people have a new awareness of the potential for infection because of personal experiences with COVID-19, such as knowing someone who died of COVID-19 — 6,200,571 worldwide, 986,545 in the U.S., and 89,054 in California as of Tuesday. There’s a better chance they may know someone who had COVID or someone contending with long-term symptoms of the disease.
But it’s more likely that the pandemic has just given them a greater awareness of how disease travels, Holman said, and now equipped with that knowledge, they’re unwilling to risk either death or lingering illness that could affect their ability to earn a living for themselves or their family.
“We know that roughly 25% of the population who gets COVID experience long COVID. We know that we don’t know enough about how the disease continues to affect our bodies, but we know that it may, Holman said.
Risk of death, lingering illness is scary
Fear definitely will motivate some people to continue wearing masks, Holman said.
“To somebody who is conscious, who is sensitive about their health, and (who is) young enough that they have a long time left to live, ... they really want to make sure that they don’t get sick or have some disabling sickness,” Holman said. “They don’t even have to be young, They could be older. I myself am 65 years old, and I have no interest in getting COVID, zero interest. I don’t want to take the chance of anything potentially ravaging my body.”
Scientists estimate that every person who has died from COVID-19 leaves behind an average of nine people who knew them well and loved them dearly, Holman said.
This pandemic has held many unknowns, Holman said, and so there’s concern that scientists may not yet know all there is to COVID-19.
Holman said people are wondering the long-term inflammatory effects of the disease: “What if it changes me to the point where I’m going to be disabled for the rest of my life? That’s a frightening thing to think about for your future.”
Protecting others
Many people wearing masks are not concerned about getting COVID-19, Holman said. Rather, they’re worried they might be infected with it and give it to someone else.
“You care that somebody next to you on that plane ... might have a disease that, if they got COVID, that would kill them,” she said, “So social responsibility is a big deal. There are people who will wear a mask because they consider it a socially responsible thing to do.”
There are people who don’t want to wear masks and could care less about whether they’re spreading COVID-19, Holman said, and many of them think they’re actually boosting their immune systems by doing so.
In a discussion on natural immunity, Drs. Lisa Maragakis and Gabor Kelen of Johns Hopkins University said: “A mild case of an illness may not result in strong natural immunity. New studies show that natural immunity to the coronavirus weakens (wanes) over time, and does so faster than immunity provided by COVID-19 vaccination.”
This story was originally published April 20, 2022 at 12:19 PM with the headline "Masks are optional across the U.S. Here are 3 reasons you might want to wear one."
