Wearing a mask is part of my daily routine. It always makes me feel better to see others in masks in supermarkets and doctors' waiting rooms -- especially when they're coughing! Masks and good manners - they've both disappeared.
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Yahoo!Life 3/10/25:
5 years after the pandemic started, COVID-19 is still around. Masks? Not so much. A look at where Americans stand when it comes to masking now.
"Has your COVID-era mask
been a constant companion or is it collecting dust? Americans’
relationship with masking has been fraught (and politicized) since the
beginning of the pandemic, a time when many balked at mandates to wear
them while others wouldn’t leave their home without that level of
protection.
"Five
years on, have we moved closer to a happy compromise? Mask requirements
have largely ceased, and deciding whether to wear one is up to the
individual. And some people do make that choice, particularly during
cold and flu season, though polling suggests that masks are both less
commonplace and a bit less polarizing these days. Here’s how we got here
— and what to know about the current state of masking in the U.S.
Mask culture has actually been around for a while — just not in the U.S.
"Before
the COVID-19 pandemic, you’d rarely see any Americans outside of an
operating room wearing surgical masks — and you would probably raise a
lot of eyebrows if you wore one in public. But Dr. David Wohl,
a professor of infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina,
tells Yahoo Life that in parts of Asia it was fairly common to mask up,
especially when the wearer had a respiratory illness they didn’t want
to spread.
"As Voice of America (VOA) reports, people in countries such as China and Japan have been wearing masks for decades
for many reasons — from blocking out air pollution to putting up a
“social firewall” to avoid awkward interactions on public transit. But
masking became especially prevalent during the SARS outbreak in 2002;
after that, it was normal for people, especially in congested cities,
to wear a mask in public as a courtesy to others if they were feeling
under the weather.
"Wohl
says regular outbreaks of respiratory viruses in that part of the world
likely led many people to incorporate mask-wearing into everyday life,
along with “a sense of responsibility to not pass an infection on to
others.” In this way, masking became a common courtesy, almost like
covering your mouth when you sneeze or cough — making surgical
mask-wearing more of an altruistic act than one of self-preservation.
“I
suppose wearing a mask, especially when I occasionally cough due to
giving a lesson after some consecutive hours, makes others feel safe,”
one Taipei middle school teacher told VOA at the beginning of the COVID
pandemic. “It’s not just for myself, but a way to decrease the fear of
people around me.”
"But
here in the U.S., we don’t have “that same type of social
consciousness,” Wohl says. “We are more likely to wear masks to avoid
infection rather than to prevent forward transmission of a germ to
others.”
Five years later, are Americans still masking?
"Even
at the peak of the pandemic, how much people masked depended a lot on
where they lived, and that’s likely still the case today. Dr. Jessica Justman,
a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University, says
it may be different elsewhere, but in New York City, where she works, it
has become common to see some people masking up in public.
"Dr. Rachel Amdur,
an assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University, tells
Yahoo Life that while the U.S. is likely not at the same level of
comfort with wearing masks in public as countries in Asia, it’s more
common now to see people wearing masks in public here than it was before
COVID arrived on the scene.
"And Dr. Dean Winslow,
a professor of medicine at Stanford University, tells Yahoo Life that
he still wears a mask when he’s somewhere that’s crowded and indoors.
Masking up in more health care settings — not just inside an operating
room — is also less of an anomaly, he adds.
“As health care
providers we are still asked to wear a mask with face-to-face encounters
with our patients to avoid, potentially, causing infection in our
patients — many of whom are immunocompromised,” Winslow says.
"Wohl
says he’s “heartened” when he sees people of all ages wearing masks in
public places, like on airplanes and at supermarkets, and speculates
that some of these maskers may have weaker immune systems, “while others
just are not in the mood to get sick.”
"And in California and areas affected by wildfire smoke, masking also saw a recent boost as health experts encouraged tight-fitting N95 masks to protect against dangerous particulates in the air.
"Still, recent polling from the Pew Research Center
reveals that while mask-wearers are still out there, they are few and
far between — and their numbers have plummeted since the beginning of
the pandemic. According to Pew, 80% of Americans say they rarely or
never wear a mask in stores or businesses. Four years ago, those numbers
were reversed, with 88% of Americans saying they had worn a mask or
face covering in stores all or most of the time in the past month.
"And
while most Americans (74%) say they think it’s extremely or very
important for people who are sick to avoid contact with vulnerable
people, they’re less enthusiastic about taking action to protect others;
43% of Americans feel it’s extremely or very important to wear a mask
in crowded settings when you have cold-like symptoms.
"In fact, Pew found that masks are now so underutilized that even the divide between Republicans and Democrats
has narrowed. Once highly politicized, frequent mask-wearing has now
almost equally been discarded by both parties, with just 6% of Democrats
and 2% of Republicans saying they frequently wore one in the past
month. (The partisan differences were less stark, however, when asked if
they had worn a mask at all recently — with 76% of Republicans and 47% of Democrats saying they had never masked up in the past month.)
When masks work (and when they don’t)
"Our
knowledge about masks — and what works and what doesn’t — has evolved a
lot over the past five years. Some of the cynicism about masks and
whether they actually stem the spread of infection, Wohl says, was
likely rooted in resistance to the mitigation measures that were
enforced during the height of the pandemic — but that doesn’t detract
from their effectiveness.
“The reality is we may
not like wearing masks, but they do protect us from getting and giving
COVID-19 and other respiratory infections,” Wohl says.
"Of
course, not all masks are created equal. Whereas pre-COVID, most of us
not working in health care had never thought about the merits of an N95
versus a surgical mask, today, laypeople are much more informed. Wohl
points out that any middle schooler could tell you that while a cloth
bandana is no match for someone coughing in close quarters, and N95
respirators are the gold standard for protection, surgical masks are a
good middle ground — striking a decent balance between cost, ease and
effectiveness.
"Winslow
says that when properly fitted, N95 masks provide excellent protection
to both the wearer and those around them. “However, N95 masks are
uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time, need to be fitted and
are quite expensive,” Winslow explains. “In contrast, surgical procedure
masks are inexpensive and comfortable to wear.”
"But
while surgical masks do provide some protection to the wearer, Winslow
says, they’re most effective at preventing the wearer from spreading
viruses to others.
"Still, Amdur says we “have a long way to go” with understanding how
masks work to prevent respiratory illness. In the meantime, she says
it’s probably a good idea to wear a mask in public if you have symptoms
of an upper respiratory virus — such as nasal congestion, sore throat or
fever — or if you’re immunocompromised and in a crowded public space.
Justman also suggests masking up when RSV, flu and COVID cases in your area are high."
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