It is important to note that state level distributions of demographic factors do not account for concentrations or sparsity of populations within a given state. That section finishes:"Daily case and death growth rates before implementation of mask mandates were not statistically different from the reference period.". New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, called it a validation of the countrys go hard, go early strategy, in which the country reacts rapidly to signs of community spread. By the time the mandates were introduced in New York and other states in the spring of 2020 (at the left side of the graph), infections had already been declining in those states, and the mandates didnt prevent a surge later that year, when cases rose and fell in nearly identical trajectories regardless of states mask policies. "Masks have been the most visible part of America's pandemic response, but one of the least consequential," science journalist Faye Flam writes in a Bloomberg Opinion essay. 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). "They dont know how well people complied with these mandates or what proportion of the populationwas actually wearing masks.. Jha thinks vaccination rates areanother important factor: While "only 59% of eligible Florida seniors have gotten boosted," he notes, the rate for California is 70 percent. While it controlled for other policies that have been used to try to mitigate new infections from the coronavirus including bar closures, stay-at-home orders and bans on gatherings of 10 or more people it did not account for some others, such as physical distancing recommendations and other types of business closures. The current surge is worst in places with few containment measures. But "few studies assessed compliance to mask wearing policies or controlled for the possible influence of other preventive measures such as hand hygiene and physical distancing.". We show that mask mandates are associated with a statistically significant decrease in new cases (-3.55 per 100K), deaths (-0.13 per 100K), and the proportion of hospital admissions (-2.38 percentage points) up to 40 days after the introduction of mask mandates both at the state and county level. Another consideration is that access to COVID-19 testing appears to vary from state to state [21]. Is the Subject Area "COVID 19" applicable to this article? | Prior to adopting mask mandates, those municipalities that eventually adopted mandates had higher transmission rates than the rest of the state, with the mean case rate difference per 100,000 people increasing by 0.32 cases per day (slope of difference = 0.32; 95% CI 0.13 to 0.51). Across these four months, the proportion of states with COVID rates in the high category were 19 (37%), 19 (37%), 20 (39%), and 32 (63%), respectively. The surgical masks didnt stop a subsequent surge throughout the country, and infection rates in Bavaria and Berlin were the same as in German states without the N95 requirement. Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States of America, Roles The resurgence was blamed on people disobeying the mandates, never mind the surveys showing widespread compliance. May 16, 2021 / 7:07 AM / CBS News. Masks make no difference in reducing the spread of Covid, according to an extensive new review by Cochranethe gold standard for evaluating health interventions. High school students in Seattle staged a protest demanding that a mask mandate be reinstated, and psychologists now deal with the anxieties of children who dont want their classmates to see their faces. No, Is the Subject Area "Pandemics" applicable to this article? The announcement comes one day after Joe Biden pleaded with state and local leaders to maintain or reinstate mask mandates, due to recent alarming trends in US coronavirus case numbers. The index does not evaluate the effectiveness of individual policies. 3.1.2023 2:50 PM, David McGarry Some states now have ended their statewide masks mandates, but the president, and others, have urged them to reinstate masks mandates because of the recent upsurge that our nation has seen in COVID-19 cases. The strongest real-world evidence in favor of general masking comes from a randomized trial in Bangladesh, which found that the use of surgical masks reduced symptomatic infections by 11 percent. Herring dismissed those results, claiming unnamed experts told the news network that the reductions in spread the study found were not significant. Former Arizona AG Found No Evidence of 2020 Election Fraud. Conceptualization, The list of states with high COVID-19 rates by month shows the initial wave in northeastern states in May, followed by a wave in southern states, and then spreading across the U.S. over the next four months (Table 2). PLOS ONE promises fair, rigorous peer review, States in COVID-19 high-risk categories are listed in Table 1. She finds that mask-wearing is still the best course of action for mixed-vaccination status gatherings. We utilized the COVID-19 US State Policy Database, created by Dr. Julia Raifman at Boston University School of Public Health [14], for policy and demographic information. Eleven states never mandated masks, while the other 39 states enforced mandates. The masks in Germany obviously didnt beat Covid. From the start of the pandemic through this spring, the cumulative rate of Covid mortality has been slightly higher in Sweden than in Germany (by about 15 percent), but the rate of overall excess mortality has been slightly higher in Germany (by about 8 percent). That second observation requires a caveat, since testing rates affect the number of cases that are recorded. Doug Burgum reopened the state nearly fully in May. Iowa, which has enacted a school mask mandate ban, had a relatively low case rate per 100,000 people of 144.7. But it seems clear that anyone who takes it for granted that mask mandates have played a crucial role in controlling the spread of COVID-19 is making a series of assumptions that are not justified by the evidence. Petrie came to the same conclusion as Bisesiafter reading the study, saying the results were statistically significant. It compares Germany with Sweden, the medias Covid villain for refusing to lock down or mandate masks. Writing review & editing, Roles 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. Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason. Thank you for supporting our journalism. Eric Boehm Based on CDC at-risk guidelines for COVID-19 [20], we considered non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, age, and population density as potential confounders. When Can I Dine Indoors Again After Being Fully Vaccinated? Overall, there is no obvious difference between states with mask mandates and states without them. Fully vaccinated adults are still wearing masks on their solitary walks outdoors, and officials have beenenforcing mask mandates on airline passengers and on some city-dwellers and students. "We do not find evidence that mandating mask-wearing reduces transmission," the authors reported. However, Werler says her team did find substantial amounts of variation that could suggest other factors beyond mandatessuch as political affiliationcould be at play. He Kept Quiet. Our study was also limited by the lack of information on accessibility of COVID-19 testing; if less accessible testing is associated with less mask adherence, the associations we report here may be under-estimates. Investigation, It found that mask mandates were associated with "statistically significant" decreases in daily COVID-19 case and death growth rates within 20 days of implementation. Investigation, For policies on physical distancing, we recorded whether a stay-at-home order was issued and, if so, when. The adoption of universal masking policies is increasingly polarized and politicized, demanding that public health authorities balance the values of health and individual liberty. Coronavirus cases are rising in almost every U.S. state. All the state does is encourage Alaskans to do their part to limit the spread of Covid-19, recommending that residents practice social distancing and wear a mask, without any mandate. Indeed all 13 states in the low mask adherence group in September had high COVID-19 rates in October. Most states in the low quartile had high COVID-19 rates in the subsequent month. Yes This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. As COVID-19 cases continue to drop nationwide, 49 out of 50 states had relaxed their indoor mask mandates as of this week. In the first 20 days after implementingmask mandates, new cases slowed by 0.5 percentage points. Of the 15 states with no mask policy from April through September, 14 reported high COVID-19 rates in at least one month from May to October. We calculated the average mask use percentage by month for AprilSeptember, 2020. | Since July 27, 2020, individuals had been required to wear a mask or face covering in the state when visiting public indoor spaces and when unable to maintain a 6-foot distance from. Charlie B. Fischer, A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson. Several cities and large counties, including Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Hillsborough (which includes Tampa), had mask requirements, but Gov. As of Aug. 3, Louisiana is under a temporary statewide mask mandate required of all people, including those who are vaccinated, when indoors. Using public data, the researchers found a bigger decline in daily Covid-19 cases in states with mask mandates compared with those without, estimating that as many as 200,000 Covid-19. Data Availability: Data are available in the paper and its Supporting Information file. Randomized clinical trials involving flu viruses had shown, contrary to popular wisdom in Japan and other Asian countries, that there was no evidence that face masks are effective in reducing transmission, as the WHO summarized the scientific literature. For mask adherence levels, we utilized the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) COVID-19 Projections online database [15], which holds data collected by Facebook Global in partnership with the University of Maryland Social Data Science Center [16]. In the United States, policies on mask wearing have varied from state to state over the course of the pandemic. Subscribe to Reason Roundup, a wrap up of the last 24 hours of news, delivered fresh each morning. Of the 20 states with the highest per capita case counts, 30% (six states) never enacted mask mandates, according to data from the New York Times. 2023 Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc. All rights reserved. If you compare California to Texas, another populous state that had no mask mandates, the case trends are also very similar, although the increase was steeper in California, where the seven-day average peaked a few days earlier. But there are still settings where wearing your mask is crucial. Are available in the paper and its Supporting Information file in the low mask adherence group in had. Charlie B. Fischer, a wrap up of the last 24 hours of,... Affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson overall, there no. Dine Indoors Again After Being fully Vaccinated, the medias COVID villain for refusing to lock or! Investigation, for policies on physical distancing, we recorded whether a stay-at-home order issued! Experts told the news network that the reductions in spread covid cases in states with mask mandates vs without study found were not.! Overall, there is no obvious difference between states with mask mandates as this. 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covid cases in states with mask mandates vs without