Read on to find out whyand to ensure . Data on population distributions from the COVID-19 US State Policy Database [13] came from the US Census. No, Is the Subject Area "Conservation science" applicable to this article? e0249891. No, Is the Subject Area "Health care policy" applicable to this article? Thank you, {{form.email}}, for signing up. New Zealand recently lifted all restrictions following 10 days with no new cases. Many states in the Upper Midwest and Mountain West resisted more stringent control measures, like limits on gatherings and mask mandates. New York. When Youve Been Fully Vaccinated. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249891.t003. Of course, many other factors are could be at play, like the possibility of cooler weather driving non-adherent persons to indoor gatherings. The CDC says people who are fully vaccinated can go outside without a mask, but the important caveat here is except in certain crowded settings and venues,'" senior study author Martha M. Werler, DSc, professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, tells Verywell. Despite an early outbreak, South Korea flattened the curve with aggressive testing and contact tracing, as well as widespread mask wearing. Its Legacy Is Disastrous. Explaining the justification for lifting mask requirements, governors and public health agencies generally have cited the precipitous decline in daily new cases since mid-January. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order May 3, 2021. that barred local governments and school systems from imposing COVID-19 restrictions, including mask rules. No, PLOS is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, #C2354500, based in San Francisco, California, US, Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249891, https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admissions, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-are-the-states-with-mask-mandates, https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-politics/, https://cepr.org/sites/default/files/CovidEconomics43.pdf, https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=mask-use&tab=trend, https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7761, https://data.cdc.gov/Case-Surveillance/United-States-COVID-19-Cases-and-Deaths-by-State-o/9mfq-cb36/data, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/county-level-data-sets/download-data/, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/indicators.html#thresholds, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/index.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fneed-extra-precautions%2Fpeople-at-increased-risk.html. 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. If this hasnt persuaded you to take off your mask, you can find lots more reasons in a book by Ian Miller, the data analyst who created the graph for City Journal. Verywell Health's content is for informational and educational purposes only. Investigation, When we looked at states with 75% mask adherence (Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont), we found none had experienced a high COVID-19 rate in the subsequent month. By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira February 28, 2023 at 5:55 am EST. Crude and adjusted odds ratios for any mask policy in relation to high COVID-19 rates in the subsequent month were below 1.0; but confidence intervals were wide. But despite an official infection rate that was virtually the same as California's, he adds, "Florida had 33% more deaths per capita than California" during the omicron surge. Traveling This Summer? For now, relaxing some mask guidelines while staying vigilant is the government's compromise. States with a 75% minimum mask adherence reported about 109.26 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents compared to the average of 249.99 per 100,000 residents in states with low mask adherence. Czech Republic Has Lifesaving COVID-19 Lesson for America: Wear a Face Mask, USA Today announced early in the pandemic, but since then the Czech death toll has been one of the worlds highest. 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. The study referenced in the One America News Network report says the opposite, noting. The study concluded that mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level Covid-19 spread during Covid-19 growth surges. The medias narrative about masks extended throughout the world. Most states in the low quartile had high COVID-19 rates in the subsequent month. 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. One state is the lone holdout. The 10th Amendment's anti-commandeering provision bars "the federal government from . Experts interviewed by USA TODAY said the One America News Network had "misinterpreted" or "mischaracterized" the findings of the CDC study. So could age demographics: The median age of Florida's population is 42.5, compared to 37 in California. Thats a huge swing, Werler says. The 2-week rate in July in Arizona = 43,088 cases/7,278,717 population in 2019 = 0.00592 or 592 per 100,000. On the other hand, Hawaii and Connecticut had two of the longest mask mandates and also some of the lowest per capita case counts of all the states. 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. Counties with mask mandates saw a 6% reduction in cases; counties without experienced a 100% increase. Methodology, Is the Subject Area "COVID 19" applicable to this article? | The adoption of universal masking policies is increasingly polarized and politicized, demanding that public health authorities balance the values of health and individual liberty. More detailed message would go here to provide context for the user and how to proceed. broad scope, and wide readership a perfect fit for your research every time. Containment measures are as of Nov. 1. Accessibility | The same basic pattern was seen in nearly every state. We classified a state and D.C. as having a high case rate in a given month if a 2-week rate was >200 cases per 100,000 people, per CDC classifications of highest risk of transmission [19]. Massachusetts. Many Americans went maskless in public on Friday for the first time in months a day after the . John Bel Edwards emergency order will . Our study accounted for temporality by staggering COVID-19 outcome data after adherence measures. For the period of April 1 through October 31, 2020, less than half of states had issued a mandate for mask wearing in public and nearly a third had not made any recommendation. Coronavirus cases are rising in almost every U.S. state. Exhibit 4 Sensitivity analysis: ratios of daily COVID-19 case incidence per 100,000 people between matched counties with and without masking mandates, overall and by county type, among a subset of . 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). Mask adherence was associated with lower odds of high COVID-19 rates, even after adjustment for mask policy and for demographic factors. Even as more and more states encourage or even mandate mask wearing, many citizens sti More state leaders acted to strike down mask mandates on Thursday, citing a decline in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. In Maryland , Gov. Nedghie Adrien, Roles But in each state, as Miller shows, infection rates remained lower in the counties that did not mandate masks. Copyright: 2021 Fischer et al. To calculate monthly COVID-19 case rates, we abstracted the number of new cases reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [17] and state population sizes in 2019 [18]. JAMA. After the pandemic, a survey of gains and losses. Their cumulative rates of Covid mortality were virtually identical, too (in fact, there were slightly more deaths per capita in the states with mask mandates). The same study found that cloth masks did not have a statistically significant effect. Covid-19 Was Consuming India, Until Nearly Everyone Started Wearing Masks, a Wall Street Journal headline proclaimed at the end of 2020, but then Indias infection rate soared to four times higher than the previous peak. "At first blush," Jha says, it "looks like their different COVID strategies did not end up mattering much." She holds a Masters in Psychology concentrating on Behavioral Neuroscience. Even if masking works, that does not necessarily mean mandates do. 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. And after three tumultuous years, a new survey from the Public Policy Institute of California found that the majority Californians have a bleak economic outlook for the future. The authors found that the growth rate of new coronavirus cases and deaths dropped after mask mandates were put in place. The current study . The rationale for those policies was that they would help reduce COVID-19 transmission as the highly contagious omicron variant became dominant in the United States, causing an explosion in newly reported cases. Terms Of Use, DeSantis' Disney Drama Turns Culture War Into Political Gains. The pandemic has eased, but not the compulsion of many Americans to cover their faces. Both mask policy and mask adherence for states and D.C. were cross-tabulated with high case rates in the subsequent month. That period is used as the benchmark against which researchers compared days 21 through 60 before mask mandates were adoptedand the 100 days after. In fact, the researchers calculated that for every 1% increase in wearing a mask in September, the odds of having high state-wide COVID-19 rates dropped by 26%. 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. Charlie B. Fischer, 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. All reviews and studies included in this document report on data collected in a time period prior California's state of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic is finally over, ending on Tuesday after nearly three years in place. But the study did not take into account other policies or voluntary safeguards that may have differed between jurisdictions with and without mask mandates. Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Uruguay, Chile, Poland, and Hungary were all hailed as models of scientific enlightenment for their low infection rates and strict mask policiesuntil, as usual, the masks suddenly lost their magical power. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. "Unfortunately, the virus hasnt gone away and is still easily transmissible. States That Imposed Few Restrictions Now Have the Worst Outbreaks. 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