Watch the video, read the text further below, or download the flyer at the bottom.
People who wear a good mask while taking the bus are protected during their journey. However, if they later visit a crowded pub, they might contract the virus there. If they get sick this way, they get the impression their mask didn’t work, but it very much did: as long as it was worn, it kept them protected.
People who do not intend to wear the mask consistently might think masking is useless. But masking being useless for them doesn’t mean it’s useless for others. For example, for an elder who must take the bus but doesn’t plan to visit the pub afterward, wearing a mask makes the difference between her getting infected and her staying healthy.
Even for those planning to visit the pub later, wearing the mask isn’t useless either. It reduces their chances of infection. For example, if they had a, say, 10% chance of getting infected during the bus ride and 30% chance during the pub, wearing a mask on the bus reduces their chances of infection by roughly a quarter. This matters even if “they are going to catch COVID anyway” because every time one catches COVID, it’s like rolling the dice, risking severe consequences. Even if that risk is small, roll the dice enough times, and it might materialize.
But even assuming that one doesn’t care about his or her health but only about being able to go to the pub, wearing a mask on the bus helps reduce spread, which reduces the chances that our governments enact policies that close the pubs.
If masks work, why did countries with strict mask policies have similar results to countries with lax mask policies?
How consistently people mask is a function of perceived risk: the more a virus spreads in a country, the more likely its population is to mask, with the result being similar to those of a country with lower virus spread and lower mask usage. It’s just like people in winter are more likely to use heating than in spring, but their houses aren’t any warmer than when heating is off – yet, that doesn’t mean heating doesn’t work. It does!
Another reason countries with different masking policies had similar results is that even when masks are mandated, not everyone wears them, and even when they are not mandated, many people wear them anyway. Therefore, two countries with different mask policies might actually have more similar behaviors than one might expect.
Download all the one-pagers as a PDF here.