Why People Don’t Wear Masks – By Jack Branson

Why People Don’t Wear Masks

Written by Jack Branson

Covid-19 has taken 2020 by storm. Every country in the world has had to deal with this pandemic and some have handled their difficulties better than others. However, almost all of the world’s nations have handled it better than the United States. According to the CDC, the U.S. alone is responsible for 3.68 million of the world’s 14.1 million cases, aswell as 141 thousand of the world’s 603 thousand deaths.

So what is the cause of this?

There are many possible explanations as to why the United States has struggled so much when it comes to Covid-19. One possible reason could be the conflicting information that we, as the public, are getting from the white house. It’s hard to feel like wearing a mask in public is going to make a difference when our own president hasn’t worn a mask through the entire quarantine.

However, some people could say that Covid-19 continues to spread in the US because of american individualism. While it is proven that the spread of Covid-19 is slowed down when masks are worn, the self-serving nature of the American people prevents many from considering the general public’s safety when leaving the house. This pattern is what has made it difficult to prevent the spread of Covid-19 effectively in the United States.

In a Washington Post article, they studied thirty one European countries and they have found that it’s the countries with less freedoms and less social trust that have actually done the best at preventing the spread of Covid, which shows that it’s people’s individualism and ability and reliance on making decisions for themselves that have played a big factor in spreading the virus. 

Well have masks even been proven to be effective?

Yes, they have. During the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC and World Health Organization were only able to confirm that surgical masks and n95 masks contributed to stopping the spread of the virus.

However Matthew Staymates, a mechanical engineer at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, ran several experiments to explore whether or not cloth masks could also help prevent the disease.

Staymates tested 26 different types of cloth masks and used high definition cameras to determine how much of his breath was getting through the mask. He found that while tightly fitted masks worked better, even things like bandanas did a solid job of preventing the cloud of droplets from his cough spread out into the air. 

After publishing his results, the CDC and World Health Organization confirmed that Staymates was right in his conclusion, and began to promote the wearing of cloth masks as well. 

So why doesn’t everyone wear one? 

Well, there’s a lot of factors that contribute to this ongoing phenomenon. In an interview with Jacqueline Gollan, a psychologist and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, she explained that many people are simply in denial. 

People who don’t wear masks just don’t properly understand the risks and damage that they can cause if they contract the disease. This is because of the fact that prevention is a very hard thing to measure or quantify. 

The short term relief from the discomfort of wearing the mask is sometimes an easy shortcut to take when it’s hard to know, or easy to ignore, exactly the risks that you’re exposing yourself and others to. 

Is this the only reason people don’t wear masks?

No, it’s not. In addition to the public’s “denial”, Dr. Gollan talks about how the pandemic has taken away so many aspects of American’s lives, and how sometimes it’s just a matter of wanting to have control over something when they go out into the current, heavily regulated world. 

The fatigue of day in and day out having to follow so many restrictions is undoubtedly exhausting for all of us, and sometimes people just think they need or deserve a break.

Lastly, people during this day and age don’t necessarily trust science as much as they should. In an article from the National Post, it’s talked about how many people will cherry-pick information that they want to hear and ignore the information that they don’t. 

A great example of this is when President Trump made an announcement that disinfectant injections could possibly help kill the virus in a living person. This is not likely however, it’s simply a very specific answer to a very specific question.                                                                                    

There’s a great example of this concept of denial spoken about in a podcast episode of FiveThirtyEight Politics entitled “Why COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Are Spreading.” In the episode, they speak about how democrats have heavily created a hoax around this virus in order to hurt President Trump’s reputation and thus, hurt his chances at a re-election. 

Again, it’s much easier to just choose to believe that because if it were true, it would make life a lot easier. 

Why is this important?

This is extremely important to think about because it’s this lack of responsibility and american need for individualism that has led to many people refusing to wear masks despite evidence that they do work.

 It’s because of this that the United States has struggled so much more than other countries when it comes to this pandemic and it could cause us to struggle for a while longer.