Face masks are an important defense and are urgently required to limit coronavirus outbreaks. Currently, evidence in favor of face masks is growing considerably.
According to projections that were recently released, even if governments in the US imposed state-level restrictions on social gatherings to stop growing coronavirus outbreaks, the death toll from the virus is expected to be twice what was previously recorded by only the beginning of February 2021. The number could very well turn to 511,000 coronavirus deaths.
If masks are worn nearly universally however in the coming months that grim future could nearly be reduced to about 130,000, according to a team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) that makes coronavirus forecasts.
If even 85 % of the population abided by face mask compulsions, the number of lives that will be saved compared to the aforementioned number would still amount to being 95,000 or even higher, they explained in a peer-reviewed journal called Nature Medicine.
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The authors note that there is multiplying evidence that wearing face masks have a great ability to limit or decrease the spread of respiratory infections like the SARS-CoV-2; therefore they are successful in stopping the infection of the Coronavirus.
Currently, the average percentage of mask wearers on a national level in the United States is at about 50% of what was seen in September, regardless of the misunderstandings harbored and spread by a few politicians regarding their success in stopping infection.
Donald Trump has also been recorded to have shunned wearing masks in public; he has also made fun of his rival for wearing one in the White House.
Some of Trump’s supporters, however, continue to wear face masks even at the rallies of his campaigns which have shortly resumed after his own time dealing with the illness this month.
Since the beginning of the very first confirmed coronavirus case in the US in January 2020, the virus has managed to infect a good 8.4 million people in the entire nation and has killed even more lives, with the number adding up to above 223,000.
In the middle of July, modelers from IHME predicted with great accuracy the deaths that were to occur by the first of November. The number they presented was as high as 224,000.
Right now, in some places, the second wave of coronavirus outbreaks is rising while in others a third wave is being witnessed with the setting of winter. The total numbers of the latest cases in the country are also amounting to 75,000 by just the 22nd of October which is twice the daily increase from a month before.
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With the vaccine nowhere still in sight and limited options for treatment available, measures that don’t require pharmaceutical interventions such as wearing face masks, self-isolating, and social distancing, as well as contact tracing, are at the time being one of the most successful tools we have to combat the lethal disease.
Several experts hold a unanimous opinion that the vaccine would not be available well into the next year because it will also take time to be approved and to be distributed.
For the nearest possible future however it is according to researchers, in our best interest to social distance, and wears masks when required because a grim future awaits us if we don’t.
