Name: Face masks reduce new infections significantly, German study finds | COVID-19 Special
Uploaded: 2021-02-04T19:15:16.000Z
Duration: 12 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

They've been doing it long before the coronavirus pandemic.

Western countries have been more reluctant to adopt face masks as a useful tool to fight the virus way.

Don't generally recommend the wearing of masks in public by otherwise, well, individuals because it has not been up to now associated with any particular benefit.

But eventually, opinion changed fancy home.

Soon, masks popped up everywhere and experts changed their tune, People congregating often without masks, of being in crowds and jumping over and avoiding and not paying attention to the guidelines that we very carefully put out.

We're going to continue to be in a lot of trouble, and there's gonna be a lot of hurt if that does not stop.

Medical masks were back on the agenda, even becoming mandatory in some places.

And just in case you're wondering, why isn't she wearing a mask?

Well, the studio is pretty much the only place I can take it off for now because things keep changing, just like the virus itself.

And that also goes for the acceptance off wearing masks on the evidence that they really help curb the spread off the virus.

In fact, a study from Germany has found that facemask could reduce the number of new Kobe 19 infections 20 days after their mandatory introductions, anywhere from 15 to 75%.

Researchers also found that the reduction in new cases was the most for those above 60 years of age.

This is the first study to identify causal effects in a population rather than in a clinical setting, highlighting the correlation between wearing face masks on a drop in new infections.

Classified, a professor of economics at the Johannes Gutenberg University minds is the co author off this study, and he joins me now, Good to have you with us.

Uh, what I noticed is that your study doesn't mention specific facemasks.

We don't mention specific facemask because the regulation at that time just required to wear any mask.

So these were probably normal, self made homemade masks.

Okay, so we don't really know about the efficacy when we take into consideration the medical masks, which are now mandatory in many places or FFP mask?

I mean, there are other studies that study in detail Which type of mask is for effective.

And we know, of course, that, uh, lost masks are not the best one.

So f f p to mask as an example, they have a much better filtering system.

Okay, but apart from the model or the material off a face mask, what other factors play a role in in making wearing a mask?

I believe your study also points to different regions.

I'm not so sure, but But what definitely matters is how good a mask fits.

So if a za manu where Ah, beard, then Of course, there's a lot off airflow at the edge of the mask, and this can be a problem.

And in any case, with any mask, it depends on the environment.

If you are in a, uh, contaminated, uh, if you inhale contaminated ambient air, then you can get infected anyway.

I mean, droplets and very small droplets.

I just had to smile because you mentioned beards.

And I know a few colleagues here, including our science correspondent, who will find it difficult to part with the beard.

The average in your study says it's that around 45 47% that's a good start.

But it means that we also need different measures to win this fight.

Are all the rules that we need in place from your point of view?

Mask are not the only measure we should employ.

But if I should say something about rules, I mean, rules are one thing, but compliance to rules.

When we look, for example, at the sudden increase off infections before Christmas, then we This cannot be related to rules because the rules didn't change at that time.

But we know from ability data that around Christmas, which can be understood but nevertheless, around Christmas, mobility increased a lot, so the question is, how much compliance is there, Thio rules in the private environment.

And then another issue is, for example, the masks at workplace.

I recently went to a small enterprise for mechanical repairs.

They would all That would be a good measure as well.

And you just mentioned statistics with looking at mobility before Christmas.

I mean, we've we've been flooded with statistics on daily infection numbers.

More recently, sadly, we also get the daily death numbers.

But how helpful are those statistics when it comes to assessing the situation?

The daily reported infection numbers we hear every day they have serious statistical problems.

One example is we test when people go to a doctor and have symptoms, and then we test the individuals who had contact with the person who is infected or we test individuals that return from holidays.

The statistical problem resulting from this is when the relative importance off how many tests you undertake because of symptoms or because of travelers or because of other reasons.

When this relative share changes, then the reported number of infections are not comparable over time.

Um, there are, of course, other statistics which are less biased when we think about the number of individuals in intensive care units.

I mean, this is definitely very unbiased.

And then, as you said, the number of deaths you don't want to hear this, but this is also unbiased measure, but unfortunately, these measures are delayed.

No, I mean, this is not, uh, instantaneous.

So what we should do is we should not just test individuals.

I mean, testing is extremely important test as much as possible.

But we should also report why individuals were tested.

And if we knew, for example, all the positive tests off individuals that were tested because they had symptoms, then we should.

Then we would count covert 19 cases, so cases off the disease and this would be an unbiased measure off the severity off the pandemic.

Okay, so there is definitely some homework to be done.

Certainly when it comes to effective testing.

Uh, well, when the pandemic is over, Simple answer.

Okay, if if if I had to give a rule, um, wait for the number of patients in intensive care units to fall to a level that we had in spring 2020 then we can be more relaxed.

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Face masks reduce new infections significantly, German study finds | COVID-19 Special

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