COVID: seven reasons mask wearing in the west was unnecessarily delayed

By Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford

Masks help prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, yet masking policies in the west have featured some spectacular policy wrong turns. Here are some.

1. Ignoring Asia

Early studies showed that countries (mostly Asian) that made mask-wearing mandatory within 30 days of the first case emerging had dramatically fewer COVID-19 cases than those (mostly western) that delayed beyond 100 days. Rather than taking seriously the theory that the…

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