Masks. Do you remember wearing masks? I do. I hated it so much. It felt funny on my face, fogged up my glasses, and for like two months, I had to use Eye Drops because of them. I remember seeing the debate over masks unfold. Many people are vehemently anti- or pro- mask. I have no idea what the pandemic did to people, because some people were like a swarm of hornets, when it came to proper mask usage. I think the most infamous-and perhaps funny- example is this poor woman losing her mind.  Personal opinions aside, let’s take a deeper look at masks and their mandate

I’m not here to debate whether masks themselves stop the spread of Covid to other people, but more so if the policy of mandating masks in large areas worked.  I was expecting the data to strongly show that mandates worked, or they didn’t. Instead, what I saw was that there was no strong conclusion to this. To frame this, let’s first figure out how masks work. According to the state of Delaware, “Masks are primarily intended to stop people from spreading droplets that contain the virus, which is especially important for people who are asymptomatic or presymptomatic”(Myth or Fact). The main caveat is that the cloth masks most people wore in the initial stages of the pandemic were useless. They caught big droplets, but it was extremely tiny particles that were the vector for COVID. However, many other mask types exist, and those are effective at at least preventing you from spreading it. 

Then why does it seem that mask mandates have an iffy impact? Well, it seems to come down to a  couple things. Firstly, there’s a level of non-compliance. It’s not universal, but there are plenty of people who don’t want to wear a mask, for a variety of reasons. In an analysis done of those who didn’t wear masks,”The strongest opposition to masks was linked to conspiracy theories”(Martin and Vanderslott). These were the people who thought COVID was a hoax, or covid was a minimal health risk. Those people aside, noncompliance stemmed from many reasons. These ranged from discomfort, difficulty communicating, personal liberty objections,a general trend of not wearing masks, or concerns about efficacy.  

To further elaborate on the efficacy of the masks, a significant portion of this worry stemmed from slippage or minor errors in wearing the mask. Thai was further explored in a New York Times article, in which the author explains that small behaviors done by a large population influence the issues with masks.  For example, “Airplane passengers remove their masks to have a drink. Restaurant patrons go maskless as soon as they walk in the door”(Leonhardt) Taking your mask off, even for short periods can be a risk. Not only that, “research by the University of Minnesota suggests that between 25 percent and 30 percent of Americans consistently wear their masks below their nose”. I think this partly explains why mask mandates are not ideal in practice. After all, we aren’t perfect. We forget, let them slip down,  and we can’t have our masks on for every task.

There are a few other issues as well. As mentioned in study analyzing covid spread in the US, and while it did show that mask mandated did slow the spread of covid, there were many limitations. Aside from the lack of homogeneity across the US, “counties could have had differential rates of local gathering events or different nonpharmaceutical interventions such as business closures”. Not only that, the time analyzed was a bit of a transitory period. Businesses were reopening, but schools were not, so things were in flux across the nation. Not only that, being so early in the pandemic, “publicly available information on county mask mandates was sometimes contradictory, unclear, or incomplete”. While these limitations do not outright refute the positive impact of mask mandates, the authors do acknowledge that it does weaken their conclusion. 

I know that this all sounds contradictory, and ultimately lacking a clear path forward. And when combing through the research, I found a similar problem. However, there is a compromise that exists, called One-Way masking. Its focus is on having the individual make their decision to wear a mask, for whatever reason they have. It overcomes the limitations of mandates, while still allowing for the benefits of masks to apply to a person. There are a few notes to make, of course. The One-Way method recommends that a person wears and N95 respirator or equivalent, and ideally vaccinated. This method has been used in hospitals, even patients who have been “sick with infectious diseases, typically have not worn masks, but doctors and nurses have”(Leonhardt). This solution is one I feel best helps everyone. People who wish to wear masks can still do so, and those who do not, also don’t have to. 

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data

https://coronavirus.delaware.gov/covid-19-myth-or-fact/myth-or-fact-masks-are-effective-against-covid-19/

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-TEg0HesoSY

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/briefing/masks-mandates-us-covid.html

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/02/25/1083046757/coronavirus-faq-im-a-one-way-masker-what-strategy-will-give-me-optimal-protectio

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X21013517?casa_token=EEwmZ1rqJ5oAAAAA:0FuOOipPISGLWsg_JJCQQvBjXbpmrzMYwuVYDTa7zR0Ty1ug-F5-kX48Wib0WiS4eaSECy9mNTgV

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01072

Ah, COVID Lockdowns. Do you remember them? I still certainly do. This is only a personal example, but I remember how my whole life got turned upside down. I was stuck at home, my school went online, and Microsoft Teams became my new high school. It was a major adjustment, that’s for sure. 

Outside of just my little bubble, however, there was a raging debate about Lockdowns. There were quite a few concerns held by protestors of lockdowns, ranging from “the stringent measures restricting movement and businesses are unnecessarily hurting citizens” to “long-term damage to local economies”(Coronavirus Lockdown Protest).

And this concern was not just limited to local economies. Some of the biggest businesses in the country, like JetBlue, and IMAX took a huge hit, all in the course of a month. For example, IMAX’s stock went from Roughly twenty dollars in January 2020, to a little over seven dollars in March 2020. While they got some relief through the relief bill, Small businesses still suffered throughout the pandemic. So, everyone was feeling the pinch of the lockdown.

While economic hardship is one issue, the main goal of lockdowns is to address a public health issue. We want to curtail the spread of disease and prevent deaths. However, in analyses done throughout and towards the end of the pandemic, the many health downsides and inefficiencies of lockdowns became apparent. So, let’s quickly discuss these issues!

By far one of the biggest impacts of the lockdowns is the rise in suicides and depression. In a multitude of studies conducted across the start of the pandemic, there was a dramatic rise in suicide attempts, when compared from March 2019 to 2020, and July 2019 to 2020. “One survey of people without COVID-19 in the United States found a high prevalence of anxiety (25.5%), depressive (24.3%), and trauma and stressor related (26.3%) disorders,…and 10.7% who seriously contemplated suicide in the last 30 days”(Joffe). Not only that, but substance abuse also was rising during lockdowns, leading to deaths as well. In that same survey of those who responded, 13.3% “started or increased substance use to cope” Not only that, in a study conducted in Cook County, Illinois, during the lockdown, there was an increase in opioid overdoses. They explain that ”the pandemic compounded an already tenuous situation with massive losses of service sector jobs and health insurance, and loss of in-person social support, resulting in increased anxiety, depression, and social isolation”(Mason, et. al).

Credit: Adam Kleczkowski

On the other hand, there is evidence that to some extent lockdowns do succeed at their goal. Recent analyses have shown they aren’t an incredibly strong stopgap, but they worked in the initial stages. In an analysis conducted of the UK and New Zealand’s lockdown measures, there was a significant drop in cases following the lockdowns. However, studies conducted through the pandemic found lockdowns wound up having a minimal impact on COVID deaths. Multiple studies have shown that pro-lockdown evidence was “shockingly thin, and based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models”(Yanovskiy and Socol). Furthermore “Later research (Jan 2022) performed at Johns Hopkins University concluded that ‘lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality’ ”.

So, what does this mean going forward? I think the evidence tells us, when implementing a lockdown, we can’t just drop it as a blanket measure. I like to imagine lockdowns as boarding up a door while someone is trying to bust it down. Eventually, cracks will appear! In CGP Grey’s video, Thinking About Lockdowns, he explains that lockdowns are best used to buy time for some sort of treatment. And as far as that’s concerned, I see nothing wrong with that. But as we know, lockdowns have unintentional impacts. If we’re ever confronted by another pandemic, we have to avoid being hasty with pulling this lever. Thorough, rational analyses are what’s needed when we decide to use this measure. After all, long drawn-out lockdowns have had proven detrimental impacts.  

I’m not trying to deride those who decided to lock down. Humans are not perfect, and the fog of the future makes it hard to make perfect decisions. However, either way, I think we’ve learned a valuable lesson on the usefulness of lockdowns, and how to utilize them better in the future. 

 Bendavid, Eran, et al. “Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and … – Wiley Online Library.” Wiley Online Library, 5 Jan. 2021, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484.

Byline: and Laura BaileyMichigan News. “Lockdowns Saved Lives, but Not a Go-to Strategy Moving Forward.” The University Record, https://record.umich.edu/articles/lockdowns-saved-lives-but-not-a-go-to-strategy-moving-forward/.

CGPGrey. “Thinking about Lockdowns.” YouTube, YouTube, 25 Aug. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVmEXdGqO-s.

“Coronavirus Lockdown Protest: What’s behind the US Demonstrations?” BBC News, BBC, 21 Apr. 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52359100.

“Did the Covid Lockdowns Work? Here’s What We Know Two Years On.” Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, 24 Jan. 2023, https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/did-covid-lockdowns-work-heres-what-we-know-two-years.

Joffe, Ari. “COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink.” PubMed Central, 26 Feb. 2021, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7952324/.

Maryann Mason, PhD. “The Pandemic Stay-at-Home Order and Opioid-Involved Overdose Fatalities.” JAMA, JAMA Network, 22 June 2021, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2779399.

Yanovskiy, Konstantin. “Covid-19 Library. Filling the Gaps.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3784709.

Yanovskiy, Moshe, and Yehoshua Socol. “Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics?” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 29 July 2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9368251/#B4-ijerph-19-09295. 

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