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The conclusions of a research from the University of California, San Francisco (USA), hypothesize that wearing a mask would help create immunity to the new coronavirus.
The study was published by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, in which it is stated that the masks act as an element of “variolization”.
He realized?
According to this, If people become infected using a mask, there is a high probability of acquiring COVID-19 asymptomatically.
«The universal use of the mask could become a form of ‘variolation’ that would generate immunity and thus it would slow the spread of the virus in the United States and elsewhere, while we wait for a vaccine, ”the publication states.
To support this theory, the study mentions that in societies where the use of masks is almost universal, the proportion of asymptomatic cases is 80%.
On the contrary, in populations where the use of masks is not generalized, the proportion of asymptomatic cases is 40%.
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The research also cites two situations in which the use of a mask produced a high number of asymptomatic cases.
The first occurred on an Argentine ship and the second in a meat processing plant, in which, thanks to the early distribution of masks, the proportion of asymptomatic patients reached 81% and 95%, respectively.
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It is worth repeating that this is a hypothesis because, as the researchers explain, it could only be fully proven if large proportions of positive cases of coronavirus are studied in societies that use and do not use masks.
Variolization
The concept of variolation arose in ancient times, when a smallpox plague affected humanity, killing between 20 and 60 percent of the sick.
Given the high mortality, the doctors tried to inoculate people by making an incision in the skin of healthy individuals, to put powder from the smallpox scabs.
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Then the incision was closed and the person was left isolated from the others until the disease attacked him in a mild way, until he recovered.
The method was used until the variola vaccine was developed, which eventually eradicated smallpox.
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Based on this, the researchers believe that, “while we await the results of vaccine trials, any public health measure that can increase the proportion of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections can make the infection less deadly and increase the immunity of the entire population without serious illness or death. ‘