Can face masks help you gain immunity to the Covid-19 coronavirus?

So you’ve probably heard that you are supposed to wear a mask to protect other people from you. That a face cover is a filter for “coughing” as well as a filter for sneezing, chattering, singy, panty, and breathable. Which is basically facial underwear. That it can block possible Covid-19 coronavirus-laden substances that come out of the nose and mouth. That should consider #Maskingforafriend, as the Pandemic Action Network hashtag says.

But is there something in this for you, you know, besides all the good for humanity, we are all in this together? Could wearing a normal face mask protect you too, even if it’s not an N95 mask or something else that has been shown to filter virus particles? Well a piece of Perspective in the New England Journal of Medicine has offered one or two possible benefits to you.

Yes, in this article, Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH and George W. Rutherford, MD of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote that “the masks can filter some droplets that contain viruses (with filter capacity determined by the type of mask), masking could reduce the inoculum that an exposed person inhales. ” Inoculum is the amount of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) that enters your body. Since your risk of getting infected may depend on how much virus you are exposed to, you can see how a face covering could reduce your risk of infection.

But possibly there is something else. Gandhi and Rutherford posit that a normal face mask might work a bit like a vaccine and give you immunity against the Covid-19 coronavirus. A vaccine? How? Are you supposed to inject the mask into your arm? No, and please don’t do that. The idea is that a mask could help you gain immunity through “variolation.”

Various what? Variation? Very important nation? Rhythm nation? Constipation? No, variolation. A website from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) describes how variolation was used in Asia years ago to try to immunize people against smallpox. This involved removing dry smallpox scabs from people who had smallpox and then blowing their noses. Besides the wonderful feeling of scabs creeping up your nose, what is this supposed to do? The scabs may have a certain amount of the virus, but not as much as a person who is actively shedding the virus. A smaller amount of the virus was supposed to result in a milder form of the disease that could better survive. Survival then could mean immunity to smallpox.

Is TED-Ed The video describes how the use of variolation eventually led to the development of the smallpox vaccine:

As you can see, variolation is not exactly the same as vaccination, although they do rhyme a bit. Variolation is exposure to the actual live virus, while vaccination tends to use weakened or inactivated forms of virus.

So the idea here is that a common face covering could make the Covid-19 coronavirus variolation. The mask would allow a smaller dose of the virus to get into the nose or mouth. The smallest dose may not be enough to cause a more serious infection. Surviving a milder infection could mean immunity to the Covid-19 coronavirus. Maybe, possibly, maybe.

So what evidence did Gandhi and Rutherford offer for this possibility? They cited examples of SARS-CoV2 outbreaks that have occurred in settings where a large percentage of people wore face masks and noted that a much higher percentage of SARS-CoV2 infections ended up being asymptomatic or mild. They also noted that “countries that have adopted whole population masking have performed better in terms of rates of severe Covid-related illness and death, which, in settings with limited evidence, suggests a shift from symptomatic to asymptomatic infections.” .

Of course, such observations can only suggest associations and correlations, but they don’t really serve as evidence of cause and effect. While the “variolation” theory for face masks is intriguing, the current evidence deserves a “C”, like wait and see. Gandhi and Rutherford admitted that more studies are needed before stronger conclusions can be drawn.

In the meantime, there are still other good reasons to wear face covers. Protecting others from you should be a good reason, assuming you are not a vile person who hates others. You could protect yourself a bit from face masks in the same way that wearing underwear in a snowstorm is better than wearing nothing at all. Then there are secondary benefits like:

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So continue to hide when you can be closer to each other, especially if you can be together inside or within a Denzel of each other. (Denzel Washington is about six feet tall.) Some may be trying to convince you that wearing face masks is not good because they can cause carbon dioxide to build up in your body (not true), lower your immunity (also, not true), or make you smell your own burps (OK , that’s true). But in the end, the benefits of wearing a mask must outweigh the cons.