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Saturday 12 December 2020
New Corona Study
Masks reduce the risk of infection by 45 percent
Jena was the first city in Germany to introduce a mask requirement. The researchers compared the data obtained with cities with similar conditions. Now they have published convincing results for the protection of the mouth and nose.
According to one study, protecting the mouth and nose reduces the risk of corona infection by almost half, by an average of about 45 percent. “That’s 55 instead of 100 new infections,” said Mainz economist Klaus Wilder, one of the authors of the study published in the journal “PNAS”. “Or even more clearly: instead of 20,000 new infections a day, we would have around 38,000 without masks.” His conclusion: “Everyone should wear masks to protect themselves and others from infection.”
Together with three other economists, he had investigated the Sonderweg Jena and compared it with data from similar German cities. In the city of Thuringia, protective masks, accompanied by an advertising campaign, were introduced on April 6, about three weeks earlier than in most other German districts and cities.
“It was an extreme stroke of luck that one would wish much more often to be able to see the channels of infection in reality,” Wilder said. The scientists compared Jena to cities like Trier, Darmstadt, Cloppenburg, and Rostock. The infection rate, population density, average age, proportion of older people, and availability of doctors and pharmacies were similar to those in Jena. “We observed what was happening in Jena and the comparison regions three weeks after the introduction of the mask requirement.”
To exclude other effects, the scientists considered other regulations in Germany during this time. “There were no changes to the ordinances in Jena and Thuringia eight to twelve days before and after April 6,” Wilder said. “This made it clear that we had identified the effect of the masks. We cannot completely rule out other changes in behavior due to the effects of the cues.” One of those signal effects would be that people generally behave more cautiously in the presence of masks.
