Math is great. It is the language of the Universe. If you want to explain something complex, the easiest way to make sure it is expressed correctly is through mathematics.
If you’re skeptical about the effectiveness of wearing a mask and social distancing, I thought it might be fun to re-visit a little experiment I ran through way back on March 24th. With a twist.
Mathing our hearts out
Researchers know this virus spreads quickly. What researchers don’t know is how each next person will react to the virus. That is the biggest hurdle with COVID-19. While one person may get it and feel fine, the other could end up in the ICU. Or worse.
That is why wearing a mask is important! You can protect yourself and others! At the same time.
I want to share a little example of how fast this thing can spread. Below is a spreadsheet showing how this infection can move. Let’s assume for a moment that I, Nick Lilja, got the virus. Thankfully, in this made up example, I am not being bothered by it. Because of that, I keep going about my business. Since there is no mask mandate for my area, I’m just walking around with no mask, talking to neighbors and friends, going to barbecues, and getting my hair cut.
Unbeknownst to me, I infect three other people. But because I didn’t know I had it, these people don’t know that they, too, are now infected. And since the incubation period can be between 3 and 14 days, these three people go about their lives for a few days without even knowing they are infected with the virus and are spreading it around, too.
Those three people? They infect three other people, too. And so on.
And you may be saying, yeah, Nick, but that doesn’t even seem like that much. And you’re right. If we stopped there, it would be 27 infected people. That would be manageable. And hopefully, everyone would survive.
Based on the recent statistics, there is a good chance that no one dies and that up to three people end up in the hospital.
But without social distancing, wearing a mask and washing our hands frequently, that trend will just continue. If you follow the math out, and three people pass it to three more people 10 total times? A total of 59,000 people end up infected. You do that 15 total times, you infect 14 million people. You do that 20 times and you get to 3.4 Billion. With a B. Billion. Not a typo.
How is that possible? The power of doubling is pretty incredible. The power of tripling? Holy moly.
In Mississippi, that is why case numbers escalated so quickly recently and also why – without intervention – the numbers will continue to balloon. It isn’t “Fake news” nor is it only “people getting tested and re-tested dozens of times” nor is it the addition of antigen testing. The problem is basic math.
This is why taking protective measures (masks, social distancing, washing hands) are so important.
But you may ask, “How effective are masks, though?”
A great question! And you guys know that I don’t usually link to other media outlets, but I’m going to break my own rule for that right now. KHQ, a TV station out in Spokane, Washington, did a great experiment to find out just how effective masks are. Take a look.
If you don’t trust “the media” that is fine. It is good to be skeptical! But check out this paper titled, “Utility of Cloth Masks in Preventing Respiratory Infections: A Systematic Review” may help provide some evidence.
“The review was limited by a lack of sufficient clinical studies. Lack of standardization between studies was another limitation. Although cloth masks generally perform poorer than the medical grade masks, they may be better than no masks at all. Filtration efficacy varied greatly depending on the material used, with some materials showing a filtration efficacy above 90%. However, leakage could reduce efficacy of masks by about 50%. Standardization of cloth masks and appropriate use is essential for cloth masks to be effective.”
Here is a table pulled from the paper highlighting other studies of face-coverings, with the findings from those studies:
While not perfect, the authors did note that if masks are worn, correctly, by all parties there was a drastic reduction in airborne pathogen ejection.
Uninformed vs. Misinformed vs. Informed
Sophia McClennen, a professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at Penn State, made a great point during an interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson
“What we are seeing today, isn’t so much a distinction between ignorance and knowledge,” McClennen said during her time on StarTalk. “It is misinformed versus uninformed. Versus informed. So if you are misinformed and I try to inform you, it is not likely to go well for me. Because I will ask you to give up a thing you think is true.”
She went on to explain that misinformation, today, is worse than at any other period in time in human history. Despite the ease of access to information.
I bring up because there is a lot of misinformation out there about COVID-19, how it spreads, what the illness is like, and who is susceptible to infection. And it is very important – maybe now more than ever? – that when you “learn” something new about this virus, that you make sure what you are learning is accurate.
I’ll give you an example. Someone today told me that a new study suggested that household spread was far more likely to occur than casual spread from meeting someone on the street. I thought that seems like it may make sense, albeit perhaps for the wrong reasons. So, I tried to google around to find the paper to read it.
I found many articles published by places like “health24.com” and “eurekalaert.org” but I couldn’t find anything from a firmly reputable site. A place like the CDC, NIH, or even The Lancet or BioRXiv. Seemed odd.
Eventually I found it by googling excerpts from the paper itself that some of the sites used.
The paper, titled, “Household secondary attack rate of COVID-19 and associated determinants in Guangzhou, China: a retrospective cohort study”
Before I go any further, here are some of the headlines:
— “Study: Household Spread of Coronavirus Likely More Common” – USNEWS
— “How easily does coronavirus spread at home?” – Health24
— “Shocking! Coronavirus may spread more easily at home” – National Chronicle
You may read those headlines, and a few sentences or paragraphs from these articles and think, “Man! It spreads faster at home than when I go to the store?! I’m in more danger in my own house! Why are we shutting down businesses??”
But you’re actually not safer at home. The headlines are misleading. The articles may not fully explain the study and what the actual researchers said their findings were.
Here is what the researchers who wrote the paper said as their interpretation of the completed study:
“SARS-CoV-2 is more transmissible in households than SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. Older individuals (aged ≥60 years) are the most susceptible to household transmission of SARS-CoV-2. In addition to case finding and isolation, timely tracing and quarantine of close contacts should be implemented to prevent onward transmission during the viral incubation period.”
So the people who did the study are saying – literally – nothing about it spreading more at home than anywhere else. Instead, they found that is spread faster at home than other diseases spread at home. And that isolation is important for those who have symptoms.
The authors noted that because people can spread the virus while presymptomatic and asymptomatic, it is was estimated that the restrictions put in place – masks, social distancing, city shutdowns – lowered the “local reproductive number” by 20-to–50 percent.
Meaning, that keeping people home, despite the increased infection rate compared to MERS and SARS, reduced the community spread by up to 50-percent.
But had someone just read a headline and moved on, that person would’ve been misinformed. And later, it would’ve been more difficult to change that person’s mind due to people’s disinterest in corrective information. In fact, in a paper titled, “Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news” published in April of 2019, authors found that corrective information about science is sometimes completely dismissed.
The authors wrote:
“Unfortunately, simply providing individuals with corrective, factual information is not guaranteed to fix misperceptions, as “strongly entrenched beliefs” are often likely to “survive the addition of non-supportive evidence”. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that attempts to correct misinformation about both political and scientific topics among individuals with the most strongly held beliefs can instead backfire, entrenching them further in their false views.”
And that is troubling enough when talking about the flat earth, heat lightning, or frosts in April. But it becomes a real conundrum for scientists during a pandemic. Because, based on the findings of the study, there is no amount of accurate, factual, real data and information anyone can discuss that will change that person’s mind. Nothing.
That said, those same authors did find that “there is some evidence that correcting misinformation via an algorithmically driven “related stories” function on social media platforms can reduce misperceptions of science-related information ”
So, for those people who say, “no one has ever changed anyone’s mind on social media!” They may want to think again (yup,I’m testing some people with corrective information)!
The bottom line
Studies continue to show evidence that wearing masks is more effective at slowing the spread than not wearing masks. And misinformation – of all kinds – is a hard hill to climb for scientists.
The combination of those two things is – possibly – the reason wearing a mask has become so polarizing. Despite scientific evidence. And mathematical proof.
