Thread by @VincentRK

One common question in recent days: How come places with mask mandates & restrictions have also been affected with high rates of COVID?

A few thoughts:

1) We are dealing with an enemy that doesn’t play fair. So unless there is high compliance, it exploits the weakest link.

2) Unfortunately masks are only one piece of the puzzle needed to stop COVID. They work in concert with other measures including border control, testing, tracing, ventilation, social distancing, protecting vulnerable populations etc. They work as part of a coordinated strategy.

3)Some places did do well for months. But then when they relaxed, the virus came right back. Until we have herd immunity from vaccines, the COVID virus does not magically disappear with just a few months of compliance. Needs to be sustained. Thankfully we have an end in sight.

4) Some places like Australia, and New Zealand implemented pretty strict border controls early on. This made it difficult for the virus to enter their countries from outside. They have then been able to relax restrictions because there is no COVID inside their borders to speak of

4) Once there are tens of thousands of cases of COVID within the borders it becomes hard to do control. Hard to screen borders after the fact. So we have to rely on preventing spread from within. This is where masks, distancing, testing etc come in.

5) When 9/11 happened we gave up a lot of freedoms. Some permanently.

COVID is causing 9/11 like death tolls everyday for months now. The freedoms we give up by wearing masks and social distancing is temporary. We already have vaccines. So it won’t be much longer.

6) I wish this was a pandemic that came with warning and spread slowly, so that we could do randomized trials and prove that masks work. Or that distancing works. We didn’t have that luxury. We had to go with best medical judgment & data. And we did have a lot of supporting data.

7) No one is going to be able to prove conclusively anything. But it is clear that countries that did everything aggressively from the start have suffered the least. You can call it luck. But they have peace of mind. Im sure they are happy to have “overreacted”.

Thanks for many replies. I’m linking to a thread I did before that highlights how transmission happens in small get togethers at home may be useful. 👇

https://twitter.com/VincentRK/status/1322220518607626245