33,000 Deaths Can Be Prevented If 95% Of People Wear Masks, Study Says

Remember, back in March, both the CDC and the WHO came right out and said that healthy people didn't need to wear masks. For the most part, people were staying home as much as possible anyway, and there simply weren't enough masks to go around if everybody wanted to wear one.

The masks on hand needed to be reserved for healthcare workers, some of whom were improvising with things like plastic report covers when PPE was in short supply.

Just look at this tweet from Surgeon General Jerome Adams back in February, urging people to not buy masks.

By then, the way the disease spreads had been studied much more extensively. Experts could see that just talking or breathing can cause its spread - not just coughing and sneezing.

Manufacturing efforts had also begun to catch up to the shortages, making more masks available to the public.

People are often at their most infectious 48 hours before showing symptoms, and can carry the disease for up to two weeks before showing any symptoms. Anybody out there who isn't coughing, who looks and acts perfectly normal, could have the disease, so it's critical to reduce the opportunities for spread to occur.

"Everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public, for example to the grocery store or to pick up other necessities," the CDC says.

The only exceptions should be "young children under age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance."

It's also worth noting that mask-wearing shouldn't replace other measures to reduce the disease's spread, like maintaining distance and washing hands.

According to a study out of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE), if 95% people committed to wearing a mask when they're out and about, 33,000 further deaths could be prevented by October 1.

"People need to know that wearing masks can reduce transmission of the virus by as much as 50%, and those who refuse are putting their lives, their families, their friends, and their communities at risk," IMHE's Dr. Christopher Murray wrote in the study.

If the disease continues to spread unchecked, many states will face the prospect of having to shut down again. States that have mandated mask wearing have seen considerably less infections, with one study showing that up to 450,000 infections were prevented between April 8 and May 15 in states that required mask use.

"For pretty much every state that we've looked at, if we can get people to wear masks, we can not only save lives, but ... we can also save the economy, because we can keep businesses going," Dr. Murray told CNN.

h/t: CNN