Masks are the "greatest vaccine" to prevent COVID-19

While the global spread of Corona 19 is not easily subsiding, studies have shown that masks are the "greatest vaccine" to prevent Corona19.

A joint research team consisting of researchers from Yale University and Stanford University and Bangladesh's non-profit organization Green Voice recently concluded that the actual mask is effective in corona 19 infection after a clinical trial of about 340,000 adults in 600 villages in Bangladesh. Previously, several studies have been published that masks are effective in preventing corona 19, but this is the first time that such a large-scale study has been carried out.

The research team encouraged about 178,000 Bangladeshis to use masks from October last year to April this year. 163,000 people lived without a mask, or recommended or mediated. The results showed that patients with corona 19 symptoms in test-gun villages who actively encouraged wearing masks were 9 percent less than those in control villages where people lived without masks.

The researchers estimate that the actual decrease rate will be much higher if the patients with asymptomatic infections and those who did not take corona 19 infection tests are included. Jason Avalak, an economist at Yale University who led the study, said, "The results of this study should never suggest that only 10 percent of masks have an infection effect. If wearing masks is universal, this number will be several times larger."

Bangladesh has been required to wear masks since March last year, but most people live without them. The "Test Army Village," which recommended wearing masks, saw its mask rate increase from 13 percent to 42 percent during the project. Even after the project was over, the increased wearing rate remained steady. By type of mask, surgical masks have a higher rate of corona 19 prevention compared to cloth masks. The prevention rate of corona19 has decreased for cloth masks.

Critics of the mandatory wearing of masks have argued that there is no "proper clinical trial" that randomly assigns participants to test and control groups, thus reducing the credibility of the mask's Corona 19 prevention effect. The clinical results give new grounds to refute the logic of those who oppose wearing masks.

"The anti-mask opponents have insisted that no random checks have been conducted on the mask," said Madgan Laney, a professor of emergency medicine at Brown University in the U.S. "Now I can confidently say that the evidence is here."

Last year, a study found that wearing a mask is more likely to lead to symptoms even if it is infected with Corona19. The explanation is that wearing a mask causes fewer viruses to enter the respiratory system, which makes it easier for the immune system to neutralize Corona 19. In fact, the mask acts as a living vaccine.

Monika Gandhi, a researcher at the University of California, said in a commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine that using masks can increase the rate of asymptomatic infections. They claim that masks significantly reduce the amount of exposure to the respiratory tract of Corona 19, giving the body the "effect" of injecting only a small amount of viruses like vaccines. The logic is that this creates a neutral antibody that disables the virus in the body, even though it does not experience symptoms or experiences symptoms very lightly, and eventually prevents corona 19 re-infection.

The researchers cited the outbreak of the Corona 19 outbreak at a food factory in Oregon in the U.S. At that time, all factory employees were wearing masks, and more than 90 percent of the actual infections were found to have been only asymptomatic. "We can't completely replace the vaccine, but we have the possibility of developing corona 19 immunity in a natural way while waiting for it to be vaccinated," Gandhi said.