The Price for Not Wearing Masks: Perhaps 130,000 Lives (New York Times via MSN)

The article reports on a study published in Nature (the compete study is linked there).

Universal mask use could prevent nearly 130,000 deaths from Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, in the United States through next spring, scientists reported on Friday.

Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters “Increasing mask use is one of the best strategies that we have right now to delay the imposition of social distancing mandates and all the economic effects of that, and save lives,” said one expert.

The findings follow an assertion by Dr. Scott W. Atlas, the president’s science adviser, that masks are ineffective, in a tweet later taken down by Twitter for spreading misinformation. On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance recommending mask use in public settings, including public transportation.

A surge of infections, driven in part by neglect of safety precautions, has begun to overwhelm hospitals in much of the nation. More than 75,000 new cases were reported in the United States on Thursday, the second-highest daily total nationwide since the pandemic began. Eight states set single-day case records.

These numbers are likely to continue through the fall and winter, with a steady rise in cases and deaths until January and staying high after that point, said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and lead author of the report.

and

The new study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, also offered a rough estimate of the pandemic’s toll in the United States: perhaps 500,000 deaths by March 2021, even with social distancing mandates reinstated in most states.

Other experts cautioned that, as with any model, the new estimates are based on many assumptions and should not be seen as predictions.

“It’s not a prediction or forecast, because we can will this number out of existence,” said Shweta Bansal, an infectious disease modeler at Georgetown University who was not involved in the new work.

Instead, she said, the model should be seen as a “sophisticated thought experiment” whose conclusions can significantly change if people alter their behavior.

Good luck with that. We’re ruled by genocidaires. At this point it appears they want a genocide, not that they are inept or uninformed.