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Originally Posted by swagger
Way to miss the point, nana.
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/east-...b61845586837f4
in East Asian countries, the majority of the public adapted quickly to mask-wearing (or were already wearing them to begin with) ― something experts believe has contributed to lower COVID-19 death rates.
“Because of the custom of wearing masks here, it wasn’t necessary for the government to mandate mask wearing for a long time because the public had already widely adopted their use,” said Ria Sinha, a senior research fellow at the Center for the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. (Sinha is currently directing a COVID-19 archive project.)
Growing up in South Korea, Jamie Cho knew from childhood that if she got sick, she had to put a face mask on, even if it was just a common cold.
“My parents told me it was to keep myself and others safe,” she told HuffPost. “I would see others wear masks as well, especially during the winter seasons.”
The masks weren’t just a medical accessory, she said. For many, they served an aesthetic purpose: something a woman might put on to cover a makeup-less face while running errands or a K-Pop star might slip on to avoid being spotted by fans in an airport.
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Cho distinctly remembers that when her family moved to New York, her mom told her that she had to stop wearing masks in public because people would think she was ill or would look at her funny.
“She was scared of me seeming more foreign than I already was at the time as a young immigrant,” the college student said. “Because of that, I’ve never worn a mask in a Western country prior to COVID.”
Masking up is second nature to East Asian immigrants like Cho. But others haven’t taken so easily to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation to wear a facial covering. The guidelines have incited a nationwide feud about public health and civil liberties. Some Americans refuse to wear masks, claiming its contrary to their personal freedom. The most strident in the anti-mask movement have called them “unconstitutional,” “autocratic” and “muzzles.”
Meanwhile, in East Asian countries, the majority of the public adapted quickly to mask-wearing (or were already wearing them to begin with) ― something experts believe has contributed to lower COVID-19 death rates.
Naturally, there’s more to the story than masks: Compared to the West, East Asian countries tend to have much lower rates of obesity, a leading risk factor for serious COVID-19 cases. Preliminary studies have also suggested that East Asians may have built up an immunity to the virus, given the history of coronaviruses emerging in East Asia.
Pedestrians in face masks are a common sight in South Korea.
SIMON SHIN/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
Pedestrians in face masks are a common sight in South Korea.
But in light of overwhelming evidence supporting the efficacy of facial coverings, it’s probably fair to say the masks helped, too.
Take Hong Kong, for example.
“Because of the custom of wearing masks here, it wasn’t necessary for the government to mandate mask wearing for a long time because the public had already widely adopted their use,” said Ria Sinha, a senior research fellow at the Center for the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. (Sinha is currently directing a COVID-19 archive project.)
There’s a long history of East Asian countries masking up.
Just as the anti-mask movement in America goes back to the 1918-19 flu pandemic (yep, there were protests over government ordinances then, too), so does the East Asian inclination to wear a mask.
In those pandemic years, mask-wearing was widely promoted in Western nations and only then exported to Japan.
“It stayed in Japan, but it disappeared in the West,” said Mitsutoshi Horii, a professor of sociology at the University of Shumei in Japan who’s currently working at its overseas campus at Chaucer College in England. “In Japan, then and now, people are generally concerned with the airborne transmission of the virus, so people wear masks in the hope of reducing the risk of infection.”
Years later, when the flu vaccine had been developed, the Japanese government said it was more important to get the shot than to wear a mask; even so, enthusiastic usage continued in the island country.
In China, the use of face masks against epidemics was practiced even earlier. In 1910 and 1911, citizens were encouraged to wear masks to combat the pneumonic plague outbreak in Manchuria. By the time the plague abated, more than 60,000 people had died in modern-day northeast China, making it one of the world’s largest epidemics at the time.