5 Reasons You Should Wear a Face Mask to Lower Risk

Some studies, including a paper recently published in the journal _Nature_, have found that over 40 percent of people with coronavirus infections never develop symptoms of COVID-19. This

makes it extremely difficult to detect who is a potential transmitter of virus, Waldman says. That is why wearing a mask, even if you believe you are healthy, is recommended both by the CDC

and the World Health Organization (WHO). It's one way to help prevent unknowingly spreading the virus to others, especially those who are more likely to become severely ill if infected

by the coronavirus. "It's a sense of social responsibility,” says Neysa Ernst, R.N., a nurse manager of the Biocontainment Unit at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. You wear

a mask because you “want to protect society,” she adds. 3. MASKS CAN PROTECT YOU, AS WELL A few studies suggest cloth face masks offer some protection for the wearer, but the protective

perks are most obvious when everyone covers the mouth and nose. Think of it as a collective benefit: The more people who block the transmission of the virus with face coverings, the less

virus there is circulating in the community. This reduces everyone's risk for infection. "If that chain is cut anywhere, then the virus is no longer able to propagate or to be

transmitted,” Waldman says. “So whether you intervene on the side of the transmitter or the side of the receiver of viral transmission, if you can block the passage of the virus on either

end of that chain, then everyone benefits from that.” A few studies highlight the power of widespread community use of face coverings. A report published in _Health Affairs_, for example,

found that states with face mask mandates had a greater decline in daily COVID-19 growth rates compared with states that did not issue mandates. The authors estimate that these mask policies

may have prevented as many as 450,000 coronavirus cases in the U.S. What's more, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington predicts face masks

could save as many as 34,000 lives in the next few months. The institute currently forecasts that 180,000 people in the U.S. will die from the coronavirus by Oct. 1. But if at least 95

percent of people wear masks in public, that number will drop to about 146,000.