It may or may not, the effect is the same in countries where nobody wears masks.

tl;dr nursing homes need special care during this event and it has been shown that doing so does reduce infection rates if not deaths

As to present numbers...

Well we stopped forcing nursing homes from accepting sick people during the event and not exposing those most at risk does tend to result in fewer deaths.

A lot of deaths could have been avoided if we went out of way to not expose those most at risk but some states actually did the exact opposite.

The Prophet's Dilemma

Years of studying pointed in different directions. Now all of a sudden they work. Same with vaccinations - if you shortcut the process the acceptance rate will drop significantly

Years of studying what?

They meant masks

You mean the heads of the US health officials who advised not to wear masks at the start of the pandemic because they don’t help? Yeah, I wonder why people distrust them now...

Except this is happening in countries and states with no mask wearing. So your null hypothesis is shot.

As I write this the post I reply to is downvoted, but it seems to be true in Norway were there's hardly a mask to be seen outside of the big cities.

Full disclosure: An alternative explanation here in Norway seems to be that the second wave mostly hits younger people.

Edit: there's a dead comment saying "citation needed".

As for the "hardly a mask to be seen" that is my eyewitness account based on what I see in shops and gas stations I visit as well as reading and watching the news.

The numbers of deaths / infections can be derived from here: https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/?utm_source=corona-wid...

Do you have a source for that? The article seems to disagree and I'd be interested to see some concrete data.

Point to me a single country or state "with no mask wearing". There are sane people (and believe it or not, a lot of them) everywhere, even where politicians are insane.

Uhh, famously, Sweden? Where have you been?

As I said, politicians asking people not to wear masks != no people wearing masks. And here's a Reuters report from two months ago saying mask sales soared, picturing at least one person wearing mask: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden...

According to YouGov the latest numbers are 9% wearing masks when in public, it has become a bit higher lately (was 7% just a couple of weeks ago). But I think 9% is far too high. I very rarely encounter a mask while taking a walk in the city closest to where I live. Although that might be due to those wearing masks not being as active in public.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/articles-repor...

I'm pro mask, but I don't get wearing a mask if someone is just walking outside with no one around them. It's not like the whole world turned to Pripyat next to Chernobyl...

Sometimes I leave the mask on outside, even though it's a little ridiculous, because I find it awkward when someone does show up and you both do the 'put on the mask dance.' I hate the mask dance. It makes me feel really uncomfortable. So, I just leave it on.

Sometimes I just forget too. I accidentally terrorized a young couple at Joshua Tree last weekend, because I didn't have my mask on, I was out climbing and in my 'happy place,' and I completely forgot there was a pandemic and just wandered right by them and waved and said 'hi.' It wasn't until later that evening that I realized why they were looking at me with wide-eyes and edging away from me. So, I wish I had just left the thing on in that case.

People forget that early on masks were almost impossible to get. And hospitals needed what few could be found.

So telling people to wear what they couldn’t get was awkward.

Sweden, along with the other Scandinavian examples, are also way less densely populated, particularly compared to a place like NYC.

There's also completely different base-levels for access to healthcare, different climates, a ton of factors besides masks.

One might as well point at Asian countries like Taiwan, Vietnam or Korea. Those are densely populated countries were mask-use is wide-spread and generally considered to have done best in their response, with the numbers to back it up.

Sweden is the best example, although not necessarily a model of success.

https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

A search shows 14% mask wearing in Sweden.

Do you recommend 14% mask wearing in the US? What's the current rate in the US? Is there a big difference between the outcomes of 14% and whatever the rate is in the US?

At least in Stockholm, where I live, 1.4% sounds high compared to my observations.

Florida, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, etc. It's not mandated my state law, and it's frequently disregarded in many jurisdictions that do. You would expect that states with stricter restrictions and higher compliance would have better results but the data does not show that.