Joe Biden and 100 days of masks

When Joe Biden likely is sworn in as the next president next year, he is expected to ask the public to go 100 days wearing a mask.

“The first day I’m inaugurated to say I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask. Just 100 days to mask, not forever. One hundred days.”

“And I think we’ll see a significant reduction if we occur that, if that occurs with vaccinations and masking to drive down the numbers considerably.” 

This is interesting for a few reasons.

First, a few weeks back, there were rumors that if Joe Biden were to become president he would require a mask mandate across the nation.

This understandably made a lot of people angry and there was a lot of instant opposition to the idea.

Shortly after that, the rumor was dispelled and Biden reportedly stated that he wanted to keep that as a local decision and not a federal mandate.

It’s worth noting that he does plan on making it a requirement to wear a mask inside of government buildings.

“I’m going to issue a standing order that in federal buildings you have to be masked,” he said.

So if you have any plans on visiting government buildings in the next few months, assuming they are open, you’ll likely be required to wear a mask when indoors.

This will also apply to transportation.

He added: “Transportation, interstate transportation, you must be masked, airplanes and buses, et cetera.”

I’ve seen a lot of conflicting reports on the effectiveness of masks.

I’m not a medical expert so I will withhold my opinion on what works and what doesn’t but as a non-expert it is difficult to know who to believe when you see so much conflicting information.

I think the reality is we still don’t definitively know a lot of things about this virus and that is why we have heard so much conflicting and contradictory guidance since March.

I also think that there are so many factors that go into stopping the spread of the virus that it is difficult to point specifically to one action such as wearing masks as the central reason for why numbers go down.

For example, if a city requires masks but also has other measures that prevent people from congregating and socializing, it could be those other measures that are more effective.

Personally, I do wear a mask and believe that it does help to prevent droplets from spreading from the mouth and nose, which in turn would help decrease things like the viral load and rate of spread.

But again I’m not the expert.

I do think that regardless of whether or not people follow this request to wear a mask for 100 days, we will likely see a very positive outcome during that time period.

But the most significant thing that will be happening during those 100 days will be folks getting vaccinated.

We know based on data of tens of thousands of subjects that the vaccines likely to get approved are highly effective at preventing the disease known as the coronavirus.

Masks may help to an extent but I would imagine that the vaccines will be what ultimately yields amazing results in terms of cases declining.

H/T