Why many avoid wearing a mask?

I came across an interesting article by Krishan Kumar, former director of NCERT, which highlighted the ignorance of rot information which does not manifest into knowledge and at a time of pandemic this rot information gets widespread among the masses for ensuing precautions and assurance from the graph of the infected population to get stagnant.

He narrated an incident where his rickshaw driver was rushing above the speed limit, and when asked to slow down, the drivers calmly asserted that death is inevitable and the susceptibility of an accident will remain the same even at a lower speed. He credits this logic of the driver with academic parlance titled as “expression of fatalism”, here the individual does not go into the nuances of an event and just looks at the issues with a broader perspective and states it to be unavoidable with any amount of action to be futile to avert the consequences. 

In terms of Covid and its response to wearing face masks, one notices that it goes with the level of an individual’s perception of risk and tendency towards risky behaviour which is guided by ignorance of the act itself. In other words, the plain and dry information of wearing a mask was not enough to instil a precautionary behaviour as the individual has no practical information of his/her susceptibility. In some comical scenario like in the USA, wearing a mask until recently was greatly determined by the political party one supports and their income levels. 

Initially, the idea of wearing masks did not make sense to me either as the greater thought that was propagated by media houses was that if anyone sneezes then their droplets will remain confined inside their mask, thus avoiding any infection to spread but in practical point of view this manoeuvre is practised by very few during an event of a sneeze as many tend to remove their masks and some do not even cover with their hands or elbow. Even sneezing into the mask makes it wet and less effective says Eleanor Murray, assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. 

Then is it necessary or logical to wear a mask?

The short answer is a big “Yes” and everyone needs to adhere to it.

The reason being that the severity of the virus depends on the amount it is present inside an individual which is also termed as virus load and the amount of virus, or viral load, appears to be highest in the nose and throat of infected people shortly after symptoms develop. The major reason also that government agency and health organization are stressing the use of a mask for a longer duration of time is to avoid the spread of infection through “aerosols” which are a droplet of different sizes that are secreted even during breathing or talking. These airborne aerosols are not noticed by the naked eye and get transmitted easily while having a normal conversation between two individuals. Here masks come in handy which prevents smaller droplet particles to travel a longer distance, even during a normal conversation or breathing in a crowded area. 

“While the cloth, homemade masks don’t prevent every single little particle from spreading out in the air, they interrupt the trajectory of a lot of those different particles.” Says Maria Sundaram epidemiological research at ICES Ontario.

Conclusion

Krishna Kumar argues that “the teaching of science is more than talking about science and telling students what out to be done” as after independence teaching of science was merely a policy initiative to create general awareness on diseases prevention. With no room for dissent or debate on topics and general understanding that only helps one fulfil an examination rather than an evidence-based understanding. This public system has failed miserably and has let people adapt to misinformation and miracle health secret being propagated through instant messaging even during an adverse period such as a pandemic. It is important to understand the measures taken to tackle the infection as it will instil a responsive behaviour in an individual rather than just following a set of guidelines or rules to avoid getting penalised.