The Ethics of Wearing (or Not Wearing) a Face Mask During the Coronavirus Pandemic
mericans have not always done selfless well. The country’s vast landmass and frontier history have long made American culture one that highly prizes personal freedom—often at the expense of the public good. Enter coronavirus, enter the face mask, and all of that gets exacerbated.
What we don’t know about face masks is in some ways as great as what we do know. A properly fitted N95 mask can be extremely effective at protecting the wearer from being infected by others, as well as protecting others from being infected by the wearer. But simple surgical masks or homemade masks? The scientific research to date suggests they do a much better job of protecting other people from you than protecting you from other people.
On April 3, President Trump announced that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would now be recommending the use of cloth masks—including the do-it-yourself kind—to prevent asymptomatic people from spreading the virus. Whether the measure will be widely adopted is uncertain, at least in part because of how mask-wearing is perceived in the U.S.
It might seem that, if masks are scarce, they should go to the people most at risk of suffering significantly from COVID-19. Primarily, that means older people, and especially those with underlying health conditions. But, says Berg, if the purpose of a mask is really to prevent the wearer from spreading the virus, “Maybe in fact the right person to buy a mask would be your healthy millennial. They’re the people who would be walking around more.
Masks also can be a form of virtue-signaling. Bioethicist Nancy Kass, deputy director for public health of Johns Hopkins University’s Berman Institute, shares examples of social behavior that are admittedly anecdotal, but nonetheless telling. “A friend of mine who lives in an apartment building tells me that when he’s wearing a mask other people won’t get in an elevator with him,” she says.
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