An Open Opportunity For a Diffusion of a New Behavior of Wearing Masks That Can Lead to Cultural Change.
Around late February and early March, many countries worldwide had their eyes on two countries: Italy and South Korea. The reason being that Italy and South Korea had roughly the same number of cases around the same time yet had contrasting approaches on handling and stopping the spread on some of their earliest Covid-19 cases. South Korea offered testing for both asymptomatic and symptomatic patients, continuously encouraged people to wear masks, as well as implementing a strong contact tracing process. On the other hand, Italy offered testing to a limited population, had few or none of its people wearing masks, and a lack of enforcement on contact tracing. A couple weeks later, the number of new cases in South Korea were trickling to less than 100 new cases (and overcoming their peak) while Italy’s were rising higher than ever before.
Initially, the R0 of Covid-19 was thought to be somewhere between 2 to 3, meaning that a person who is infected is expected to infect two to three other people in the next wave and so on based on the branching process model. As time passed since the earliest cases, data has shown that R0 actually has a median of around 5.7, meaning that a person who is infected is expected to infect around six other people in the next wave and so on. In class, it was also mentioned that using R0 is found by multiplying p, the probability that a person will be infected after coming into contact with an infected person, and k, the number of people the infected person is expected to be in contact with. Part of South Korea’s success in driving down the number of new Covid-19 cases is their efforts in lowering p (e.g. encouraging its people to wear masks) and k (e.g. implementing a strict contact tracing process and mandating a quarantine period after coming into contact with someone who has been infected) in hopes to drive R0 down to a value less than 1 (the point where the next wave of people can no longer be infected). Although many countries now recognize wearing masks as an effective solution in mitigating the spread and lowering the probability of contracting Covid-19, this behavior was not always welcomed by many Western countries during the beginning of the pandemic.
During the early months of the pandemic, the habit of people wearing masks can be described as a diffusion of a new behavior. More specifically, I distinctly remember during the start of the Spring 2020 semester, many of my international friends from China were one of the first few people to wear masks in class. They can be described as the initial adapters of the behavior. However, as time progressed, I slowly spotted more people wearing masks in my classes, including non-international students. Whenever I had called home, my mother had also mentioned how she was also seeing more people wearing masks on the streets of New York City. At some point, my mother had also adapted the behavior and wore a mask herself. As the number of students wearing masks started increasing, I was also more willing to adapt to this new behavior and eventually wore a mask myself during the last few days of being on campus before going back home in mid March. By the time I had returned to campus for the Fall 2020 semester, everyone in the Cornell community had adapted the behavior of wearing a mask. This shows that the new behavior of wearing mask had been successfully adapted within the Cornell community group as more people were spotted wearing masks nationwide.
Besides recommendations from the CDC government and the global trend of wearing masks, many people from East Asian countries were susceptible to wearing masks early on during the outbreak due to a similar case that occurred in 2002. After asking my father why many East Asians were so willing to wear masks while many people from Western countries were so hesitant on adapting this new behavior in late March, he mentioned how the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak in China had influenced many East Asians’ culture and perspective on preventative ways in spreading diseases. More specifically, the behavior of wearing masks had helped control the spread of the 2002 SARS outbreak then so many knew to follow the same behavior for the Covid-19 outbreak. Even after the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, many East Asians continue to wear masks, in general, whenever they got sick. They managed to turn the stigma and image of wearing masks as a signal of being sick and someone to stay away from into a cultural behavior and something that is looked well upon: wearing masks is a form of respect and way to show that you are looking out for others by taking initiative in protecting everyone. When the Covid-19 pandemic ends, I hope that many Western countries will follow a similar path as East Asian countries: to continue wearing masks whenever one gets sick and successfully change the stigma of when a person chooses to wear a mask.
Sources:
https://www.healthline.com/health/r-nought-reproduction-number