Why Chinese people wearing masks
There is a question on Quora which confused me for a long time:
Why did the U.S. surgeon general urge the public to stop buying masks, warning that it won’t help against the spread of the coronavirus when we see all of Asia wearing masks?
I don’t know if other Asia countries such as Japan and Korea all wear masks or not. I come from China so that I can understand why it happened in China.
One month ago, at the end of February, when the coronavirus already spread all over the world I noticed a very interesting fact that China is the only country as I know still telling their people wearing masks is the only most important way to protect themselves from coronavirus. Meanwhile almost all other countries are telling different stories: keep social distance, wash your hand properly and avoid touching your face before washing your hand.
The other fact is that almost every country has an official website that releases the updated information about coronavirus like how it spread, learn about symptoms, how to protect yourself and others etc. But not including China. I checked China National Health Commission website and China CDC website. There are lots of news about coronavirus on their homepage such as how successfully they defeat coronavirus but can not find any objective information about coronavirus.
So based on those two facts and my experience in China I can understand why.
First of all, China is a very crowded country. Most people live in apartments and use public transport everyday. So keeping social distance is just impossible. The only effective way to reduce droplet spread is everyone wearing masks. After 24th January there are no masks on the market anymore. You can get some basic masks by ones or twos but definitely no N95/P2 masks. So the purpose of wearing basic masks is not to protect you from coronavirus but to protect others from your droplet.
Secondly, as I know lots of Chinese people do not trust their authority. They are not motivated to follow authority’s order unless there are benefit or punishment. So if the authority wants all the people wearing masks they need to do two jobs. One is pushing the police and community committee to check everyone and force people wearing masks. The other is to let people believe wearing masks is for their own benefit. It can protect themselves from coronavirus. As I know lots of my friends in China still believe coronavirus can spread via airborne or even fecal-oral route. I think the authority didn’t deny these rumours on purpose.
