The Importance of Face Masks and the Tragedy of Downplaying Them
Let’s start all over again about face masks. The noise about them is a Judas Priest blare. Can we turn down the volume for a moment? OK, good, thanks. Now, let’s talk about their value. Why there is such discord about them. After all, what has the clamor wrought? Nothing good, says Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and associate division chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine.
Gandhi has experienced the racket firsthand. In June she published a study, “Masks Do More Than Protect Others During COVID-19,” which discusses “for one of the first times the hypothesis that universal masking reduces the ‘inoculum’ or dose of the virus for the mask-wearer, leading to more mild and asymptomatic infection” rates. When the study was publicized, Gandhi’s Twitter account was stoned with hate. “I got so many anti-masker comments,” she says. “They were really harsh. They went on about oxygenation and smothering and how there’s no evidence for masking. They were profoundly disturbing. So I signed out and have no intention of going back to Twitter.”
Gandhi says this in the most bitter-free tones you can imagine. She has researched HIV and been a clinician on the AIDS ward at San Francisco General Hospital for years. She knows a thing or two about a deadly virus, how it gets tangled up in politics, and how it tears people’s lives apart. She has earned her authority and calm demeanor, which I could tell the moment we started our interview. Most of all, Gandhi says, she wants to rise above the fray and inform. I began with the most basic question I could think of.
