[freeandfreezing]

It seems like you like to think about the math behind things.

If the apparent success of mask wearing to reduce the deaths per million people in a country results from the effects of the mask then it seems like the most likely place for COVID-19 infections to be transmitted is outside, on the street or in a mass transit vehicle. And not in meetings, dinners at restaurants, bars, church services, or many other public events. Because people in mask wearing countries, prior to the widespread response to COVID-19 did not wear masks in many social circumstances.

The change in behavior to nearly constant mask wearing, and other social distancing measures did not start until after the outbreaks were under way. And in several of the countries listed the outbreaks never really got underway, but remained small enough for contract tracing and isolation to be used to quell the epidemic.

Worldwide some of the situations where the epidemic spread most rapidly were situations like the dinner party in Connecticut, or the Biogen meeting in Boston, or a restaurant in China where people would not have been wearing masks in any country.

Masks should make a difference in viral transmission rates, and for high end masks they should make a big difference but it is hard to match up the known locations of viral spreading with the effects of wearing masks on the street or in public transit vehicles.

[amorphous]

I've always been fascinated with the amount of information one can derived from numbers/data. Even back as far as my college freshman years I recognized most people haven't a clue how much valuable information is left untouched after some study or evaluation of some process, etc. One thing about data, if you have enough, is how well averaging what you have will give you very accurate numbers in the end.

Those simple sets of numbers USFRIENDINVICTORIA came up with speak for themselves. True, other factors come into play, but no other factor will prove to be more important than what those numbers indicate. Because the mere fact of a population which is wise enough to wear masks during a viral outbreak will also implement any additional measures necessary. So this simple metric becomes self fulfilling and one which can reliably be counted own to produce similar results when applied by other countries or entities.

The beauty here is in the metrics' simplicity of complexity.

USA (little mask-wearing) Deaths/million = 204
Taiwan (mask-wearing) Deaths/million = 0.3
S.Korea (mask-wearing) Deaths/million = 5.0
Japan (mask-wearing) Deaths/million = 4.0

Fascinating...