Okay! So, "mask immunity"--cool idea to me, very unproven--a theory. The hypothesis to be tested is, do people who scrupulously wear face masks build up an immunity to COVID-19? The hypothesis is grounded in these facts:
-Vaccines that we are all familiar with, like the polio vaccine, confer immunity by subjecting the person immunized to a weakened strand of the virus. The body's immune system goes into action to combat the invader and because the immunization strand is weakened the body is not overwhelmed as it would be by a robust dose, the body defeats the virus and once the body "knows" how to defeat virus-lite it can defeat the whole army of invaders. The body is now immune to the virus.
-COVID-19 does not come in one-size-fits-all. Some people get a dangerously robust dose; some get a little peepy dose and are asymptomatic, don't even know they have it.
-COVID-19 face masks, we have been repeatedly told, do not protect the wearer from getting the virus as much as they protect other people from getting the virus from the wearer. That never made complete sense to me since it seemed apodictic that if there was any barrier--distance, a mask--between carrier and uninfected some of the virus particles would be stopped. The theory of mask immunity proceeds from this common sense postulate.
-Therefore, although the mask wearer can still get COVID-19 even while wearing a face mask, perhaps (s)he is getting a strain of the virus weakened by the mask, or, I presume more likely, a mini-dose of infection that the body can defeat and once defeated, immunized.
The theory of mask immunity is making the rounds in the epidemiological community in letters to the like of the New England Journal of Medicine and wherever epidemiologists talk shop to the point that the popular press like the New York Times are now noticing.
-Vaccines that we are all familiar with, like the polio vaccine, confer immunity by subjecting the person immunized to a weakened strand of the virus. The body's immune system goes into action to combat the invader and because the immunization strand is weakened the body is not overwhelmed as it would be by a robust dose, the body defeats the virus and once the body "knows" how to defeat virus-lite it can defeat the whole army of invaders. The body is now immune to the virus.
-COVID-19 does not come in one-size-fits-all. Some people get a dangerously robust dose; some get a little peepy dose and are asymptomatic, don't even know they have it.
-COVID-19 face masks, we have been repeatedly told, do not protect the wearer from getting the virus as much as they protect other people from getting the virus from the wearer. That never made complete sense to me since it seemed apodictic that if there was any barrier--distance, a mask--between carrier and uninfected some of the virus particles would be stopped. The theory of mask immunity proceeds from this common sense postulate.
-Therefore, although the mask wearer can still get COVID-19 even while wearing a face mask, perhaps (s)he is getting a strain of the virus weakened by the mask, or, I presume more likely, a mini-dose of infection that the body can defeat and once defeated, immunized.
The theory of mask immunity is making the rounds in the epidemiological community in letters to the like of the New England Journal of Medicine and wherever epidemiologists talk shop to the point that the popular press like the New York Times are now noticing.
