Wearing masks could make you immune to COVID-19

The use of masks is essential to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among the population and stop the pandemic. Now, a new study published in 'The New England Journal of Medicine' suggests that this type of protection not only prevents transmission between individuals, but can help reduce the severity of the disease and ensure that a greater proportion of new infections be asymptomatic .

One of the fundamental pillars to stop the spread of the virus is the use of masks. During the month of March, in which the effects of SARS-CoV-2 were increasingly serious, facial masking was essential to avoid contagion. Studies showed that the rate of shedding of the virus through the nose and mouth by asymptomatic patients was very similar to that of those who did have symptoms. That is, a person carrying the virus, even if they do not present symptoms, has the same capacity to infect others as another person who does manifest the disease.

In this way, if everyone wears a mask, those who have the virus without manifesting it will not be able to spread it to other people either. Thus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended on April 3 that the public wear face coverings in areas with high rates of community transmission.

Furthermore, recent virological, epidemiological, and ecological data have led many researchers to believe that the mask may also reduce the severity of illness among people who become infected. In other words, it can mean that there are more asymptomatic people and fewer people admitted with serious problems.

This statement is based on the theory that the manifestation of the disease is directly related to the viral load received or, what is the same, to the amount of virus that enters our body. If a large amount enters our body, the severity of the disease will be greater. On the contrary, if we are in contact with few virus particles, the symptoms will not manifest but, even so, the necessary antibodies will be developed to fight the virus or even achieve immunity , that is, a new infection will not occur. infection after re-contact with the pathogen.

The truth is that, since 1938, scientists from all over the world have carried out animal studies on the “ lethal dose ” of a virus or the dose at which 50% of those infected with it die. The high presence of a pathogen in a body can upset the innate immune defenses and aggravate the disease . This is what is believed to happen with COVID-19. Thus, facial protection will reduce the viral amount to which the wearer is exposed and the impact of the disease.

The CDC estimates that asymptomatic infection before population masking was 40%. Currently it has risen to 80%, which provides evidence for this hypothesis. The lower the exposure, the less severe the disease.

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— patel vidhu Sat Jan 12 06:21:30 +0000 2019

The 'variolization

This would not be the first time that it is believed that the inoculation of low amounts of a pathogen in a person can cause the disease to not manifest itself or its severity to be less. In fact, when smallpox was a disease that devastated the world's population, people susceptible to it were inoculated with material extracted from a vesicle of a person with smallpox. It was intended that the infection be mild and that the patient generate antibodies to become immune to subsequent exposures to the disease. This method was used until the vaccine was introduced, which finally managed to eradicate the disease.

The use of the mask could have a very similar effect to this method known as ' variolization '. The vast majority of the positive population in COVID-19 is asymptomatic and the severity of the patients who do manifest the virus is, in general, lower than in March.