Countries that have flattened their Coronavirus infection curve recommend face masks for public use. Countries that don’t recommend them, or lack widespread adoption, tend to have done a poorer job with stemming infections. Most countries in Asia, that have flattened the curve of Coronavirus COVID-9 infection, including China, South Korea and, Japan have made these recommendations.

As suggested in almost every post on this blog, alternative face masks are better than no facemask. They won’t deplete health care worker supplies, will confer some protection and should be recommended facemasks to the public.

What about the countries with the worst looking curves? You guessed it, they have not recommended facemasks to the general public. The exception (as mistakenly shown in the video) is in Iran, where even though they reportedly would have made these recommendations, they have a supply shortage. However, the European nations including Italy and Spain, have bad looking curves and have not made this recommendation. What do you think your country should recommend? This isn’t rocket science. Not even basic algebra. Its basic addition and subtraction.

And speaking of mathematics…while we all learned in basic statistics that “correlation does not mean causation,” it does imply the possibility of causation and does not disprove it.

Since the CDC agrees that alternative facemasks should be used by healthcare workers in lieu of surgical masks, perhaps it’s time for CDC and WHO to recommend that the public wear homemade facemasks that won’t further lead to a supply shortage. If not the countries that don risk being part of the experiment to prove or disprove the correlation and choosing the arm without the protective effect. I’d rather choose the safest way forward and that is wearing a face masks — a homemade one.