WHEN coronavirus started spreading from China to other countries in late January, it seemed that the neighboring countries would especially be hit hard.

One of those countries, Thailand, seemed especially vulnerable - a popular destination for Chinese tourists, along with thousands of people who traveled from Wuhan that month, the very source of the epidemic in China. Despite that, with a population of 68 million people, Thailand has only had 3,158 confirmed cases so far, with 3,038 people recovered, and only 58 deaths.  

COVID-19 death toll per million Thailand residents is 0.8. Just to compare, in the USA, that number is 376, in Sweden 516, in the UK 635, and Belgium as many as 839. 

Why did Thailand do well, just as other East Asian countries? Japan, a country with a population of 126 million people, has less than a thousand confirmed deaths, i.e., only eight deaths per million. South Korea, with 51 million residents, has only 282 deaths, i.e., 6 per million. With 36 million residents, Taiwan has only seven deaths, i.e., 0.3 per million. China also had a relatively low official number of infected people and deaths, but many were calling into question these numbers because of the nature of the Chinese regime. 

East Asia, where people wear masks, fought off coronavirus in the beginning

Several factors are responsible for the success of the East Asia countries - partial lockdown, contact tracing of the infected, and public health care volunteers who helped track the spread of the infection throughout the country, according to the American magazine Fast Company.

However, one factor is put forward as the key factor - wearing masks. In Thailand and other countries mentioned above, that was normal at the beginning of the pandemic, when the WHO insisted that masks should be worn only by hospital staff, people infected with COVID-19, and people who are taking care of them at home.

Of course, wearing masks was widespread in China and other countries of East Asia even before the novel coronavirus appeared, because of the deadly SARS epidemic in 2003, or similar infectious diseases in the last 20 years, or because of widespread air pollution.

When asked in a poll if they wear masks in public even now when there are only a couple of new coronavirus cases per day in the entire country, 95% of Thailand residents answered positively. Let's compare it with the situation in Croatia, where masks, after the first two or three weeks of a lockdown, practically disappeared from the streets, parks, public transport, and the majority of indoor spaces. 

New study: Countries where people wear masks have up to 100 times lower mortality rate

A new study that analyzed data about the coronavirus death rate concluded that the countries where wearing masks was mandatory in the start-up phase of the epidemic, or where citizens adopted this practice self-initially, had up to 100 times lower death rate than the countries where that wasn't the case. 

"We looked at the data from 198 countries around the world, and we looked at mortality from coronavirus. We found that the countries that introduced masks quickly—that is, before the outbreak had much of a chance to spread within their country—had much lower mortality," explained the lead author of the study, Christopher Leffler physician and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.

"You also got (except for Japan and South Korea) Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau - there are many countries where people started wearing masks in early phases. Vietnam and Thailand are good examples because the mortality rate per capita remained low," said Leffler for the Canadian Global News.

The difference between the countries where people were wearing masks and the countries where they weren't, was huge - the mortality rate went up by 8% per week in some countries, on average, and as much as 54% per week in others. The study still hasn't been peer-reviewed, and it has only been published on a specialized server medRxiv.org for now. 

Some studies have shown earlier that masks are effective in stopping the coronavirus transmission - for example, the study published in a prestigious medical journal Nature Medicine, in which 246 people infected with coronavirus or the flu were tested in two groups.

The study: Surgical masks as effective as the ones with filters

The flu virus was found in respiratory droplets only in 4% of the participants wearing surgical masks, and in 26% of participants not wearing masks. Coronavirus was found in 30% of participants not wearing masks, and not found in participants wearing masks. 

How much do masks prevent the spread of the virus is still not definitively determined. According to another study in the respected British Medical Journal, virus transmission is 97% when wearing fabric face masks, and 44% when wearing surgical masks during four week-period, in a hospital surrounding where the quantity of the virus is much larger than elsewhere. 

However, the new study conducted by the scientists from the universities of Cambridge and Greenwich, published in a scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, found that wearing masks in public by at least 50% of the population keeps the so-called "reproduction number" (R0) below 1, even when wearing less effective fabric masks. It means that the new waves of the epidemic will be much less severe, and a complete lockdown won't be necessary. 

"Our analyses support the public's immediate and universal adoption of facemasks," said Dr. Richard Stutt, a part of a research team.

Despite that, at the end of March, the WHO said that there had been no proof that massive adoption of face masks benefited fighting off the virus. On the contrary, they can be quite harmful if they give people a false sense of security, which leads to not complying with the rest of the safety measures. 

The WHO has been insisting for months that masks shouldn't be worn if we aren't sick

However, the WHO drastically changed its guidelines at the beginning of June, and now the governments are recommended to encourage its citizens to wear masks in public places where there is a widespread transmission.

"We recommend that the governments encourage their public to wear fabric masks," said Maria Van Kerkhove in an interview with Reuters. 

The Croatian Coronavirus Task Force also made a bizarre switch. Its member Maja Grba-Bujevic, the Croatian Institute of Emergency Medicine Director, said in February: "The mask won't protect us from the virus." A month ago, with the rest of the Task Force, she changed her opinion and said: "Masks should absolutely be worn indoors."

A similar volte-face was made by the American Center for Disease Prevention and Control, which finally issued recommendations to wear fabric masks in April. Its member and the leading American epidemiologist Anthony Fauci admitted what the WHO critics were saying from the beginning - experts and authorities in the USA and other countries have been talking people out of wearing masks because they were afraid that there are simply not enough masks available and that the mass adoption of face mask would lead to the mask shortage for hospital staff, who need it the most. 

"Seriously, people - stop buying masks!" Fauci warned Americans on Twitter at the end of February. 

The prognosis for Croatia: 600 deaths without masks, 270 with masks

Let's recall, the WHO has posted this on Twitter on January 14:" Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China." It subsequently turned out that the conclusion, taken from the Chinese regime, was wrong.

In the end, the model made by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington bears witness to the effectiveness of wearing masks, and introduced an alarming prognosis for Croatia, in accordance with the rise in coronavirus cases. According to this prognosis, the COVID-19 death toll could reach more than 600 by August, six times more than today. It could go over 1,400 by October. 

But in case of mass adoption of face masks, the anticipated number is far lower - around 270 deaths by the end of September. Which raises the question again - how many lives could have been saved if the masks had been provided in sufficient amounts and if the public had been encouraged to wear them?