We extend previous studies on the impact of masks on COVID-19 outcomes by investigating an unprecedented breadth and depth of health outcomes, geographical resolutions, types of mask mandates, early versus later waves and controlling for other government interventions, mobility testing rate and weather. We show that mask mandates are associated with a statistically significant decrease in new cases (-3.55 per 100K), deaths (-0.13 per 100K), and the proportion of hospital admissions (-2.38 percentage points) up to 40 days after the introduction of mask mandates both at the state and county level. These effects are large, corresponding to 14% of the highest recorded number of cases, 13% of deaths, and 7% of admission proportion. We also find that mask mandates are linked to a 23.4 percentage point increase in mask adherence in four diverse states. Given the recent lifting of mandates, we estimate that the ending of mask mandates in these states is associated with a decrease of -3.19 percentage points in mask adherence and 12 per 100K (13% of the highest recorded number) of daily new cases with no significant effect on hospitalizations and deaths. Lastly, using a large novel survey dataset of 847 thousand responses in 69 countries, we introduce the novel results that community mask adherence and community attitudes towards masks are associated with a reduction in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our results have policy implications for reinforcing the need to maintain and encourage mask-wearing by the public, especially in light of some states starting to remove their mask mandates.
Deep partisan conflict in the mass public threatens the stability of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n=32,059) testing 25 interventions designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes. We find nearly every intervention reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting sympathetic and relatable individuals with different political beliefs. We also identify several interventions that reduced support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence, most strongly by correcting misperceptions of outpartisans’ views – showing that anti-democratic attitudes, although difficult to move, are not intractable. Furthermore, both factor analysis and patterns of intervention effect sizes provide convergent evidence for limited overlap between these sets of outcomes, suggesting that, contrary to popular belief, different strategies are most effective for reducing partisan animosity versus anti-democratic attitudes. Taken together, our findings provide a toolkit of promising strategies for practitioners and shed new theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.
Around the world, would-be authoritarian leaders have convinced their supporters to vote away the democracies they claim to cherish. How is this possible? We argue that simply fearing that opposing partisans support democratic backsliding can lead individuals to support it themselves. Would-be authoritarians may then be able to start a self-reinforcing dynamic of democratic backsliding by fostering these fears, which then generate exaggerated fears on the other. Using observational and experimental studies (N=4,400), we present four findings consistent with this account: Republicans and Democrats (1) overestimate opposing partisan willingness to break democratic norms; (2) will support their party breaking democratic norms themselves to the extent that they overestimate willingness by the other side; (3) that experimentally correcting this overestimation reduces support for breaking norms, and (4) increases the likelihood of voting for candidates that uphold democratic norms. Our findings suggest that we can foster democratic stability even in a highly polarized society using interventions that simply correct misperceptions about opposing partisans’ commitment to democratic norms
Using publicly available data, we quantify the impact of mask adherence and mask mandates on COVID-19 outcomes. We show that mask mandates are associated with a statistically significant decrease in daily new cases (−3.24 per 100K), deaths (−0.19 per 100K), and the proportion of hospital admissions (−2.47%) due to COVID-19 between February 1 and September 27, 2020. These effects are large, corresponding to 13% of the highest recorded number of cases, 20% of deaths, and 7% of admission proportion. We also find that mask mandates are linked to a 23.4 percentage point increase in mask adherence in four diverse states, and that mask adherence is associated with improved COVID-19 outcomes. Lastly, using a large novel survey in 68 countries, we find that community mask adherence and attitudes towards masks are associated with a reduction in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our results have relevant policy implications, indicating the need to maintain and encourage mask-wearing.
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