Consistently, the most effective — not to mention cheapest and easiest — way to reduce deaths was to increase the number of people wearing masks. Scenario 1: States continue to remove social distancing measuresAKA: The Do-Nothing ScenarioThis is the worst-case scenario among the five the researchers considered. In this case, the researchers found that there would be 415,654 COVID-19 deaths through the end of February. That’s still about 96,000 fewer deaths than in Scenario 2, but 33,856 more deaths than in Scenario 3. That’s also nearly 21,000 more lives saved compared to states shutting down again at the eight-daily-deaths-per-million threshold but not implementing rules on wearing masks.

Source: Los Angeles Times October 23, 2020 15:02 UTC