The importance of wearing a mask

Korean students wear masks for a group photo. In Korea, there is much less of a negative perception around wearing masks to keep others safe.

Shin-Ling Yeh, Staff Writer

There are many people who don’t want to wear masks because they make it hard for people to breathe.

Wearing a mask plays a very important role in preventing COVID-19 spread because the most diffused path of COVID-19 is through saliva, and a mask can prevent saliva from coming out.

I found that there is a perception of reluctance to wear a mask. However masks are not only for the people who get very serious diseases.

For instance, in Korea, people wear masks when the air is not good because of the dust. Of course the dust is serious in Korea and it causes people to wear masks.

However, people in Korea even wear masks when they catch a slight cold, flu, have a fever, etc. Furthermore, they wear masks when they think they look tired.

The United States doesn’t really have bad air, so people in the U.S don’t need to have the habit of wearing masks as much as Koreans do, but getting used to wearing a mask will be helpful for their health.

It would also be great that people in the U.S. learn to have positive perceptions about masks so that people can actively wear masks.

Why don’t we start wearing masks when we have only slight symptoms of disease for other people? I believe this small change could make our world healthier.