4 reasons you shouldn’t trash your neck gaiter based on the new mask study
Don’t throw out your neck gaiters just yet. A new study has spurred numerous headlines declaring that neck gaiters may be worse than wearing no mask at all for controlling the spread of COVID-19. But the actual study, published August 7 in Science Advances, isn’t that conclusive, nor was it designed to be. “The headline that neck gaiters can be worse is totally inaccurate,” says Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Publicity like this is worrisome because “it can turn people off of mask wearing, which we know can protect both the individual wearing the mask and those around them,” she says. Here are four reasons why you shouldn’t use this study to decide which mask to wear: 1. The study tested how to test masks, not which masks are best. Masks have emerged as a crucial, science-backed tool for slowing the spread of COVID-19 (SN: 6/26/20). Since...