"To protect the whole line"

About a year or so, I wrote a post about the ancient Spartans.  According to Plutarch, mothers and wives of Spartan soldiers would tell their loved ones as they departed for battle, "Come back with your shield or on it".  As Steven Pressfield recently wrote, the Spartans would not punish a soldier who dropped his helmet or breastplate in battle, but if any soldier lost his shield, he would be put to death immediately.  Why the difference?  Plutarch tells it best, "Because helmet and breastplate are worn to protect the individual alone, but the shield is borne to protect the whole line."

Both ancient Greek and Roman soldiers fought in what is called a phalanx - each soldier would stand shoulder to shoulder such that his shield would overlap with the shield of the men next to him on either side.  Opponents would confront a single, powerful, impenetrable wall of armor as opposed to individual soldiers.  The enemy's only chance of beating the phalanx was to break the line at a single point - one failed shield would result in the loss of the entire army.  For this reason, Spartans placed so much emphasis on the importance of keeping one's shield - losing your shield was punishable by death.

I hope you know where I am going with this - we are seeing a similar strategy today during the COVID-19 pandemic.  As Pressfield asks in the article mentioned above, "Why are we asked to wear surgical or face masks in public, to practice social distancing, and to observe self-quarantining?"  His answer - "Because these practices are not for the individual alone but for the protection of the whole line."

Does wearing a surgical mask in public protect you from COVID-19?  Maybe just a little.  What's really important is that by wearing a mask, you are protecting everyone around you.  The available research suggests that wearing a simple face mask can block almost 99% of the number of virus particles that we emit from our mouths and nose!  So if everyone is wearing a mask, we are significantly reducing the transmission of COVID-19.  Universal masking works.  Social distancing works.  Self-quarantine works.

Two studies deserve mention here.  The first study looked at the number of cases of COVID-19 in counties that bordered both the state of Iowa and Illinois.  While Illinois issued a stay-at-home order, as well as universal masking in public, Iowa did not.  While the number of COVID-19 cases were similar in border counties prior to Illinois' stay-at-home order, there was a significantly higher number of cases in the Iowa counties afterwards.  In other words, social distancing and universal masking work!

The second study reported the number of employees at a single hospital in Belgium who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.  SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19, so the only way to get antibodies to this particular virus is if you have been infected with it.  This hospital tested almost all 4,000 or so employees - only 6.4% of the staff tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 antibody.  There were no differences in testing in workers who cared for COVID-19 patients and those who didn't, nor was there any difference in testing in workers who were exposed to colleagues with COVID-19 and those who weren't exposed.  As it turned out, most of the workers acquired the virus through exposures to infected family members at home.  Incidentally, this hospital had instituted both social distancing and universal masking.  Again, masking works!

It's not a political issue (or at least it shouldn't be).  Wearing a mask protects your friends, your colleagues, and everyone around you.  You don't wear a mask for yourself - you wear it for everyone else!  You wear the mask "to protect the whole line", just like the Spartans in ancient Greece.