Coronavirus: Why do people really wear face masks?

The latest coronavirus epidemic has sent people scrambling for face masks like never before. 'The world is facing severe disruption in the market for personal protective equipment,' Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organisation, warned recently. 'Demand is up to 100 times higher than normal and prices are up to 20 times higher.'This, even though face masks are not, on their own, a proven prophylactic against infection from the new coronavirus(hand washing is more important, medical experts seem to agree). And yet we shouldn't look upon this buying spree as a sign of irrational epidemic-panic. Consider maskwearing in its historical and cultural context, and you'll see that in China, for example, itserves asfar more than simply a means of protecting oneself from infection. Masks are also a marker of medical modernity, as well as a signal of mutual assurance that allows a society to keep functioning during an epidemic. Anti-epidemic masks as we know them today were invented in China more than a century ago, during the Chinese state'sfirst effort to contain an epidemic by biomedical means. When the pneumonic plague struck the northeastern provinces of the Chinese Empire (a region known then as Manchuria) in the autumn of 1910, the Chinese authorities broke with their long-standing opposition to Western medicine: They appointed Wu Lien-the (also known as Wu Liande), a young and brilliant Cambridge-educated Chinese doctor from British Malaya, to oversee efforts to stem the outbreak. The plague was about to meet its match. Soon after arriving in the field, Wu asserted that this plague wasn't being spread by rats, as had been assumed, but was airborne. The statement was heresy, and turned out to be correct. Wu proved his point by adapting existing surgeons'masks - which were made of a cotton wad encased in gauze - into easy-to-wear protective devices and ordered Chinese doctors, nurses and sanitary staffto use them.He alsomade sure that the masks were worn by patients and their immediate contacts, and he distributed some among the general public.

In the West, the use of masks did not last much past the Second World War. But in China, masks remained markers of medical modernity and continued to be used for public-health crises Masks as talismans Wu's Japanese and European colleagues on the ground were sceptical until the death of an eminent French doctor who wouldn't cover up even while attending patients. Gauze...