Mask Mandates Are Destroying the Social Fabric

A generation-defining uptick in homicide, crime, and social dysfunction has links to mask mandates. Isn't it time to change course?

I live in one of the bluest cities in one of the bluest states. By now, I’m accustomed to the Kabuki theater of mask wearing—sitting in a restaurant at a table, mask off; standing two feet away, mask on. Yet, as we take arms against the threat of COVID-19, a virus for whom the median age of death is over 80, a crime wave unprecedented in modern history is sweeping the nation and, notably, my city. And no one seems to consider the link between the two.

Are masks and crime (especially homicide) related?

Before I explain why I think they are, let me describe an alternate reality. A few weeks ago, my wife and I crossed the river Styx (flew south) to visit the underworld Hades (Sarasota, Florida). When our taxi arrived at the airport, our driver was not wearing a mask. We asked him if we had to wear one in the car.

“You can do what you want. It’s a free country,” he said.

“Thank god,” we said in unison, as we yanked them off.

Not only could we breathe, I could finally see through my glasses without fogging them up. On the way to our lodging, we had a spirited conversation with the driver, while The Allman Brothers’ “Melissa” played on the radio. When I got out, I saw that his car was emblazoned with “Freedom Rides.” And so went our Florida baptism.

That night, we went out to dinner and saw people walk into restaurants without masks. Weird. At the grocery store, some patrons were masked (Trader Joe’s was about half-masked). On the street, no one wore a mask, save for the odd tourist. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that there was a palpable sense of ease in the air, even exhilaration. Yes, it also felt safe wherever we went, unlike our home city. We also couldn’t help but notice that everyone—shopkeepers, waiters, anyone—was friendly. What was wrong with these people?

Masks Don’t Work, or Have Trivially Small Effects

Were the maskless behaving recklessly? Of course not. I won’t bore you too much with the evidence, because you’ve probably already heard it. But a representative study is here and a systematic review here. Another accessible review is here, and, for the hell of it, here’s one study that finds increased transmission with masks. There are only two randomized controlled trials of mask wearing in ecologically valid settings for COVID-19. A carefully designed study in Denmark (with 5,000 people assigned to wear a mask or not to) found bupkis, an effect of masks that was indistinguishable from zero. Another randomized trial in Bangladesh, perhaps the most ambitious public health intervention ever carried out, combined mask wearing with various public service messages. Despite a massive sample (N = 342,183 adults), it found an effect of masks that was tiny in magnitude and of questionable validity. El Gato Malo explains here. Even a charitable reading of a tiny effect would mean masks have practically no effect on mortality, because COVID-19 is not a particularly deadly virus for the vast majority of people.

(The CDC loves to cite observational studies of mask wearing that are absolutely meaningless. Let’s recall the CDC put forth a ludicrous, scare-mongering correlational “study” on diabetes and COVID infection in children, a study so deficient it would never have passed peer review. See Vinay Prasad’s excellent critique for more.)

But maybe masks help a little, you argue. What’s the big deal? Masks are innocuous. It’s a minor inconvenience, and even if it only has a tiny impact, it’s worth it. Put it on, for god’s sake, you twit.

Mask Wearing Is Not Harmless

I used to agree with this logic, more or less. I don’t anymore. I don’t think masks are innocuous. I don’t think they are innocuous at all. I think they are profoundly damaging to the social fabric, and their negative consequences pale in comparison to any potential tiny effect they might have in reducing transmission of COVID-19.

Masks deprive us of one of the most potent sources of information and pleasure there is: the human face. We communicate an enormous amount of information through our face, including our intentions, our internal state, and our willingness to engage with or be a threat to others. Masks stop this information cold. They anonymize the people around us. They inhibit friendly interactions with strangers, impair a sense of fellow feeling, and complicate our ability to navigate our environment, because we cannot read other people and they cannot read us. For people with impairments like social anxiety disorder, masks are particularly harmful, as suggested in this review. The effect on children may be devastating. Some anecdotal evidence suggest it’s already affecting kids ability to develop language skills.

But an especially consequential outcome of mask mandates is their potential causal effect on crime, particularly homicide. The signal is already present in the data, as you know. Many cities have seen startlingly high homicide rates, virtually unknown in modern history. And across the country, the largest jump ever in homicides was recorded in 2020 and a further uptick in 2021.

Are masks, at least in part, to blame?

Masks and Crime: The ADDA Model

I believe they are, and here is a simple model for how: the ADDA model (Anonymity, Disinhibition, Dehumanization, Absence of consequences).

• Anonymity. Masks make you anonymous, and people are more likely to commit antisocial acts, when they are anonymous, as shown here. For people who are already inclined toward antisocial behavior, anonymity is a powerful stimulant, allowing them to pursue courses of action they might otherwise inhibit, as suggested here. One fascinating study in Northern Ireland found that almost half of the political violence was committed by people who were disguised. Worse, people who wore disguises committed more extreme forms of violence than the non-disguised.

• Disinhibition. When people are anonymous, they are more disinhibited, because behavioral consequences are less salient. The Behavioral Inhibition System, the part of us that is ordinarily a check on our antisocial behavior, won’t rein us in when we are anonymous. For example, this study found that people are more prone to cheat to get a reward in a room that is dimly lit or even when they wear sunglasses. Although prosocial behavior can also result from anonymity, this depends on the person! As this review shows, anonymity reveals the person’s underlying motivations. If you are an angry and aggressive person who is inclined toward antisocial behavior, you are MORE likely to be this way when you are anonymous (i.e., disguised by a mask).

• Dehumanization. When people are forced to wear masks, they are no longer in full possession of their humanity. And that in itself makes it easier to assault or kill them. Dehumanization is a necessary ingredient of every pogrom and every genocidal program in history, because it provides a means of inoculating perpetrators against the sympathies that would ordinarily prevent them from committing odious acts.

• Absence of consequences. The anonymity of mask wearing facilitates crime in one more obvious way: the ability to shield your identity so that you won’t get caught. Every bank robber puts on a balaclava. Now you can wear a balaclava without drawing a funny look. Anyway, if you drew a funny look in your balaclava, no one else would know it, because they can’t see the person’s face under the mask.

This is all well and good, but is there any evidence of a link between mask mandates and crime? It’s a difficult question to answer, because most cities adopted some form of mask mandate and thus there is limited variation to compare with homicide. But there is some variation, and it is instructive, at least broadly, to compare it.

Florida

Florida is a useful example, because some Florida cities adopted more stringent mask mandates than others and the state government did not impose a mandate, thereby permitting variation across municipalities. Before we look at Florida, let’s make a distinction between lite and stringent mask mandates. Lite mask mandates are ones that are narrowly defined. For example, Miami-Dade only stipulated masks in government buildings but did not require masks in public spaces or restaurants. By contrast, St. Petersburg had a stringent mask mandate in which masks were required in any enclosed public space.

Did homicide rates differ between Miami-Dade and St. Petersburg?

In fact, they did dramatically: Miami-Dade bucked the national trend and saw a 15% reduction in homicides. By contrast, St. Petersburg saw a dramatic 108% increase in the number of homicides.

Texas

Let’s look at another state without a statewide mask mandate, Texas. Although mask mandates were banned by the governor, not all cities complied. The most enthusiastic proponent of masks was the Mayor of Austin, Steve Adler, who reinstated so-called “stage 3 guidelines” in July, 2021, well before other Texas cities also attempted to reinstate masking requirements.

Dallas and some other municipalities reinstated mask requirements, but these were about a month later and extensively litigated, which might undermine their legitimacy. I don’t know of any data on the proportion of people in Texas who wore masks, but I’d be very surprised if Austin didn’t have the highest proportion of routine mask wearing in the state.

What about homicide rates in Texas? Austin saw its largest jump in history, with a more than 100% increase in the homicide rate in 2021 compared to 2020. San Antonio had a 23% increase in homicide. By contrast, Dallas saw a 23% reduction in 2021 homicides compared to 2020.

Mississippi

The highest murder rate in the country was in Jackson, Mississippi. There were 97.6 murders per 100,000 population, an increase of 15% from 2020. If this rate persisted, it would mean that in a 50-year span, you would have a 5% chance of being murdered. To put this in further perspective, the nationwide murder rate was 6.5 in 2021, and the murder rate in Europe has typically been between 1 and 2 per 100,000.

Jackson stood against the prevailing trend of the state, and it kept a mask mandate in place well into 2021, unlike most Mississippi cities. Gulfport, the second largest city, only had a mask mandate-lite, requiring masks in government buildings. And it did not see a comparable increase in homicides.

These ad hoc city-to-city comparisons are no substitute for a systematic quantitative analysis. Although homicide and crime are multiply determined, and many other factors are at play, there are sound reasons to think that masks play a role. Isn’t it high time to recognize this as a plausible outcome of masks? If public health and safety are the goals, then the unintended consequences of our interventions must also be considered. Alas, our current crop of policymakers has spectacularly failed to do anything of the sort in this pandemic.