Our foray into causal analysis is not yet complete. Until we define the methods of causal inference, we can't get to the deeper insights that causal analysis.
Nicolas Ajzenman, Tiago Cavalcanti, Daniel Da Mata
Wearing face masks should be considered the least controversial of major public responses to COVID-19. Unlike with many other measures such as shelter-in-place ordinances, lockdowns, or capacity restrictions, there is no trade-off between mask use and economic activity. Several recent studies documented that masks can effectively diminish the spread of a viral respiratory infection (Mitze et al. 2020, Fischer et al. 2020, Chu et al. 2020, Leung et al. 2020), without disrupting economic activity (Howard et al. 2020). By contrast, social distancing has had an adverse effect on consumer activity (Goolsbee and Syverson 2020, Chetty et al. 2020, Coibion et al. 2020, Chronopoulos et al. 2020) and job losses (Friedson et al. 2020, Chudik et al. 2020, Gupta et al. 2020, Beland et al. 2020) and is itself influenced by economic conditions (Wright et al. 2020).