Face masks will be a part of life even after this pandemic ends Other countries have normalized face masks when sick - here's why the U.S. will join them FacebookTwitterEmail In June 2020, just six months after the World Health Organization first learned of a viral phenomenon in Wuhan, China, that would become the COVID-19 pandemic, life in the city where the disease was first identified was largely back to normal. The Chinese government attributed the success of a brutal lockdown period to its citizens voluntarily adopting safety precautions . Even when residents of Wuhan were no longer required to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) in public, 35 year-old resident Pan Yuan told Reuters that “people still wear masks.”