ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2022
Face masking and COVID-19: potential effects of variolation on transmission dynamics.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- App-based epidemic game in a university campus reveals how risk perception and behavioral interventions shape disease transmission dynamics.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Symptom propagation in respiratory pathogens of public health concern: a review of the evidence.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Review
- Evaluating the spike in the symptomatic proportion of SARS-CoV-2 in China in 2022 with variolation effects: a modeling analysis.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2024Article
- Epidemiological and health economic implications of symptom propagation in respiratory pathogens: A mathematical modelling investigation.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- The probability of epidemic burnout in the stochastic SIR model with vital dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Factors Associated with SARS-CoV-2 Infection before Vaccination among European Health Care Workers.La Medicina del lavoro · 2023Article
- Association of combustible cigarettes and heated tobacco products use with SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe COVID-19 in Japan: a JASTIS 2022 cross-sectional study.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Association of healthcare worker behaviors with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) risk during four pandemic periods and characteristics associated with high-risk behaviors.Antimicrobial stewardship & healthcare epidemiology : ASHE · 2023Article
- Dynamic analysis and optimal control considering cross transmission and variation of information.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Face masks do not completely prevent transmission of respiratory infections, but masked individuals are likely to inhale fewer infectious particles. If smaller infectious doses tend to yield milder infections, yet ultimately induce similar levels of immunity, then masking could reduce the prevalence of severe disease even if the total number of infections is unaffected. It has been suggested that this effect of masking is analogous to the pre-vaccination practice of variolation for smallpox, whereby susceptible individuals were intentionally infected with small doses of live virus (and often acquired immunity without severe disease). We present a simple epidemiological model in which mask-induced variolation causes milder infections, potentially with lower transmission rate and/or different duration. We derive relationships between the effectiveness of mask-induced variolation and important epidemiological metrics (the basic reproduction number and initial epidemic growth rate, and the peak prevalence, attack rate and equilibrium prevalence of severe infections). We illustrate our results using parameter estimates for the original SARS-CoV-2 wild-type virus, as well as the Alpha, Delta and Omicron variants. Our results suggest that if variolation is a genuine side-effect of masking, then the importance of face masks as a tool for reducing healthcare burdens from COVID-19 may be under-appreciated.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.