ArticleDialogues in health2024
Wearing masks is easy but taking them off is difficult - A situation in Japan during COVID-19 pandemic and after.
Article in Dialogues in health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Side messages, side effects: Justifying infection prevention but fuelling social polarisation.SSM - population health · 2026Article
- The impact of vaccine beliefs on the COVID-19 vaccination among Polish medical staff and students: A cross-sectional study.Medicine · 2026Article
- Comparison of Mask-Wearing Behavior on Social Media and Its Relationship With Demographic Characteristics During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Social Media Data Analysis Between the United States and Japan.JMIR human factors · 2026Article
- Variations in face experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic affect infants' preference for their mother's face.PloS one · 2026Article
- Overhearing hushed voices: Using unobtrusive methods to uncover the work-related sentiments of people with epilepsy.Dialogues in health · 2025Article
- Factors influencing mask-wearing behavior in the context of COVID-19 severity risks in the post-COVID-19 era: a Japanese Nationwide Epidemiological Survey in 2023.Environmental health and preventive medicine · 2025Article
- Considerations for Creating a User-Friendly Telemedicine Service in Japan.Inquiry : a journal of medical care organization, provision and financingArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Masks are well accepted in Japan, where they were already part of daily life even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike many other countries where mask mandates were lifted as soon as the pandemic was under control, Japan was one of the last countries to ease mask-wearing guidelines. Even after the formal announcement to allow masks-off in mid-March 2023, many Japanese still voluntarily wear masks. In this work, possible reasons for this extreme "mask-affinity" of Japanese people were studied by exploring various information sources including tweets (now known as X posts) and subsequent text-analysis, online news, and medical literature. Methods: An observational study was conducted based on tweets prospectively collected during 5 months from June 26 Results: The data collection period included the 7 Conclusions: Subsequent review of domestic information sources suggested that various factors, not only well-known peer pressure, may have contributed the public's mask affinity in Japan. This work revealed an aspect of Japanese struggle toward adaptation to life in an unexpected pandemic by focusing on masks as our closest daily adjunct over the past 3 years of isolation.Trial registration: not applicable.
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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.