Why We’ve Taken Down Our Outdated Coronavirus Mask Coverage

US officials recommend that you wear a mask to try to protect others—and possibly yourself—from the coronavirus. But that hasn’t always been their advice. Because of these changes, some of our reporting from earlier this year has become so outdated that we’ve unpublished it from our site. Let us explain why.

Official guidance for wearing face masks during the coronavirus pandemic has changed drastically over the past few months.

In February, when we first published a post on surgical masks, N95 respirator masks, and protection against the coronavirus, the CDC, the US Surgeon General, and two non-agency-affiliated epidemiologists we interviewed insisted there was no need for members of the general public to wear face masks unless they were sick or caring for someone who was. In that moment, there were vanishingly few known cases of COVID-19 in the US, and the national conversation was centered on which masks could best protect you from catching the new coronavirus should it emerge more robustly in the US. We had previously reported, in a YouTube video, that although N95 respirators offer some protection against viruses, a surgical mask is primarily meant to keep the wearer from infecting others rather than protecting the wearer from getting sick. (We have removed the video to avoid any potential confusion about the purpose of widespread mask wearing among the general public.)

Our reporting in February reflected this: We advised readers that they didn’t need a mask to protect themselves from the coronavirus. That was what we saw as the best advice from experts at the time. But that advice is obviously no longer true. Everyone should wear a mask for the sake of people’s collective health.

The CDC’s official guidance for the general public has changed over time. In a second post, published in April, we explained how the agency had begun recommending that people who didn’t know they were sick should wear face coverings in public. Some epidemiologists had suggested masks were useful in that they could help keep you from touching your face. Other epidemiologists, including those we had spoken to in March, had disagreed, citing worries about auto-contamination. In both posts, we reported on the CDC’s guidance at those times. Since mid-April the CDC guidance has changed yet again, and there is now growing evidence that wearing non-medical masks can greatly help reduce transmission of the coronavirus.

This is why we’ve taken down our outdated advice and replaced it with this: You should wear a mask to try to protect others—and possibly yourself—from the coronavirus.

For more, see all of our coronavirus coverage.