Before 2020, evidence for the efficacy of community masking – that is, asking ordinary members of the public to wear cloth or surgical masks when going about their business – was shaky at best.
This evidence was reviewed in detail by Jeffrey Anderson, a former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. He notes that:
of the 14 RCTs that have tested the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, three suggest, but do not provide any statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis, that masks might be useful. The other eleven suggest that masks are either useless—whether compared with no masks or because they appear not to add to good hand hygiene alone—or actually counterproductive.
In another piece that’s well worth reading, Professor Steve Templeton provides a list of quotations from what he calls “the BP era” (Before Things Got Political). Each quotation, taken from one or other expert, testifies to the lack of evidence that community masking works against respiratory pathogens.
For example, in a systematic review published early last year, Jingyi Xiao and colleagues “did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons… or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility”.
This is presumably why, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, health authorities in both the U.K. and the U.S. advised against community masking.
For example, on 4th March 2020, Chris Whitty told Sky News that “wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all”. And as late as 3rd April, Jonathan Van Tam said “there is no evidence that general wearing of face masks… affects the spread of the disease”.
Likewise, in a tweet sent on 27th February, the CDC said that it “does not currently recommend the use of facemasks”. And two days later, the U.S. Surgeon General urged people to “STOP BUYING MASKS” because they are “NOT effective” at preventing the general public from catching coronavirus.
In a video interview from May of 2019, Anthony Fauci actually laughed at the notion of wearing a face mask. The interviewer asks him, “The best way for me to prevent getting an infectious disease… is what? Wearing a mask?” To which Fauci replies, “No, no no… you avoid all the paranoid aspects.”
Yet by the summer of 2020, the health authorities in both countries had done an about-face, and were now recommending face masks to the public. These recommendations subsequently became mandates.
‘The Science,’ in other words, had changed. But what prompted this change? The charitable answer is that new evidence emerged suggesting that community masking does work against SARS-CoV-2. However, this new evidence looks just as shaky – if not shakier – than the pre-Covid evidence.
I suspect that something else happened. Back in the spring of 2020, all Western countries were on the same upward trajectory, with cases doubling every few days. Meanwhile, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore had all manged to ‘flatten the curve’, despite eschewing draconian lockdowns.
Commentators were searching around for an explanation, and ‘masks’ seemed like a good one. After all, Western health authorities had advised against masks. Yet many East Asians had been wearing them for years.
If you were on social media at that time, you probably remember seeing a version of this chart, which went viral numerous times:
Putting ‘correlation doesn’t equal causation’ aside, it appears to suggest that masks are the crucial factor for bringing COVID under control. Of course, the subsequent imposition of mask mandates in Western countries didn’t forestall large winter outbreaks, which rather undermines the mask theory.
Nonetheless, it seemed plausible enough at the time. And articles began appearing in major news outlets that questioned the West’s reluctance to wear face masks. On social media, commentators asked why we shouldn’t follow the East Asian countries, given their far greater success in handling the pandemic.
I suspect this pressure had more to do with the health authorities’ about-face than any fundamental change in the quality of evidence. It was another case of ‘politician’s logic’. ‘Something must be done; mask-wearing is something; therefore we must do it.’
In a matter of weeks, ‘The science’ went from ‘don’t do X’ to ‘do X’. And yet it took another whole year for the first RCT of community masking to be published. The theory I’ve outlined is speculative, of course. But I don’t see what else can account for such a sudden shift in public health advice.
Discussion
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From OUR HEALTH POV(point of view), breathing is ONE way we excrete gaseous waste. One person(maybe you can find the paper) measured and found 315 trace elements in exhaled breath.
We all (used to) know how throwing open windows for FRESH air got rid of ‘stale air’, ie. air we’ve used again and again.
More studies are needed.
One high school girl, an oft winner of races in running
was mandated for a mask and COLLAPSED toward the end..
when she’d be going ‘all out’. She had to be rushed to emergency. I submit she could have DIED or suffered brain damage. They needed to be SUED.
Wearing a mask BLOCKS fresh air flow, is criminal to health and the authorities should be SUED.
Some cultures, like Asians tolerate the face covering but
I wonder about their pale skin which suggests less iron,
hemoglobin, I’ve forgotten how that works.
But I think the rest of us need that clean exchange.
A short time likely doesn’t matter too much.
I don’t think it has anything to do with FACTS. How insane is that? I’d say we’re dealing with insanity. And insanity is ruling everything.
No one seems to mention the fact that masks still have to be worn in any health environment
Recently I went to the dentist for an extraction and they insisted that I wear a mask until I arrived at the dentist chair and then immediately after the extraction.
Even more ridiculous my wife went to a podiatrist and she insisted on my wife wearing one.
Last week we both went for our booster jab (over 70 by quite a bit) and they insisted that we wear masks throughout.
Why are NHS continuing this pointless charade?
I live in a small town which has a high number of elderly people. Shops are not demanding mask wearing but many people put them on even just to buy something like a newspaper which takes about 30 seconds. In the street about 50%, but getting less weekly, wear masks. On the other hand the really elderly and also many teenagers wear masks in the street and there are car drivers who wear them while driving. I and my wife have not worn a mask since “freedom day”. We are both well over 80.
Why are masks still worn? Fear and ignorance.
See HSE report 2008 as preparation for influenza pandemic work was being done.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr619.htm
“This study focussed on the effectiveness of surgical masks against a range of airborne particles. Using separate tests to measure levels of inert particles and live aerosolised influenza virus, our findings show that surgical masks provide around a 6-fold reduction in exposure. Live viruses could be detected in the air behind all surgical masks tested.”
And this was for surgical masks!!
In Wales we have the highest infection rate but have stricter mask mandate than in England. “MASKING THE TRUTH” is the reality be it masks,lockdowns or vaccination in children.
The last two paras sum it up well. It always was BS, and I never complied with it – although I suppose I took trade away from some places.
As I recall, either Austria or Switzerland had mandated them maybe as early as april. Just as you say the growing numbers spooked the politicians, who then had to appear to be doing ‘something’. And although I believe transmission was always thought to be mostly aerosolised, there was uncertainty about fomites and whether you had to be personally coughed on. And then there was a subtle flip – the presence of masks would give consumers ‘confidence’ to re-enter society. So even if they hardly worked, or even didnt work, they had some ‘benefit’. However there has been a steadfast refusal to address the dangers -epidemiological, mental – mask-wearing presents, and i believe because sick people are the lifeblood of the NHS and the covid panic, anything likely to make them sicker is being actively supported. And this is the real reason for masks.
this bs again. The only time east asians wore masks for illness is when they should have been staying at home in the first place because they were already coughing up a lung.
used to see them all the time in airport transit lounges – couldn’t for the life of me work out why they were all masked up like that
I’ve always assumed the sudden U-turn on mask-efficacy was due to input from psychologists. Seemingly, it’s been found that when people feel powerless in the face of a threat, many will give up and become deeply depressed.
I vaguely recall experiments on rats being electrocuted while sitting on a metal plate in a cage. After a while the rats gave up and no longer even bothered to jump when electrocuted.
And if you look at people putting masks on, say, before walking into a supermarket, they do look like they genuinely believe they’re massively reducing their risk of catching Covid.
In those dark winter days at the beginning of the pandemic, I assume officials believed that masks would be used like talismans.
“And if you look at people putting masks on, say, before walking into a supermarket, they do look like they genuinely believe they’re massively reducing their risk of catching Covid.”
What I see now is simply a kind of reflexive action “oh, going into shop so, mask on then” and out of pocket it comes and on it goes. It is now an engrained habit. Soon people won’t remember what it is like to NOT wear one – what normal life was like, which is ultimately what TPTB are aiming for.
The face mask is basically the white flag of surrender, particularly when worn by so-called adults.
Fauci has said many times that the reason his guidance and that of the CDC changed was that it became apparent that there was a significant amount of asymptomatic transmission. I see no reason to doubt this.
Templeton writes: Now we know that asymptomatic transmission is not a major mode of spread, as discussed here and here. But these two references are from last year and are marginal evidence at best. This article from March this year refers to four metanalyses and concludes: All of these studies agree that AIC transmit SARS-COV2 to contacts, although to a somewhat lesser extent than SIC. (AIC stands for asymptomatic index cases, SIC for symptomatic index cases).
There is a general lack of quality RCTs on masks because it is very hard thing to do well. People wear different types of mask, in different ways, in different contexts. So it is not surprising that metanalyses of RCTs are inconclusive. However, this survey of a broad range of evidence in addition to RCTs concludes there is evidence they are effective.
“Fauci has said many times“
The direct equivalent of quoting statements by Blair or Bush II as supposed evidence that we invaded Iraq “because of WMD”.
There is no parallel. I wasn’t using Fauci’s statement as evidence that there is asymptomatic transmission. That evidence is in the following paragraph. I was just suggesting there is no reason to reject Fauci’s explanation as to why he changed his mind.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus
“I was just suggesting there is no reason to reject Fauci’s explanation as to why he changed his mind.”
There is every reason to suspect his motives and his honesty. Him and every other major actor in this monstrous nonsense.
Asymptomatic spread of a fake infection. Keep it up we need a good laugh, but remember you can’t finesse skulduggery, no matter how hard you try.
There are lies, damned lies and oracular pronouncements by Anthony Fauci.
Has Fauci talked about his Lying to Congress yet?
In effect you are representing a review of evidence suggesting that there is evidence that masks work. You quote a paper from an obscure publication which is a narrative review and not a scientific paper, Sadly you have attempted to use inappropriate publications to promote a view that masks work.
Lord Moynihan many years ago described any patient as being their own unique experiment as infection is so multi factorial; sadly we have seen Covid19 generate 160000+ publications by scientists who often are more interested in getting publications, which are the lifeblood of their career progression than serving the interests of mankind.
Masks as worn by the general public have never been shown to affect the outcome of infection transmission or mortality. The only effect of face coverings is to “Mask the Truth”.
The nonsense of mask mandates comes from the fairly obvious point that the advice is the wrong way around.
If you are to protect yourself from the nasty, then you need an inbound mask that will filter the nasty – because seals improve under suction. Then you have no need to concern yourself with what anybody else is doing. You are protected whatever others do – to the extent that the mask does what it says on the tin.
Having masks under pressure makes no sense because elastic stretches and the mask leaks. Therefore the air will come out the side – along with everything carried in that moist air.
It follows that mask wearing is about subservience, because it makes no logical sense to require everybody to filter outbound to keep the inbound flow clear. As soon as one person doesn’t follow the ‘rules’, or the masks leak as they will do then the whole process falls apart.
It’s this failure in logic that I find most disturbing. Apparently what applies to asbestos fibres in the air doesn’t apply to viruses in the air.
I was lunching in a restaurant today and watched as a woman at a neighbouring table sat down and unmasked. At that moment I realised that there is some point to some people hiding their faces.
The mask theatre has always baffled me. If you’re not too bright and don’t realise viruses are really very small and the holes in masks are huge, it’s plausible that wearing a mask will help you and others. But to go from that to sitting in a cafe full of unmasked people, unmasked yourself, and then putting one on to go to the loo or to walk out, that takes a special kind of doublethink.
Pretty much the same kind of doublethink that allowed the government to say that it was ok to spend all Christmas day with relatives, but it wasn’t ok to stay over night!
If you’re not too bright and don’t realise viruses are really very small and the holes in masks are huge,
Or you might be bright enough to realise that viruses don’t travel through the air by themselves. They travel on water droplets which vary in size, as do the size of the holes in masks. There is ample evidence that many types of mask reduce transmission of a wide range of droplet sizes. Even droplets that are much smaller than the holes in masks get caught because the masks slows down the air they are in and Brownian motion causes them to take a zig-zag route which causes them to get caught in mask fibres.
https://eurjmedres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40001-020-00475-6
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7301882/
https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/face-masks-can-filter-small-airborne-particles-including-respiratory-droplets-and-are-effective-at-reducing-the-spread-of-covid-19/
So we should see this benefit played out in far lower infection spread in nations and states with mask mandates than in those without. Please show us the evidence.
There is a big gap between a mask mandate and a significant number of people wearing masks correctly in the right context. And masks are only one, possibly quite small, factor in determining infection. So it is unlikely to show up in a crude correlation between mask mandates and infection rates. Despite that there is some evidence linking mask mandates to better outcomes e.g.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818
https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/face-masks-and-gdp.html
Yes, we know, the Chinese entrepreneurs behind this have commissioned all kinds of fancy air disperal papers because that’s something which can be measured. That’s a horeshoe theory of sorts, namely, the claim that counting the number of horseshoes in a country and dividing that by four communicates something about the number of horses. But it doesn’t.
In order to demonstrate that masks affect viral transmissions, one has to track viruses travelling from person A to person B and demonstrate that these viruses moving in the indicated way actually caused a symptomatic infection while viruses moving in some other way prevented it.
Has it been established how covid is transmitted, beyond a reasonable doubt? I thought the jury was still out on that one.
Do you know how quickly moisture droplets evaporate?
Except they’re predominantly carried on aerosols (very small, carried long range) rather than water droplets (very large, short range). If the virus is carried as you claim, and masks works as you claim, why did the infection rate reduction not increase after the mask mandate was introduced, and stay down? Demonstrable cause and effect is the most basic of scientific criteria.
but those are “the rules” and you have to be seen to comply with them and lots of people just do for the sake of a quiet life and ‘because everyone else is doing it”
A butter face girl?
Last spring deaths ‘attributed’ to Covid-19 peaked in the second week of April. By late May it was effectively over, yet mask-wearing was mandated on public transport from 15 June and in indoor settings from 23 July – two months and three-and-a-half months respectively after the peak. These measures were transparently only introduced to maintain unnecessary public anxiety.
For a while I requested that people I was engaging with remove their mask as I couldnt understand what they were saying, to their credit nobody ever refused. Unfortunately now I’m just so pissed off with them all, in the street, shops etc that I smile and give a friendly greeting to which almost all respond likewise and engage in conversation, I then inform them that unfortunately I couldn’t understand a word they have just said because of their mask, unkind of me but very satisfying, particularly as the majority have the decency to look sheepish about it.
I always compliment shop workers and restaurant staff if they aren’t wearing a mask, telling them how nice it is to see a smiling face.
“Yet many East Asians had been wearing them for years” because of pollution, not viruses!
Until about 50 – 70 years ago, everybody in Europe wore a hat or some other kind of head-covering. This was done because of because, ie, because it was a fashion. I’ve actually bought a reusable cloth mask of the type seemingly most popular in England (or maybe just in Reading) and the label said (roughly) Fashion mask. Not a medical mask. Wear for fashion or dust or sun protection.
It makes me so angry every time I see Whitty’s face.
The case for a full face mask is strong in that one.
A face for farting in, with the fart coming from an elephant, if ever there was one.
I am pleased to report that very few parents are now wearing masks at the gates of my grandchildren’s school. Last term it was almost universal even after the mandate was lifted.
Shops are still stoking the fear. Sainsburys has signs saying it’s a choice… but… please keep us safe by wearing one: and lots of muppets are complying. Lidl seems more sensible.
But how can this bullshit still persist anywhere? Confirmation that it is purely political can be seen in the Commons with all the Labour sheep masking and the Tories not. Presumably we can expect to see a surge of infections in one party and not the other!
I was in sainsburys on saturday and there were more people masked than last week – are we going backwards?
unfortunately masks very much in vogue in Northern Ireland where there are a lot of restriction still which may never get lifted
Masks are beyond idiotic.
People are already questioning them.
Soon, politicians and media will start questioning them more loudly.
Then, questioning them will become the mainstream position.
Eventually, nobody will be able to find anyone who ever believed they worked.
A bit like Nazis in Germany. From not being able to swing a cat without hitting one in 1939 to not being able to find a single one in 1946.
I once knew a man whose wife worked with a woman whose nephew lived in the same street as someone who used to be a mask wearer.
The science (synonymous to loads of number in a table, a very Chinese idea of science) came from the PR departments of companies selling masks. In Germany, mask mandates have been much more intrusive than in the UK. And there were numerous halfway surfacing scandals of elected representatives with good business connections to China getting handy commissions etc for helping with mask imports. All in the name of public health, obviously, honi soit qui mal y pense …
Cases have never been doubling every few days except for very short periods when the numbers were so small that they’d unexponentially double every few days: Counting from 1 to 20 will lead to four occurences of doubling. Counting from 21 to 100 will add two more. And it becomes less after that.
Let’s remember that in Scotland, mask wearing indoors is still law.
And kids still need to wear them in high schools.
Well, the stats show that didn’t work very well. Scotland has been leading the way in infections and hospitalisations these last few weeks.
I have always assumed that the reason we did not jump on the ‘something must be seen to be done, other countries are using masks, let’s use masks’ bandwagon immediately is because at the time hospitals and medics were desperately short of PPE. The government were under the media cosh for PPE shortages so SAGE were told to avoid encouraging the public to make matters even worse by buying up all the available masks.
That aside, there still seems to be no evidence that mask wearing reduces infectiOn rates; if it did we should see an alteration in infection rates when masks are mandated. This effect has not been observed anywhere in the world as far as I am aware.
It’s very simple.
Don’t comply. Don’t play their game.
I haven’t worn a mask for 18 months and won’t go anywhere that requires one.
The Oxford study was particularly disingenuous with the President of the Royal Society of London – the RS sponsored the study – quoted as saying mask refuseniks should be treated like drunk-drivers. Frankly, with the RS promoting advocacy research and policy being driven by the guesstimates of the modellers, science is in a very bad place. Tea leaf readers and rigged research outcomes embedded in the country’s most prestigious scientific institutions.The ‘climate emergency’ is going to use this ‘Science’ in a quasi religious crusade – heaven help the unbelievers….
.
Err? Yes — I have a err??? a close relative that’s employed by the RS. They are some of the biggest Bedwetters out there. RIP to real Science.
Mid-Feb 20 my instincts went on alert – there seemed an aroma of tyrant or rat. By end March 20 I was wondering if it was going to be blue overalls or brown uniforms next; it turned out to be masks.
Good comments so far here but few have mentioned health risks of wearing masks.
Those risks are not widely enough published but I’ve posted comments detailing them so many times already I can’t be bothered to do so again.
Best comment I’ve ever seen about masks was of ‘many a true word spoken in jest’ variety. It pointed out that the now despised British tradition of carrying a clean handkerchief was a far more effective way of reducing spread than wearing a mask.
“If you were on social media at that time, you probably remember seeing a version of this chart, which went viral numerous times:“
But surely all the “fact checkers” would have been straight onto it, shouting that “correlation is not causation”, about “confounding factors”, etc and declaring it “misinformation”? And then the tech corps would have suppressed it, labelling it as misinformation, shadow banning and suspending accounts that repeatedly pushed it, etc?
Because that kind of intentionally misrepresented non-evidence driving policy into erroneous areas is exactly what they are opposed to, right?
Too many people are still not understanding what is going on, and try to judge politicians and their lackeys actions and words by ‘normal’ vallues. That is the worst mistake to make.
Politicians are venal psychopathic liars. If you start from that Sine qua non, then it is a lot easier to understand
I’ll just add to the already splendid observations and comments here that masks were once found to increase vaccination rates against the flu in one hospital.
As the sole real goal of the plandemic was and is the introduction of vaxxports, they might have found that study belatedly and jumped upon it then.
I was vehemently opposed against masks from day 1, as after having read the readily available research on them and some logical self-thinking, it was obvious that they would be medically at best useless, more likely counterproductive with regard to other illnesses AND Covid.
Therefore, I immediately recognized what they are and there for: Gessler’s hats, like the Hitler salute was one, and above all the initial assault on ones inalienable individual right of bodily autonomy.
If the people had seen that and refused them then, the further assaults on them and it, like repeated Lockdowns and the coerced vaccinations and vaxx passports, wouldn’t have stood a chance.
They were our litmus test, and we failed it completely.
“Gessler’s hat” is a term I have favoured myself as it succinctly sums up what is being done to us. I hope it’s not wasted on those too young to have watched William Tell on black and white TV.