Mask-wearing had no discernible impact on the spread of COVID-19 in Europe during winter 2020-21 and may actually have increased mortality, a study has found.
The peer-reviewed study by Professor Beny Spira from the Department of Microbiology at the University of São Paulo, published in the journal Cureus, looked at the correlation between the rate of mask-wearing in the population and the number of reported infections and deaths from October 2020 to March 2021 in 35 European countries. All European countries, including Western and Eastern Europe, with more than one million inhabitants were included, encompassing a total of 602 million people. All the countries experienced a peak of COVID-19 infections during the six months – the winter 2020-21 wave.
The results are shown in the graphs above, where a positive correlation can be seen in the case of both infections and deaths, i.e., greater mask-wearing went hand-in-hand with more infections and deaths, the opposite of the intended effect of masks. In the case of reported infections the correlation was not statistically significant, so may have been by chance. In the case of deaths it was statistically significant, particularly in Western Europe, opening up the possibility that wearing masks actually made things worse.
Professor Spira addresses some possible limitations of the study.
It could be argued that some confounding factors could have influenced these results. One of these factors could have been different vaccination rates among the studied countries. However, this is unlikely given the fact that at the end of the period analysed in this study (March 31st 2021), vaccination rollout was still at its beginning, with only three countries displaying vaccination rates higher than 20%: the UK (48%), Serbia (35%), and Hungary (30%), with all doses counted individually. It could also be claimed that the rise in infection levels prompted mask usage resulting in higher levels of masking in countries with already higher transmission rates. While this assertion is certainly true for some countries, several others with high infection rates, such as France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain had strict mask mandates in place since the first semester of 2020. In addition, during the six-month period covered by this study, all countries underwent a peak in COVID-19 infections, thus all of them endured similar pressures that might have potentially influenced the level of mask usage.
Professor Spira notes the findings are in line with the results of most randomised controlled trials before and during the pandemic, which found the “role of masks in preventing respiratory viral transmission was small, null, or inconclusive”. Despite this lack of evidence, masks were widely mandated.
Mask mandates were implemented in almost all world countries and in most places where masks were not obligatory, their use in public spaces was recommended. Accordingly, the World Health Organisation (WHO) as well as other public institutions, such as the IHME, from which the data on mask compliance used in this study were obtained, strongly recommend the use of masks as a tool to curb COVID-19 transmission. These mandates and recommendations took place despite the fact that most randomised controlled trials carried out before and during the COVID-19 pandemic concluded that the role of masks in preventing respiratory viral transmission was small, null, or inconclusive.
Mask proponents appear to have been led astray by population-based studies from 2020, where, the study notes, ‘mask effectiveness’ was invariably measured against a background of falling infections.
Conversely, ecological studies, performed during the first months of the pandemic, comparing countries, states, and provinces before and after the implementation of mask mandates almost unanimously concluded that masks reduced COVID-19 propagation. However, mask mandates were normally implemented after the peak of COVID-19 cases in the first wave, which might have given the impression that the drop in the number of cases was caused by the increment in mask usage. For instance, the peak of cases in Germany’s first wave occurred in the first week of April 2020, while masks became mandatory in all of Germany’s federal states between the 20th and 29th of April, at a time when the propagation of COVID-19 was already declining. Furthermore, the mask mandate was still in place in the subsequent autumn-winter wave of 2020-2021, but it did not help preventing the outburst of cases and deaths in Germany that was several-fold more severe than in the first wave.
The study concludes that the lack of negative correlations between mask usage and COVID-19 reported infections and deaths suggest that “the widespread use of masks at a time when an effective intervention was most needed, i.e., during the strong 2020-2021 autumn-winter peak, was not able to reduce COVID-19 transmission”. It adds that the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe suggests the practice “may have had harmful unintended consequences” – though cautions that no cause-effect conclusions can be drawn from the observational analysis.
The study is worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
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Of course, masks do make a difference and the positive correlation between deaths and mask usage bears this out. Although masks as worn by the general public don’t reduce viral infection, they do reduce oxygen levels in the blood, most obviously if worn for long periods – this is well-known and proven, I’m sure that someone with more time can find a link or several if they want to. Reduced oxygen leads to worse health outcomes e.g. when the body is trying to fight Covid – again, correlation between low oxygen levels and increased Covid severity is well-known and proven.
And yet I am still being forced to wear one for 12.5 hours a day at work in the NHS. Being told off for taking breaks from my mask or it slipping down my face because they’re enormous and I have a small face (so I have to constantly touch and adjust it).
You have my sympathy – must be awful.
As surgeons, we all knew masks as worn by the general public don’t work, any more than do pieces of plastic apron. The PPE nonsense as with most of the uncritical pro vaccination nonsense has persuaded society and politicians and sandfly many medics that they understand SARS-Cov-2. You will note this is not a mainstream publication and this paper would never get great traction because too many, including our knighted pair can’t be proved to be buffoons.
Took my dog to yet another vet (I’ve been chucked out of two for my views regarding their stupid “covid” rules) it’s like going back in time to March/April 2020. Notices on seats saying “DON’T SIT HERE” plus others dotted around saying “DON’T FORGET SOCIAL DISTANCING” and most important of all “PLEASE WEAR A MASK AT ALL TIMES”. You can only go in to say you’ve arrived. You then walk out and the vet phones when they are ready. Only allowed one person to see the vet and on it goes! Looks like I’m going to have to find a 4th veterinary practice. When is this madness going to stop?
this study on europe confirms the findings of my own study.
https://doi.org/10.1097/md.0000000000028924
Just read quickly through your paper. Very interesting findings.
Anyone with the slightest bit of common sense knew from day one that all measures introduced were harmful to health and ineffective. Why bother to spend energy and time analysing data? Experienced and honest Scientists told you right at the beginning and it has all gone the way they predicted. That’s why some of us ignored the whole damn lot and have remained perfectly healthy other than normal seasonal illness (if at all) for the last 2 years. At the end of the day it’s clear that the global plan is partly to depopulate and they have approached this from so many angles- eg. denying essential healthcare for months, harmful drugs (Remdesivir, Midazolam etc), isolation, masks (micro plastics now found in lungs in the UK from using these) , harmful tests, highly dangerous vaccines etc. It very much looks like over the next few years the goal depopulation quota will be reached.
no suprise as this was obvious from the start
Like I said, masking is a filthy habit…
“Mask proponents appear to have been led astray …”
Does one ‘lead astray’ a crook, a fool, or a liar?
These articles keep saying things like; “the opposite of the intended effect”. A more accurate phrase would be; “the opposite of the publicised & claimed effect”.
Off topic but…
Truth is treason.
It was known long before 2020, not least from studies during influenza outbreaks in mask-obsessed Oriental Countries, that masks made no difference. We have observed from the data in mask verses no mask USA States and of course Sweden versus the rest, plus umpteen reports – they don’t work!
The faux-vaccins don’t work, masks don’t work, lockdowns don’t work, antisocial distancing doesn’t work. How much longer will the deadbeats go on insisting they do?
About 80% of us have strep and staph colonies in our nasopharynx. These are kept under control at low levels by our immune system. Bacteria, unlike respiratory virus, can propagate out side the Human body in various media and on surfaces. Masks provide a nice warm, moist breeding medium for disease causing bacteria which can then be inhaled providing a bigger load for the immune system to deal with. Plus masks being constantly touched are an excellent method of cross-infection.
So how many of those extra deaths were from bacterial infections? I suppose since nobody was counting, we shall never know.
That’s two of the four cornerstones of “the science” debunked, lockdowns & face masks were more detrimental than the virus they were supposed to curtail, who would have guessed?
We already know the “gold standard PCR” that was widely used to drive up figures and fear from the outset, was quietly swept under the carpet last year, and replaced with lateral flow testing, which in and of itself is known to be not exactly accurate at the best of times, so that’s three.
Number four, jabs, promised to deliver salvation, the more data being released is showing it is a placebo at best and lethal at worst.
Hold on to your tinfoil hats, the ride isn’t over yet. 😉
Remember the very well planned 2011 Pandemic Preparedness Strategy? The one that Hancock and the rest of the lying, deceitful charlatans ripped up, when Black Death 2 first arrived?
Here’s what it says about masks, Page 37, and it’s still online:
“4.15 Although there is a perception that the wearing of facemasks by the public in the community and household setting may be beneficial, there is in fact very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use in this setting. Facemasks must be worn correctly, changed frequently, removed properly, disposed of safely and used in combination with good respiratory, hand, and home hygiene behaviour in order for them to achieve the intended benefit. Research also shows that compliance with these recommended behaviours when wearing facemasks for prolonged periods reduces over time.”
Notice the word “perception” in the first line.
I’m glad you had that information to hand, I was thinking about it when I first read the headline.
The part which stuck with me was –
“there is in fact very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use”
It was a fact then and still is now, no matter how hard they try to convince us otherwise.
There was a meme floating about around the time which sums it up….
Very good!!!!!
If only they had a vaccine or three to stop this terrible killer disease!
In other news: research shows that the number of budgies kept as pets is not correlated to covid either.
However there is a correlation between pirates and global warming 😅
Maybe parrots are involved somehow?
I’m willing to accept millions in government funding to prove/disprove this theory (depending on what they tell me the outcome should be)
“the science”
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I’ve just received a letter from my gp informing me that I can now get a health check. The only positive is that I can use the back of the letter for a shopping list.
I completely understand now why people move off-grid. ‘Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated’.
We live in a very strange and broken world where a peer reviewed paper is required to determine something so obvious. We really are in trouble.
Peer review is worth about as much as the toss of a coin.
Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, condemned medical peer review as up to 50% junk so it’s worse than you thought.
Child hepatitis cases falsely linked to Covid vaccine – BBC News
Another 36 cases in the past week
The Health Authorities and the BBC have ruled out any link to the vaccines
In reality they have conflated the fact that none of the children were jabbed to stating there is no link between vaccines and this outbreak of hepatitis in children
Simply not true
The only thing that they know at the moment is that they don’t know
Interestingly, they still try to keep alive the possibility covid is to blame, despite the specialist they quote says it is not a possibility as only 16% of the patients tested positive and because it is a different virus.
Perhaps isolating a child for two thirds of it’s life may have something to do with it?
I guess the allowed answer would be that out of two bad outcomes it is worse for the child to go outside, meaning it would immediately drop dead from covid, than to get hepatitis.
What do you mean a different virus. Heretic!
There is only one virus and his name is CoV 2. All others are false gods.
The BBC really are very naughty in this regard — there is no ‘knowledge’ that the vaccines aren’t to blame — there are several mechanisms that could have led from vaccination (using weird vaccines) to increased pathogenicity of an adenovirus strain.
But the BBC probably knows what it is doing — they’ve got both an authoritative voice and primacy bias on their side — most people will just believe that it isn’t due to the vaccines no matter what evidence comes along (as anything ‘not official’ is misinformation and they simply turn off their brains whenever they think that misinformation is incoming).
when in a actual fact anything anything “not official” is more likely to be accurate information and the “official” version is likely to be mis-information (vaxx is safe and effective, wear a mask to stop the spread) and they should switch on their brains when information which is “not official” is incoming
No report I have read mentions vaccines, the suspected culprit is adenovirus, known to cause hepatitis, as result of untrained immune systems thanks to lockdown and other measures which stopped kids mixing and sharing bugs.
But when it comes to BBC et al, if their is no ‘fake news’ to denounce they’ll invent some.
Those results fly in the face of the widely held belief that because a mask limits airflow it necessarily limits viral spread. This is a widespread fallacy of intuition; because things look a certain way to me, this must be how they are. Another such fallacy would be believing the earth is flat because that’s the way it seems to be when I look out the window.
Since the study is already peer-reviewed it will be considerably harder for the masking crowd to discredit it, and most possible flaws will already have been fixed. The inclusion criteria is very simple and the period selected mostly prevents differences in vaccine rollout from complicating the issue.
Is the mask question settled then? To most reasonable people it already was long ago, and this study is important because it confirms what was already known. As for the masking crowd I guess no amount of research will ever convince them, not any more than flat-earthers can ever be convinced of the error of their ways.
People believe that the masks must be doing something a bit helpful to them, rather than understanding that they are obeying an order from their government which has no good purpose whatsoever.
Are you trying to tell us the earth isn’t flat? I’m sure if the Guardian and the BBC told us it’s flat then round earth conspiracy theorists would be banned from Twitter.
Seriously, though, it is so patently obvious that the masking nonsense is entirely political with no credible science to justify it you have to marvel at the temerity of people who profess it and the gullibility of those that go along with it.
“The round-earth conspiracy theory”, this is a good one, won’t be surprised to see it popping up somewhere soon.
I know there are a lot of anecdotal stories, but I really have to wonder at how damaged (or how totally compliant) people have to be to wear a mask on a near empty English beach with a stiff onshore wind, as I have seen this week, and people still wearing masks to walk around hotel dining rooms but taking them off to sit down. It’s a shame that the above report will never be read by these sorts of people.
I saw one lady carrying a tissue in her hand so she did not have to touch door handles with her bare hand.
A good start point would be to ask whether these people were like this before, not as a consequence of, the last two years.
I think we finally have an intelligence/mental state indicator for those ‘care in the community’ cases who used to walk among us unbeknown.
There’s always been a question about whether covid naturally spreads as a respiratory disease in the first place. I’d say that it probably does, but the evidence isn’t conclusive.
Eg, it could be spread via an faecal-oral route — I note that the household infection rate (how likely it is that one person in a household will spread it to others in a household — this is about 15%) is rather close to the ‘not washing hands after having a poo’ rate (10-20%, depending on age, gender and cultural background).
The other complication is the role of superspreaders. This was all over the media in spring 2020, but was overtaken with the theory that all infected are spreaders. Yet there’s lots of evidence that it can’t simply be that all infected are spreaders
Eg, back to that household infection rate — covid apparently now has a R0 of >12, yet an R0 this high would mean that nearly everyone in the same household as an infected individual would become infected, and this isn’t the case.
Recent studies have picked up on the superspreader theory (eg, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-022-01105-z), but the people directing this pandemic would prefer us to keeping thinking… Read more »
Fæcal-oral route. It is a virus of the respiratory tract, not the gut. Therefore it is adapted by evolution to be aerosol spread.
When swallowed it will be destroyed by hydrochloride acid in the stomach so it cannot reproduce in the gut, and any viral fragments in fæces would be inactive.
Respiratory viruses spread in enclosed spaces with plenty of circulating air and where there is a high level of circulating viruses, and particularly in domestic settings – which is why lockdown was so counterproductive.
In order to be infected, and individual needs around 5 000 viruses settled on the nasal mucosa.
What matters is how long you are in a space with circulating virus and how many virus. It us why masks won’t work, because they are not airtight, virus will pass round sides and straight through the material. Even if some virus are stopped, if you are in the space long enough, there will be an accumulative effect.
Why then was it found in waste water treatment samples going back as far as the summer of 2019 in Spain and Italy – faecal route? no?
And it is well known that if you flush a toilet without the lid being down, an invisible plume of bacteria and other nasty particles is forced up to 7 feet in the air which can then be inhaled or fall onto other surfaces.
That being the case I can never understand why there are public toilets in hospitals where there are no lids. Were they trying to economise? reduce cleaning time?
In the last few weeks we have seen studies and articles that demolish virtually every detail of the Covid Narrative shoved down our throats
by the Johnson Government, its agents, its fake experts and the controlled censored Media for the last two years..
As even the most gullible and naive can surely now smell a cellar full of rats , is it time to ask why we have been lied to and what the real purpose of the lies the massive self-harm damage to our general health, the Health Service itself and our economy and the subsequent hysterical max experimental and ineffective “vaccination” campaign has been?
Even the darkest of “Conspiracy Theories” now needs to be considered seriously.
When I was young I never understood so much of what made dystopian societies ‘work’ — how do they get people to rat on their neighbours; why support rates are so high; why do people put so much effort into obeying rules that clearly only make life worse.
I thought that people in these countries ‘obeyed’ mainly as a result of fear — I now realise that this is incorrect.
People seem to accept these dystopian conditions just so long as they think everyone else is accepting them — at which point they become very content to ‘rat out’ anyone that isn’t accepting them.
Of course, there are always a few dissenters — but the masses will happily ignore them and if they cause too much trouble will be happy enough if they’re silenced by the state (whether it be by execution, gulag or having their social media accounts frozen).
Yes, this is the real manifesto and agenda of the,Globalist, Anti-Conservative, Great Reset/ Green Fascist, Johnson Government we so stupidly put in power!
Duh………
It’s funny how the woke/progressive/democrat crowd have embraced masks as a political stance. And at the same time how masks have become the signifier of the stupid.
I have just ventured into Ilkley where I found mask wearing restricted to the elderly – all of which were wearing them loose, over their mouths only etc, and the idiotic young who were wearing them to prove how virtuous they are. Yes, they have become an outward emblem of stupidity.
And I bet they were masked, baht’at an bahn’ to catch their deeath o’ covid.
Still a great way of quickly identifying the truly stupid in society (the ones who have come out from behind their sofa’s).
My view on masks is that some vulnerable people continue wearing them outside in winter, thus blocking the sunlight from one of the few parts of their body normally exposed to the (weak) sun. This depresses Vitamin D levels and thus leads to increased chances of death.
Vit D. Hmmmmm………..
Just had a humdinger of a cold despite knocking back 4,000IU of Vit. D daily for the last 2+ years.
Maybe I should consider that my cold wasn’t as bad as it could have been…………….
Vitamin D tablets are no replacement for sun exposure and the whole pill popping thing can be a bit scammy. The labels of these vit pills and other supplements state their contents but not how absorbable they are in the body. Different forms of these supplements are more readily taken up by the body and most of the time all those lovely vitamins are going in one end and out the other.
‘Dr’ Zelenko sells ‘vitamins’…. I wonder where he buys them from, and where they are manufactured.
They nearly all have something to sell.
I am no expert on supplements but it is my understanding that not all are equal. Naturally obtained vitamins and minerals are mostly superior.
Ah… but ‘Dr’ Zelenko’s vitamins are especially good. And, who would hesitate at 5% off the cost?! Bargain!
Hope you are taking it alongside Vit K2 which helps with its absorption and makes sure it doesn’t send calcium into the wrong areas of the body!
What about all the other vitamins? A, B2, B6, B12, C, E…. ?? And all the ‘minerals’…. funny how these rarely get a mention.
An odd response – Vit D is only really a vitamin because the usual synthesis path through UV is compromised in our latitudes (and or by clothing). Research on its specific role in immunity has been around for some years.
Vit C, in high dosage, is also frequently mentioned in the COVID protocols, based ultimately on the work of Linus Pauling, whose debunking may have been premature.
There’s little reason for most people to be deficient in the other vitamins and minerals (barring zinc), and that’s why they’re not frequently discussed in this context.
Next question.
Vits D3 and K2 are synergistic and work with each other. Hence the mention – it would be neglectful to talk about D3 and not then talk bout K2 in the same conversation.
Read more about it and educate yourself on the issue. I did.
I’m baffled to see muzzles making a comeback in the Democratic People’s Republic of Caledonia.
Most prevalent in coffin dodgers, as you’d expect, but also a number of younger women seem to have put their purity-veils back on again – as you’d expect, they were the ones out banging pots and pans in worship of the Holy Church of Our NHS.
I’m still trying to figure out why this is. Normally it’s rote obedience to Kween Krankie, but I’d have thought that her repeated “Ah briefly forgot mah ain law, but Ah’ve drawn a line under it noo” incidents would have disabused them of that grovelling subjugation.
I wonder if this is like the Millerite movement, the apocalypse cult whose truest believers actually became more zealous when Armageddon failure to turn up on time. I guess it is actually true that every day you don’t die makes it more likely that you’ll die tomorrow.
Masks were always about compliance and keeping the fear going – not about public safety.
Mask wearing was pure political theatre.