John Tierney has written an excellent article in City Journal summarising the latest Cochrane review showing masks do “approximately zero” against Covid. Here’s an excerpt.
The most rigorous and extensive review of the scientific literature concludes that neither surgical masks nor N95 masks have been shown to make a difference in reducing the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses.
This verdict ought to be the death knell for mask mandates, but that would require the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the rest of the public-health establishment to forsake ‘the science’ — and unfortunately, these leaders and their acolytes in the media seem as determined as ever to ignore actual science. Before the pandemic, clinical trials repeatedly showed little or no benefit from wearing masks in preventing the spread of respiratory illnesses like flu and colds. That was why, in their pre-2020 plans for dealing with a viral pandemic, the World Health Organisation, the CDC, and other national public-health agencies did not recommend masking the public. But once COVID-19 arrived, magical thinking prevailed. Officials ignored the previous findings and plans, instead touting crude and easily debunked studies purporting to show that masks worked.
The gold standard for medical evidence is the randomised clinical trial, and the gold standard for analysing this evidence is Cochrane (formerly the Cochrane Collaboration), the world’s largest and most respected organisation for evaluating health interventions. Funded by the National Institutes of Health and other nations’ health agencies, it’s an international network of reviewers, based in London, that has partnerships with the WHO and Wikipedia. Medical journals have hailed it for being “the best single resource for methodologic research” and for being “recognised worldwide as the highest standard in evidence-based healthcare”.
It has published a new Cochrane review of the literature on masks, including trials during the COVID-19 pandemic in hospitals and in community settings. The 15 trials compared outcomes of wearing of surgical masks versus wearing no masks, and also versus N95 masks. The review, conducted by a dozen researchers from six countries, concludes that wearing any kind of face covering “probably makes little or no difference” in reducing the spread of respiratory illness.
This may seem counterintuitive, writes Tierney, but not if you understand what’s going on at a microscopic scale.
It may seem intuitive that masks must do something. But even if they do trap droplets from coughs or sneezes (the reason that surgeons wear masks), they still allow tiny viruses to spread by aerosol even when worn correctly — and it’s unrealistic to expect most people to do so. While a mask may keep out some pathogens, its inner surface can also trap concentrations of pathogens that are then breathed back into the lungs. Whatever theoretical benefits there might be, in clinical trials the benefits have turned out to be either illusory or offset by negative factors. Oxford’s Tom Jefferson, the lead author of the Cochrane review, summed up the real science on masks: “There is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop.”
This lack of evidence would be enough to keep any new drug or medical treatment from being approved — much less one whose purported benefits had not even been weighed against the harmful side-effects. As the Cochrane reviewers disapprovingly note, few of the clinical trials of masks even bothered to collect data on the harmful effects on subjects. Most public-health officials and journalists have ignored the downsides, too, and social-media platforms have censored evidence of those harms. But there’s no doubt, from dozens of peer-reviewed studies, that masks cause social, psychological, and medical problems, including a constellation of maladies called “mask-induced exhaustion syndrome.”
Tierney notes that, despite all the data showing that COVID-19 poses virtually no risk to healthy children, “the CDC continues to recommend masking all [schoolchildren] in communities where infection rates are rising” and even “cruelly recommends masking everyone from age two on up”.
Incredibly, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, when asked about the Cochrane studt at a congressional hearing, said: “Our masking guidance doesn’t really change with time. This is an important study but the Cochrane review only includes randomised clinical trials, and, as you can imagine, many of the randomised clinical trials were for other respiratory viruses.”
Tierney notes this is a statement “remarkable for its chutzpah as well as its scientific incoherence”.
One of the worst mistakes of the CDC and other lavishly funded federal agencies was the failure to conduct randomized clinical trials to determine whether their policies were effective. The Cochrane review had to rely on pandemic mask trials conducted in other countries — and now Walensky has the gall to complain that other countries didn’t do enough of the research that U.S. agencies shirked. She’s right that some of the trials involved other viruses, but why dismiss them as irrelevant to the coronavirus? And while one can always wish for more studies to include in a meta-analysis, that’s no excuse to ignore the best available evidence in favor of the shoddy science peddled by her agency to defend its policies.
Data analyst Ian Miller – author of Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates – prepared a graph for a previous City Journal article that Tierney reproduces in his article “because it’s a visual confirmation — from nationwide data, not clinical trials — of the conclusions in the Cochrane review”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson have written a post on their Substack about the reaction to the recent update of their Cochrane Review.
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There is only one face on that gallery of criminals that I suggest might be worth a punt on and that is Esther McVey. The rest are treasonous gallows fodder.
A complete wipe-out of one of the main parties would be good for the soul of this country. There is no doubt an incoming Labour Party will be as bad or worse but that might be the price we have to pay before the sheeple awake from their stupor. Nevertheless, as I keep posting:
Our salvation will not arrive via the ballot box.
You beat me to it. ——-I just scanned the faces and I could not see a tory, (McVey maybe but she is untested). So it is not Tories that face electoral oblivion is it? —-It is Labour Lite.
They are all globalists to me!
She has just been brought to heel by Sunak.
https://www.cheshire-live.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/cheshire-mp-esther-mcvey-appointed-28100000#
She like all others are all bought and paid for.
Quite. But too many people on this side of the argument still can’t get their heads around that. Where’s Oliver Cromwell when you need him?
The Tories deserve to be wiped out by the people who put them in but what fails me is how can the same people vote for Labour instead ! It will make no difference !!!
Why would they vote for Labour or indeed any establishment party?
It does not really matter which WEF leader we vote for, as the policy will not change no matter the party spin that is applied. the “Parties” are trying to out do each other in the degree of “NetZero” to apply – without the consent of the electorate.
Wholly agree.
Bullet box ..
McVey, like Redwood, Patel, Braverman, Anderson et al talk the talk but at the end of the day it is Tory Plc that pays their bills and they cling to that reassurance. Tories who posit themselves as centre Right haven’t had the slightest effect in steering this stinking hulk of a party on its leftwards drift over the last 30 years. These characters need bouncing out too in 2024 as they are not genuine conservatives, if they were they would not be in the fake Conservative Party.
A fair point.
Your last line says it all, The ballot box is a medium to let the pleb vote for the representatives who will rubber stamp what the blob dictate. They do not really need us but condescendingly offer us a vain hope that we might have a voice, or indeed, make a difference
Thank you.
Good. I hope the Party is completely obliterated ….. and never recovers.
Isn’t there a saying – science hates a vaccuum?
Perhaps a complete wipe-out will provide the opportunity for a properly new political party.
The thought of 300 Kneels backed up by 300 Vicky Pollards – that’s Ranting by the way – is decidedly depressing.
“Look at my face, am I bothered? Am I though?
”
Sorry hux, getting my vicky pollards mixed up with my Lauren Coopers!
Still, both are perfect candidates for the labour party!
Understood Dinger.
Exactly! And thus disenfranchising it’s own ‘conservative’ supporters who now find themselves politically homeless.
“The Tories Face Electoral Oblivion”
Good! Lee, kemi, etc ,leave now!
Better still ,join reform!
They deserve it though why so many people think we’d be better off with a continuation of woke socialism with Labour is beyond me
The only sense in which we will be better off is that people stand a chance of realising we’ve swapped one bunch of traitorous no-hopers for another.
Well I suspect we’ll have maybe two terms of Labour and then people will get fed up with them and we’ll go back to Tories who don’t seem to show much sign of waking up.
Aren’t Gove and Hunt just the face of pure unalloyed evil and greed, having clearly been paid for by Soros/Gates etc. Starmer is a crazy Mugabe style Marxist so can’t wait for the next 5 years, gonna be fun, he’ll chuck ppl inside for mis-gendering.
He’ll chuck ppl under the burning ev bus!
To Starmer the burning bus is like the burning bush
They’ll be so many people under the bus the wheels won’t touch the ground.
Great image for my rifle range, that! Though I’m not entirely sure where I’d put the highest points…..
May I suggest a bullseye
in the the middle of each of their foreheads!
And don’t skimp on the hollow points!
Did this with my own cartoon drawings of Bunter, Vallance and Witty during lockdowns became an instant marksman.
As far as I recall – although I could be wrong – every single MP supported the Coronavirus 2020 Act. The lot should be duly wiped out! They are not fit for any purpose whatsoever, other than self-serving ambitions.
Some parts of the Act are still in force – why? In abeyance to manipulate / force the people to conform to whatever horrors ‘They’ next plan to impose on the people.
By a yet unknown disease x that maybe a dead cert in the near future!?
The Coronavirus Bill 2020 was passed ‘without division’ in both houses of parliament. No MP called for it to be put to a vote.
The Scottish Parliament gave immediate ‘Consent’ without significant debate as the Bill was an incursion on devolved powers.
It was enacted – given Royal Assent – 6 days after the bill was introduced to parliament. Jeremy Corbyn was on record asking to be involved in the drafting of the bill to try to avoid any debate and amendment in parliament.
That is a shame, his brother Piers is a tireless campaigner against Lockdown’s.
That’s surprised me about Jeremy Corbyn. I can’t remember if he was still Labour then or an Independent but he was clearly conforming to the Labour hunger for longer, harder lockdowns. Turncoat
Stabbed with the real junk not the special Westminster saline batch.
How many of the cowards are quitting their seats and declared they are not standing in the next election? Worried about the impact of their voting for government policies against the interests of the people? Rats, the lot of ‘em’.
Sigh….
Who cares. Team A, Team B.
They don’t make policy, they sell it. To the useful idiots who turn up every 4 years to play the western democracy game. Pick a name and pretend that you are expressing your will.
You know what they call people who stand for office and actually intend on setting policy and representing people’s wishes? They call them populist extremists.
When you think about it, it’s comical and pathetic.
Exactly.
On all the policies that matter, that affect our wealth freedom and futures, the globalists have infiltrated all sides of fake left right.
What we do get to choose are whether boys can be girls, statues are racist, abortion at birth or a week after conception…
Meanwhile both parties have settled science, open borders, money printing, digital identities, etc
Surely these millions of New Britons should be grateful enough to the Tory Party to vote for them?
What’s behind the invasion of Western Europe and the US with migrants?
Chris Martinson of Peak Prosperity offers his views on Rumble
https://rumble.com/v49hbb0-exposed-the-hidden-agenda-behind-mass-migration-in-the-western-world.html?mref=6zof&mc=dgip3&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Peak+Prosperity&ep=2
Did the pollsters really ask people about UKIP but not about Reform UK?
Perhaps some of them know there won’t be an election if the plan is to go to war before Jan 2025? It would explain why they have been so incredibly complacent.
“there won’t be an election if the plan is to go to war”
This is certainly a point of view that has crossed my mind. It’s as if the Tories are committing wilful suicide.
But Labour would not be on board with that when they are ahead in the polls.
There’s plenty of reasons to hate the Tories e.g. net zero, immigration etc. but people always reject the governing party, whoever it is, when things are tough for them financially.
When the Tories printed £500 billion of funny money during covid high inflation and a cost of living crisis was inevitable. Given that the economy would probably be in an even worse state if they’d locked down without furlough and all the other spending their electoral fate was sealed when they decided on lockdown.
Until they accept that lockdown was a choice not a necessity they aren’t going to learn the correct lessons and will be happy to do it all again.
You are discussing cock-up theory Matt and that has been demolished.
Agenda 2030. It has all been planned.
At least you refer to it by its actual name…Most just call it Net 0.
Inflation wasn’t caused by planting magic money tree’s during the Lockdowns it was Russia invading the Ukraine. Come on now, the BBC told me (trusted news initiative) everything else is right wing conspiracy theories Marianna said so.
Sadly that’s what a lot of the population believe, just as they don’t realise that high energy prices are in a large part due to the obscene subsidies given to renewables.
It isn’t in their interest to reduce migration and I’m sure I don’t need to explain why this is the case. Why would you expect them to do things that are in direct opposition to their interests? This isn’t arcane knowledge or hard to deduce just a quick glance at supply and demand dynamics will do the trick. It’s implicit in everything they say and so of course they will indulge their predatory and parasitic proclivities. Saying that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum is putting it way too mildly.
Was speaking to eldest daughter today (will be eligible to vote in a year) explained the party system ie uniparty with top down orders from the WEF . The only difference between the Tories and labour is, the conservative party will destroy the country labour will do it quicker. Spoiled my last vote plan to do the same this time around they are all treasonous next Tuesday’s.
In a sense they do have us by the balls because we reject the political class and yet all of our lives in complex societies rely upon the stability of systems that if we were to severely disrupt them would leave us in a difficult situation. How genuinely self-sufficient could we possibly be. And given our reliance on the status quo, how do we ever change it without wrecking everything that our lives depend on? This can lead to despair but i do believe that there are forces operating beyond our kenning. You will not be able to cogitate on our malaise and come up with a solution. Rudolf Steiner was asked by his more eager acolytes, how do we attain knowledge of higher worlds? He said that to start with you should go down to the local old people’s home and take a few of the residents out for a walk. That the only way to higher worlds is through the heart.
True….Just seen some Alfred Hitchcock Presents half hour thrillers today. It is a good throw back watching old films, the attitudes, decor etc. Skills for living off the land were once passed down from generation, something that has been in decline and we’re only just realising this while the Globalists plan to control all food production, and will there even be enough.
It seemed obvious from the start that Sunak was put in to deliberately lose the election to usher in Sir Kier Stalin.
Sir Kier Stalin has supported every Government policy from the Fake Brexit to Lockdowns, Jabs, Net Zero, Ukraine …
Kemi for PM!