CONFIRMED: The “Anti-Maskers” Were Right

By Christie Pritchard

The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was just published. The study, titled, “Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses” (Jefferson et al.) was conducted by The Cochrane Collaboration, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of healthcare data. The group’s analyses are often used to inform policymakers —and this study’s outcome is clearly the opposite of what our policies have been. The article concluded: “Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID-19-like illness compared to not wearing masks”

In an interview, Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist and lead author told journalist Maryanne Demasi on Substack:

“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” “Full stop.”

But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?

“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.

What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?

“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”

What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration?

“There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.”

The Study

Jefferson and 11 colleagues based their conclusions on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries.

They also tracked what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without. The study shows that mask mandates were a bust when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as “anti-maskers” and censored for spreading “misinformation” for opposing mandates were right. And the mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates lacked solid evidence to support their argument.

The Response

In light of this meta-analysis, during congressional testimony, Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, insisted that her agency’s guidance on masking in schools wouldn’t change. She also called into question the Cochrane analysis’s reliance on a small number of Covid-specific randomized controlled trials. Of course it’s a small number because very few randomized controlled studies were actually done on masking and COVID — almost as if the CDC and other health authorities didn’t want to know the results. But this goes the other way too — where are their randomized controlled trials that find masks do protect against COVID-19?

The Science

Remarkably, the absence of evidence to support mask-wearing for infection control was confirmed from the very beginning by the same agencies and organizations that ended up mandating universal mask-wearing. For example, a CDC policy review paper, published in May 2020, concluded that there’s “no evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility.”

Similarly, guidance by the World Health Organization, published in June 2020, stated: “At present, there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID-19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.”

And the well-designed studies that were conducted while mask mandates ramped up in 2020 continually found no evidence to support masking:

A randomized controlled trial in Denmark, which looked at COVID-19 infection specifically, also concluded there was “a non-statistically significant difference between two groups of participants, one requested to wear a mask, the other not wearing a mask,” and that masks were ineffective against virus-laden aerosols, as airborne viruses can “penetrate or circumnavigate a face mask.”

A May 2020 study found no difference in case rates between U.S. states that had mask mandates compared to those that didn’t, and a British survey of infection rates among school children found “no evidence that face coverings, 2-metre social distancing or stopping children mixing were associated with lower odds of COVID-19 or cold infection rates in the school.”

Harms in Masking

Mask mandates were a fruitless endeavour from the start. And, as noted in the Cochrane review, “Harms were rarely measured and poorly reported.” Most notable is the psychological harm imposed on young ones. Entire knowledge bases of early literacy and speech development are formed on seeing human faces. Here is just a small sample of studies that illustrate this:

• A study (Stajduhar et al.) showed that masks were disruptive to school-aged children’s ability to process human facial cues
• An observational study by Brown University (Deoni et al.) found significantly lower cognitive scores in toddlers since the beginning of the pandemic
• American Speech and Hearing Association study (Grieco-Calub et al.) found restrictions and mask mandates had negative impacts on communication skills

Interestingly, while Canadian provinces mandated 2-year-olds wear masks, The Cochrane review failed to find any study conducted on the efficacy of facemasks on 2-year-olds. It seems they realized that if they don’t study it, the answers they don’t want to come to light will stay hidden — at least for a little while.

Indeed, physical well-being may not have been the primary purpose of facemasks. Instead, they served as a constant reminder that we were living in a “pandemic” and should be living in fear of the virus.

The Final Lesson

Pandemic theatre is not science. Wearing a mask should have been left as a personal choice, not a public mandate. And the people who had the courage to say as much never deserved to be called names like “anti-masker” and “conspiracy theorist.” No one should have lost their job for questioning the “science.”  They may never get the apology they deserve, but at least they have been vindicated.

You can read the full study 326-page study by Cochrane at https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6