Science shows masks aren't effective:
April 2020. University of Illinois. On Respiratory and Infectious Disease.
"Face masks have no effect in everyday life. Neither for self-protection nor protection for third parties."
May 2020. Meta Study by the CDC. On Pandemic Influenza.
"Face masks have no effect either as personal protective equipment or as source control."
May 2020. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Entitled: "Face masks offer little to no protection in everyday life."
July 2020. Oxford Center for Evidence-Based Medicine. "There is no evidence for the effectiveness of face mask for the prevention of infection or transmission."
October 2020. A large, randomized control trial (8,000 participants), published in PLOS-1, "Face masks do not seem effective in laboratory confirmed viral respiratory infections nor against clinical respiratory infections."
November 2020. A Danish randomized control trial. (6,000 participants). Published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Found: "No statistically significant effect of high-quality medical face masks against SARS-2 infection in a community setting."
November 2020. A Cochran Review. Found that: "Face masks did not reduce influenza-like illnesses. Neither in the general population nor in healthcare workers."
February 2021. The European CDC. Review. "No high-quality evidence suggests for the effectiveness of non-medical or medical face masks in the community." The European CDC actually advised against using N95 masks by the general public.
The American CDC admitted they do not have any randomized control trial that supports face mask mandates for Covid-19. This is the response the CDC gave to a FOIA request for randomized control trials supporting the use of face masks for Covid-19: "We are not aware of any."
Even when surgeons wear face masks in surgery, studies have concluded it does not reduce post-operative bacteriological infections.
Science shows that face masks may actually lead to an increase in infection.
2015. British Medical Journal, the MJ Open, found that cloth face masks were actually penetrated by 97% of particles and may increase your rate of infection because moisture is retained in the mask, and we re-use masks without washing them. (Or wear them too long.)
Confirmed in August 2020. A review by a German professor of virology and epidemiology found that there is no evidence for the effectiveness of face masks and that the reality of the fact is that we don't use face masks properly.
In real-world scenarios across countries around the world, cases and fatalities increased after face masks were mandated. In U.S. states with and without mask mandates, there is no difference between them in the rate of cases and fatalities. In Kansas, 90 counties without mask mandates had lower rates of cases and fatalities than the 15 counties with mandates.
September 2020. Report from CDC. Shows that the majority of the people in the study who contacted covid-19 had been wearing a mask in public. 70% of the people who tested positive always wore a mask.
Covid-19 is transmitted by aerosols: fact. It is not transmitted by droplets, as we were told by the CDC at the beginning of the pandemic. (Influenza and other corona viruses are not spread that way.) Masks do not filter aerosols. Studies show that 90% of particles escape from masks within minutes and spread around the entire room.
Researchers from the University of Minnesota have found that the infectious dose, the viral load, needed to transmit the disease is 300 virions. Just speaking for one minute can generate 750,000 virions, which makes face masks ineffective in stopping the spread of Covid-19.
In order for face masks to protect against these viral aerosols, a mask must fit perfectly. Just a 1% gap around the edge of a mask, allows 50% of the virions to bypass the mask. A 2% gap, which is still unrealistic, allows 75% of the virions to bypass the mask.
Aerosol Science in 2021 published a study that the masks we typically wear, the cloth masks, have a 90-95% leakage rate. If we fit our masks perfectly, what would happen to us? We would seal ourselves off, we would risk asphyxiation.
Mask mandates are political, not scientific.
To this day, the only randomized control trial where they compared in an equitable environment two groups of people, in a community setting, found no statistically significant benefit. However, politically, this study was stifled. Three medical journals refused to publish this study. The actual publication of this study was delayed for months because these journals feared political repercussions.
The World Health Organization admitted in June 2020, that face mask recommendations were the result of political lobbying as told to a BBC medical correspondent. He said, "We have told by the various sources, (the WHO committee members reviewing the evidence) that they had not backed masks, but they had recommended them due to political lobbying." This point was put to a WHO official who did not deny it.
What about all those studies which show that face masks work? Most, if not all, of those studies are simply flawed. Combing through the methodology of these studies, underlying assumptions and laboratory settings skew their statistical data, and they can make a statement of result which flies in the face of actual science.
A meta-study published by the WHO published in the Lancet Medical Journal stated that masks could lead to a reduction in infection or risk of infection with Covid-19. But in looking at the study, it only looked at N95 masks in a hospital setting, not surgical grade masks, and certainly not cloth masks, and not in a community setting. The level of strength in its recommendation was so low, a World Health epidemiologist said this study was essentially useless. (Except for the media which said it supported wearing paper and cloth masks in public.)
Commissioned by PMAS, another study found that masks (as they claimed) lead to a decrease in infections or did lead to a decrease in infections in three global hotspots. The flaw in this study, centering on the outbreak in New York, did not account for any natural decrease in death rates as the epidemic spread among the elderly. Because they did not account for the normal sine curve function, 40 scientists called for this study to be withdrawn, but that fact was not published when the study was cited.
Another study done in the United States that was actually withdrawn after it claimed that counties with mask mandates had lower infection rates. However, after the study was published, the infection rates in those counties climbed higher than unmasked counties. We only heard about that study when it was first presented, but not afterwards when it was withdrawn.
In June of 2021, in Nature Communications claimed that masks reduced infection rates by 62%. However, looking at their methodology, this study relied on self-reported online surveys. There is no verifiable data base on which to base that statistical conclusion. It's not even a scientific sampling.
In a large, well-controlled study looking at post-operative wound infections, where half had masked surgeons and half did not, where they found that masked surgeons had a 4.7% post operation infection rate and non-masked surgeons had a 3.5% post operation infection rate.
At the Royal Society of Medicine in the United Kingdom, which also said that masks were ineffective in source control, that in this particular setting, was a well-known fact before Covid-19 became a political issue.
Masks don't work.
