Coming To Grips With the Facts About Masks

By James D. Agresti
February 1, 2022

Allegations that “masks work” and “don’t cause harm” have been enforced by governments and firms round the world for greater than 18 months by arrests, firings, censorship, fines, and denial of entry to faculties, supermarkets, hospitals, streets, and different public areas. This has made it nearly inconceivable for many individuals to stay with out complying with masks mandates.

In latest weeks, nevertheless, extra medical students and media shops are coming to grips with information about masks that Just Facts has been documenting for greater than a yr and painstakingly compiled in a September 2021 article sourced with greater than 50 peer-reviewed science journals. Here’s a pattern of people who find themselves talking up about the information and their implications:

Dr. Vinay Prasad—an affiliate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco—has written an article that examines the scientific proof for masking kids and concludes that:

• “most of the masks worn by most kids for most of the pandemic have likely done nothing to change the velocity or trajectory of the virus.”
• “there are downsides to face coverings for pupils and students, including detrimental impacts on communication in the classroom.”
• “masking is now little more than an appealing delusion.”
• choices to masks schoolchildren are “ignorant, cruel, fearful, and cowardly.”

Dr. Chad Roy, who focuses on airborne infectious illnesses and is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine, has informed the Washington Examiner that:

• “cloth and surgical masks do absolutely nothing for protection from ambient virus.”
• “all this song and dance of wearing cloth masks with some presumption that you’re being protected from ambient virus is completely and positively 100% counter to how masks and respirators work.”

The Atlantic has printed an evaluation of college masking insurance policies by three medical students—together with Dr. Margery Smelkinson, a specialist in infectious illnesses at the National Institutes of Health—by which they wrote:

• • • “We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed.”
    • The “overall takeaway from these studies—that schools with mask mandates have lower Covid-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates—is not justified by the data that have been gathered.”
    • “As with our existing school-mask policies, no real-world data indicate that these [N95] masks decrease transmission in school settings—data that matter greatly, as these masks require a very tight fit to function effectively, and that may not be possible for many kids.”
    • “Over the past 21 months, slowly and with much resistance, the layers of mythology around Covid-19 mitigation in schools have been peeled away, each time without producing the much-ballyhooed increases in Covid-19. Schools did not become hot spots when they reopened, nor when they reduced physical distancing, nor when they eliminated deep-cleaning protocols. These layers were peeled away because the evidence supporting them was weak, and they all had substantial downsides for children’s education and health.”
    • “Covid-19 hospitalizations have “remained extremely low among children, on par with pediatric flu hospitalizations during a typical season.”
    • “Imposing on millions of children an intervention that provides little discernible benefit, on the grounds that we have not yet gathered solid evidence of its negative effects, violates the most basic tenet of medicine: First, do no harm.”

In an article printed on Christmas Eve, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen confessed that “cloth masks are little more than facial decorations” and “this is what scientists and public health officials have been saying for months, many months, in fact.” Yet, she fails to inform the whole reality and instructs folks to put on N95 masks with out conveying their harms or the indisputable fact that gold customary research have solely discovered inconsistent advantages from N95s in healthcare settings, a lot much less neighborhood settings.

Fox News has printed an article about how YouTube suspended Rand Paul for questioning the effectiveness of fabric masks and that the CDC is edging nearer to Paul’s view. The article then hyperlinks to Just Facts’ analysis on masks to doc the indisputable fact that “several studies have shown” fabric masks “are not effective in stopping the spread of viruses like the coronavirus.”

Still Leading People Astray

Some of the strongest proponents of masking proceed to unfold damaging fictions and withhold real information from folks. For a first-rate instance, Google-owned YouTube just lately censored a video from Just Facts about the risks of N95 masks. Even although each reality in the video is documented with knowledge from peer-reviewed science journals, OSHA and the CDC—YouTube purged it with callous disregard for the well being of individuals, particularly kids.

Likewise, the New York Times just lately reported that YouTube suspended conservative speak present host Dan Bongino “after he posted a video saying cloth and surgical masks were useless in stopping the spread of Covid—a false claim that violated the company’s misinformation policy.”

In actuality, these “misinformation” insurance policies and different pronouncements of tech giants, government officers, media shops, and reality checkers typically flout fundamental ideas of tutorial integrity, unfold lethal falsehoods, and suppress information that might assist folks.

The cracks which can be opening in the dogma that “masks work” are simply the tip of that iceberg.