Face Mask Mandates Still Lack Evidence
The Data Has Not Changed
Sigh…some things never change.
Mask mandates are quietly making a comeback, yet the state of the evidence on the utility of such “public health” measures fails to show any demonstrable benefit.
As
documents in her Substack, mandates are back with a vengeance.
Just when it seemed like we were getting back to some limited sense of normality, it’s time to ramp up the pandemic again…just in time for the U.S. presidential election?
I hope I’m wrong but…If you thought 2020-2022 was bad, wait until 2024.
All of a sudden news stories are popping up about new mask mandates, testing mandates, and vaccine mandates.
It seems the urge to turn human society into a hellscape lifted bodily from the “Resident Evil” movie franchise simply will not die, lack of actual evidence in support of these “public health” controls be damned.
Regarding the corporate media narrative, there is little to say that I have not already said many times before: There is panic over a “new variant”, a vague reference to “rising cases”, and the reflex urge to “mask up.”
To mask, or not to mask?
That is the question facing many doctors, public health officials and concerned citizens worldwide, as cases of COVID-19 once again tick upward.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Thursday that there’s a new, “highly mutated variant” of the coronavirus named BA.2.86 that’s spreading worldwide.
What gets buried deep in the propaganda, however, is the fact that these “large” increases in cases are relative (percentage) increases. The overall case and hospitalizations are still very low overall (emphasis mine).
The CDC's most recent data shows the number of hospitalizations are up by 30% statewide. The most recent report is raising some concerns for some doctors, including Dr. Jayne Morgan, the executive director of Health and Community Education at Piedmont Healthcare.
"This is what endemic means -- it doesn't go away," said Morgan. "We know now, with this heat wave, so many people have been driven indoors, when we're usually outdoors. We're also traveling a lot during the summer, so we're carrying the virus from one group to the next."
Overall, Morgan said, the number of Covid-related cases is still low.
In other words, media reporting on COVID cases is like the old joke about having a penny and finding another penny—yes, you’ve doubled your money but you still only have two cents. (Even my sarcasms are recycled….that’s how repetitive this nonsense has gotten!)
Are hospitalizations for COVID up in the US? Yes. But relative to prior infection cycles, they are still very low.
Overall current hospitalizations for COVID are also up—but by a lesser amount than the weekly count, which indicates a decided lack of severity.
Even more significant: COVID mortality is still declining.
People might be getting sick, but they are not, by and large, dying as a result.
Yet because of these minor increases in cases and hospitalizations, the corporate media is trotting out its favorite Resident Evil Zombie, the mask mandate. Like those putrefying walking dead, the mask mandate still shows none of that most important sign of intelligent life—evidence.
What must be remembered—and reiterated and repeated, to counter this creeping zombie narrative—is that there has never been solid evidence for universal masking.
There was no evidence supporting face mask mandates when the mandates first appeared in April of 2020, in the very early days of the “pandemic”.
There was no evidence in July of 2022, when Los Angeles County ignored its own COVID data to genuflect to the CDC’s opinion on the need for face mask mandates.
There was no evidence to support universal masking when mask mandates made an appearance in the Corsa Rosa cycling race earlier this year.
So complete has been the lack of evidence in support of mask mandates that “The Science™” advocates felt compelled to demonize and attempt to undermine a Cochrane Review that confirmed the lack of evidence for universal masking.
Nor has 2023 produced conclusive studies to the contrary—although not for lack of trying by the Faucists.
A recent systematic review1 of the current literature on universal masking appearing in the Annals of Internal Medicine could only identify a problematic and miniscule benefit to masking.
Updated evidence suggests that masks may be associated with a small reduction in risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection in community settings. Surgical masks and N95 respirators may be associated with similar infection risk in routine patient care settings, but a beneficial effect of N95 respirators cannot be ruled out.
Tentative language such as “may be associated with” is a far cry from corporate media’s overly confident narrative that masks are highly effective, indicating that universal masking is at best a dubious public health strategy and at worst a public health nightmare.
It is worth noting that this review, which was an update of earlier reviews of the extant literature, unearthed only one new random controlled trial2, which found that N95 respirators were somewhat better than medical masks at preventing COVID.
Among health care workers who provided routine care to patients with COVID-19, the overall estimates rule out a doubling in hazard of RT-PCR–confirmed COVID-19 for medical masks when compared with HRs of RT-PCR–confirmed COVID-19 for N95 respirators. The subgroup results varied by country, and the overall estimates may not be applicable to individual countries because of treatment effect heterogeneity.
The authors’ lack of confidence in their own results is quite telling—and what it tells is that masks are even for healthcare workers a problematic level of personal protection and infection mitigation.
With even the new RCT presenting severe limitations as to its conclusions—the authors acknowledge their conclusions cannot be reliably extrapolated to healthcare workers in any one country—the end results are the same: there is simply no solid evidence that mask mandates have beneficial effect in mitigating COVID spread.
The one scientific standard even above the Random Controlled Trial is reproducibility. In real science (as opposed to Faucist “the Science™”), a study has the most value if its results can be replicated by other independent researchers.
With now at least sixteen Random Controlled Trials failing to show any clear public health benefit to mask mandates and universal masking, it is simply not a true statement by the “experts” when they argue that universal masking has clear benefit.
It is not a true statement when corporate media reports that the thrust of the scientific evidence supports mask mandates. The scientific evidence simply does not support universal mask mandates as good public health policy.
There has never been good scientific support for universal mask mandates. Even where studies purport to show some benefit, confounding factors make drawing clearly policy conclusions from these studies an absolute impossibility. Where coercion is concerned, the scientific support needs to be clear and unambiguous, not hazy and uncertain.
That has been the case each and every time mask mandates have emerged, and it is the case now. Equally it is necessary to keep repeating this to push back against the corporate media propaganda and a resurrected Pandemic Panic Narrative. Above all else we must always remember to analyze, question, and scrutinize a matter for ourselves. We must never let the media, but corporate media especially, presume to think for us.
The return of the mask mandate is simply the triumph within the corporate media of narrative over facts and evidence. Mask mandates are a perverse and peculiar sort of intellectual laziness, whereby the notional “experts” do not bother to challenge their own assumptions and preconceptions. Rather than analyze, question, scrutinize—the behaviors which are the basis of all science—the “experts” in and out of the media merely genuflect to a preconcieved notional good.
It is not expertise to parrot a narrative, but idiocy.
Should people wear face masks when COVID (or any infectious respiratory pathogen) is on the rise? Ultimately, that has to be a question of personal comfort and personal choice. Those who gain a certain peace of mind from wearing a mask, or who are concerned about the risks of COVID as they are immuno-compromised, should feel at liberty to do so.
However, in no way shape or form should that freedom to wear a face mask become a legal coercion to do so. There is no basis in science, and thus no basis in ethics, for anyone to circumscribe the free choice of others on whether to wear or not wear a face mask. That was the state of the scientific evidence in 2020, and it is the state of the scientific evidence today.
Chou, Roger, and Tracy Dana. “Major Update: Masks for Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 in Health Care and Community Settings-Final Update of a Living, Rapid Review.” Annals of internal medicine vol. 176,6 (2023): 827-835. doi:10.7326/M23-0570
Loeb, Mark et al. “Medical Masks Versus N95 Respirators for Preventing COVID-19 Among Health Care Workers : A Randomized Trial.” Annals of internal medicine vol. 175,12 (2022): 1629-1638. doi:10.7326/M22-1966
Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Hope I have support.
Just in time for the next presidential election. How convenient. 😑