It is not unreasonable to conclude that surgical and cloth masks, used as they currently are being used (without other forms of PPE protection), have no impact on controlling the transmission of Covid-19 virus. Current evidence implies that face masks can be actually harmful. The body of evidence indicates that face masks are largely ineffective.
My focus is on COVID face masks and the prevailing science that we have had for nearly 20 months. Yet I wish to address this mask topic at a 50,000-foot level on the lockdown restrictive policies in general. I build on the backs of the fine work done by Gupta, Kulldorff, and Bhattacharya on the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) and similar impetus by Dr. Scott Atlas (advisor to POTUS Trump) who, like myself, was a strong proponent for a focused type of protection that was based on an age-risk stratified approach.
Because we saw very early on that the lockdowns were the single greatest mistake in public health history. We knew the history and knew they would not work. We also knew very early of COVID’s risk stratification. Sadly, our children will bear the catastrophic consequences and not just educationally, of the deeply flawed school closure policy for decades to come (particularly our minority children who were least able to afford this). Many are still pressured to wear masks and punished for not doing so.
I present the masking ‘body of evidence’ below (n=167 studies and pieces of evidence), comprised of comparative effectiveness research as well as related evidence and high-level reporting. To date, the evidence has been stable and clear that masks do not work to control the virus and they can be harmful and especially to children.
Table 1: The evidence on COVID-19 face masks and mask mandates and harms
