The COVID Response. What We Got Wrong.

Part XII: More About the Masks

On Dec. 20, 2022, I wrote about how inconsistent the reporting was on the effectiveness of wearing masks against COVID-19. I explained how the WHO, the CDC, and the US government gave us all sorts of bad information in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Their first recommendation was that the public should not wear masks because they don’t work. Their next was that the public should wear masks because they do work. (The prior misinformation was explained as a little white lie to prevent a shortage of masks among frontline workers.) Then the mask mandates became not just recommended, but mandatory. Meanwhile, studies on masks were being compiled, and they were not supporting their utility.

In my Dec. 20 report, I argued that cloth masks were virtually useless, but N-95s were somewhat useful.

“It would have been better for everyone,” I wrote, “if they had reported the ‘science’ as it arrived and made transparent recommendations based on the latest data. Had they done it that way, they would have admitted that N-95 and surgical masks were much safer than cloth masks. They would have said that if you could not get hold of or afford N-95 masks to wear a combination of surgical and cloth masks. And they would have told us that social distancing was the best way to avoid contracting COVID and spreading it to others.”

Now, after nearly three years, we have all sorts of studies done and compiled, some of them more reliable than others. And JM, one of my trainers, mentioned to me that Fauci has publicly admitted that masks don’t work and never did. I found it hard to believe that Fauci would say that. But before I could do any research, I got this note from “Greg,” a reader:

“Do You Believe In Science? 

“You do, right?

“If so, you recognize the hierarchy of evidence when it comes to poorly understood subjects.

“And let’s be clear on this: If a subject is well-understood, the outcomes are deterministic. You don’’ have a ‘percentage’ change. A thing either is or is not, and it is repeated every time. Almost nothing in medicine meets this standard. Ergo, virtually everything is poorly understood.”

Click here for an introduction to a very persuasive piece suggesting that even the N-95s do not and never did work. Chew on that for a minute!