I have to congratulate the author on this article. A brilliant summary of Miller’s book, the issues and the data. Miller, of course, is absolutely spot on, as is evident to anybody who bothers to open their eyes to the actual data. Indeed, just a comparison of the daily deaths per capita and daily cases per capita between North and South Dakota, two states with very similar demographics, population density, etc: North Dakota had mask mandates and other restrictions; South Dakota had nothing. The result: the curves for daily deaths and daily cases per capita in the two states are quantitatively superimposable.
These particular topics always generate much heated debate, with many links posted and lofty assertions of fact based on selective readings of various documents by, in the main, laymen.
In the interests of detonating a small grenade, I would point out that Ian Miller, like most YouTube dissidents, has no pertinent qualifications, no organisational support to run the considerable analysis required to factor in all the variables and is presumably making a fair bit of cash off his book.
Common sense told me that the filthy rag I kept pulling in and out of my pocket, dropping on the floor, and putting down on various surfaces, wasn’t likely to be doing much good, but I figured if it made many people, who were genuinely frightened, feel a little bit better then it was a small price to pay. Making it a symbol of some bizarre freedom struggle felt rather OTT.
If nothing else, this pandemic has taught us to be very sceptical of the “expert” class, weighing in to blow any argument away, solely with the weight of their own credentials. It has also shown us that intelligent people can become “citizen scientists” and read and work out stuff for themselves. They have often made fools of the experts. Einstein was a patent clerk when he formulated his relativity theory.
You are undoubtedly correct. Equally it has shown that anybody with a google search engine, and a YouTube account, can generate theories out of nothing.
Whether they do so out of genuine interest, political conviction, a desire for fame, or in the hope of cash, is as unknowable as the motives of the “elites.”
All I’m doing is pointing out these threads are always full of selective evidence seeking to rationalise an already held opinion (either way.)
You always have to question it if people are selling you on something very one-sided. However, in terms of general masking, there was so little afterthought that literally anything is plausible – even that the masks worsen COVID by allowing the viral particles to get deeper into your lungs.
Like you said above, wearing a dirty mask is obviously not going to help, but can it hurt? Yes, most definitely, and in so many ways.
In 2020, having worn a clean mask solely for the dash in and out of a supermarket, I got a fungal infection on my chin. If that happened to me, a very healthy individual, what my have happened to others, as they breathed in carbon dioxide etc?
If Norman Tebbit refused to have ‘face covered’ individuals, into his surgery, how come this problem disappeared with Covid-19?
Let me clear that up for you since you don’t get it. When the techocrats get the governmemt to lock us in our homes, shut our businesses, force us to wear masks, mandate injections of unknown ingredients… some us get very motivated to find out why. I call that a self preservation instinct.
Without knowing Ian personally, his ability to create numerous charts from the data shows some analytic skills. Further Ian has been posting those charts throughout the pandemic. If the charts he created are factual (my checks say they are), his analyses show the failure of most of the mitigations. The lockdown analysis by John Hopkins used statistical techniques to arrive at the same failure conclusion.
The difference is that governments essentially junked the entire assumptions of a liberal society, not to mention all the established wisdom of how to address a pandemic, overnight in a state of panic (let us say charitably). Legal sanctions, fines and imprisonment were visited on the population by authoritarian government action, not by any ‘sceptical’ voices.
The fact that governments and public institutions can lie and even rewrite the past (such as on previous medical advice) with impunity is by far the most worrying thing to come out from this pandemic.
I think this from the article is important “scientific and medical establishment’s uncritical support of masks and other dubious policies is just the latest manifestation of its lack of independence from political imperatives”. Is there independent science?
Many on unherd would say no, but is it true? I try to avoid being sucked into conspiracy theories, but there needs to be an investigation to learn from the mask fiasco
To play devil’s advocate… some of the technocrats have stated the masks were useful to drive other policies. Citizens felt like they were in a dangerous pandemic. It could help drive vaccine uptake or other NPIs like lockdowns or track and trace. The noble lie. I really encourage people to read Laura Dodsworth’s State of Fear. People in the USA should get to know firms like the Fors Marsh group and Hill & Knowlton. Understanding the public campaign around messaging, nudging, behavioral modification strategies would clear up a lot of confusion.
The revelation that experts had been biasing advice to worst case scenarios was also damaging.
Doing that in any similar scenario drawing situation is always questionable, but how much more so when it was the situation we have been in for the last two years. or so.
It was very poor and also damaged trust.
Yes perhaps, but what about MY feelings? Are they less worthy than the masked classes’? I must acquiesce in order to spare someone’s feelings, but my feeling are expendable.
Are we helping or enabling, then?
Surely not the “my lived experience”
argument from you Andrea?
Are the feelings of the gender dysphoric less worthy than the cis classes? Must we make their feelings expendable?
Rightly or wrongly, many more people were genuinely concerned than were blasé. It’s a utilitarian argument, but it’s reasonable to expect the minority to take into account the majority stance in any communal activity, such as shopping or using a public loo.
The amount of data this thing has generated is colossal. Do I have the time or the expertise to make sense of it? Unlike many commenters on the Covid threads, my answer is a clear no.
Do I trust the establishment and big pharma? No.
Do I think the literally thousands of people involved in generating pandemic response measures of every type are all evil conspiracists in thrall to the architects of the great reset? No.
Are they capable of group think. Yes.
Will many have the moral strength to stand up if they really think conscious harm is being wrought? Yes
Are the garage based experts capable of coming up with better analysis of this volume of data? Possibly.
Am I in any better position to trust the motives and expertise of all the amateurs that have sprung up? No.
So commenting on this topic, in the vehement style so often adopted in these threads, can only possibly be an exercise in emotion.
One of the things I’ve found educative about Unherd is seeing people on “my” side using all the irrational, ad hominem and “you’re not just wrong you’re stupid/evil,” arguments I so abhor in the woke. These threads seem to highlight that tendency more than any other.
My little grenade has also demonstrated to me that down ticks are more fun than upticks, but I really do need to get on with my day
I agree wholeheartedly with your comment except one point.
You say, “Will many have the moral strength to stand up if they really think conscious harm is being brought? Yes’
Not sure about that. It is true that I stopped wearing a mask for just over a week now (nobody has paid the slightest attention to it; not even a glance or a passing tut-tut), but I am in a small minority.
Pieces of cloth have been worn for over 18 months here and no explanation was given on their introduction (cases were at rock bottom then and there had been no deaths for weeks) or the condition for removing them. That was the day when I lost confidence in my devolved assembly.
They have been playing politic (or should I say “parlour”) games for years and they see that fear brings good returns when polling.
However I feel I have to make a small stand, insignificant though it might be, as I have had quite enough of the games.
There is a master design for a great reset? I don’t think so, but undoubtedly Covid is being milked to the last drop for political gain.
Thanks Andrea. I agree it’s being milked. It can only be milked because polls seem to continuously show support for “safety” measures. That’s starting to turn, I think, so hopefully the political response will follow.
On moral strength, I was thinking more of the thousands of scientists and assorted experts that have driven everything from mask wearing to vaccine development. There was an article on Unherd recently from a relevant professor making the case that the science isn’t settled. I don’t think the sheer numbers involved would have allowed a pure conspiracy without any basis in any science.
The issue is the MSM which has not allowed for ANY debate to be had. If you contradict the dogma you are heretical and need to be erased (not unlike the trans “debate”).
Where I am (Scotland) we had the lovely Devi Sridhar advising the First Minister like she was the Archangel Gabriel telling the Virgin Mary about the birth of the Messiah. She has been the instigator of school closures, masks everywhere, zero covid and so on. Now she has been somewhat “discredited”, so she seems to keep a lower profile, but the damage is done (and the secondary school kids still have to go to school masked as have done since last August) as the people are by and large still in a trance. And it doesn’t help that Covid is conflated with separatism, but that’s another story.
Now the latest from the devolved administration is to chop the bottom of the doors off to improve air circulation in schools. One could NOT make it up. At least now she, the First Minister, is pretty much being ridiculed by everyone.
Well, she got a fair amount of laughter thrown at her (and certainly a larger amount than usual). I am still to see a positive comment on that policy announcement.
Wow, that’s a depressing tale. Devi Sridhar and her appointment as a public health specialist is just a symptom of the chronic sickness which Scotland has been afflicted with over the last 5-6 years. The current status with masks there, if I’m to believe you, is the classic example of the most damaging consequences of politicians playing the expert role when they have absolutely no authority for doing this although the experts who did a 180 degree turn concerning mask effectiveness at the start of the pandemic are the real culprits, purely out of not knowing what else to do. I’ve just booked my first trip back to Glasgow for two years, and coming from mask-free Sweden it’s not something I’m looking forward to.
Personally I wouldn’t come, unless you had to.
Said that, my limited experience here in the central belt is that pretty much everyone is wearing a mask, but nobody seems to care if you don’t. I saw the other day a clip on FB from Dundee (about something totally unrelated) where they were showing people boarding a bus and every single one was maskless. OK, they were young, but still.
Have you explored the WEF Great Reset web pages? Please do, then tell me there isn’t at least a concerted and coordinated effort, if not quite a “master design.”
I absolutely agree about the muck slinging…ugh. I disagree with the argument that most will have the moral strength to stand up if they believe harm is being done. Serious, unfixable harm has been done, especially in the silent corners where children, the disabled and the old live. People knew/know that care homes are still operating like prisons and yet it is considered necessary to stop the spread of covid. Cognitive dissonance, prejudice & bias are very weakening to the knees.
You don’t need a conspiracy. You just need a journalist class with stock portfoilios that all bought stock in drug companies, and stand to make a few thousand dollars if only they can get everybody vaccinated. Which they may believe is a good idea, anyway … as Samuel Pepys wondered, is it really a bribe if I was going to vote that way anyway? If I didn’t know how much the ‘gift’ would be worth until after I voted?
Corruption is so much easier now.
No, I don’t believe that. A much more likely explanation is that they are interested in clicks, so they peddle whatever story is more likely to generate a bigger interaction (a bit like UnHerd does with these posts 😀 ).
I am sorry that just doesn’t make sense. Downticks are more fun than upticks? Really? I am not sure that I feel that I am having more fun when I decide that I agree with someone’s point as opposed to disagree.
The covid threads are always the ones that excite the most vehement debates. Overwhelming they anti vax, anti lockdown, anti any other risk reduction interventions. The implicit assumption is that governments (including the thousands of normal people who generate the data on what they base decisions) are devious liars with an agenda, whilst odd blokes on the internet are entirely trustworthy.
I’ve tended to steer clear of these debates because, as I stated, the issue is so big,the sources of info so varied, it tends to become just tribal quite quickly.
Posting a contra view, on a subject sure to be explosive, was bound to create a reaction. Some responses made me think about my stance, some exposed me to a couple of angles I hadn’t thought of, and it filled a morning with some mental gymnastics I wouldn’t have had if I’d ignored it or gone with the Herd (with whom I’m more often in agreement.)
It also sorted the debaters from the numpties in one thread, which is useful for future reference.
Hence more fun, and 88 down ticks and counting must be getting close to a record 🙂
“And therein lies the nub. What is the truth?”
The totality of instances satisfying the Tarskian truth schema for any given proposition p.
T: “p” is true if and only if p.
Regarding moral strength, the way researchers who a few days before were saying they thought it was a lab leak fell in line when their funding source, Fauci, told them to say “natural origin” tells me that moral strength is in very short supply.
‘Will many have the moral strength to stand up if they really think conscious harm is being wrought? Yes’
While I agree with you on the other points you made, I do not agree with you on that one!
Conforming to mass hysteria is not the answer for me. ‘It’s easier just to go along with it’ never ends well- at some point you have to make a stand. Or where does it end?
Well… he does wind up saying I need to go do something productive. If by that he means ignoring covid hysteria and moving on with life he has a good point and we should all do that
And taking a dogmatic and vehement stance, denying any contrary evidence because the narrative “has been rigged to suit the elites,” is a reasonable definition of critical theory.
It’s the fanatics on whatever fringe, with no doubts about their cause, that are responsible for many of the worlds ills.
I feel like there are many things over which I should make a stand, living in Italy. Don’t get me started on the emergency mandates here. I would be a massive outlier if I did however since most of the native people I speak to consider acceptance of state rules as a given – yes that’s Italians I’m talking about.
I’ve taken a small stand with regards to the unilateral decision of my sports club to adopt the Vaccine Super Green Pass, even though it is not obligatory for them to do so, by not signing up again. I don’t feel like it will make any difference and I don’t really want to not take part in something I love – I’m taking a stand for others, not myself since I qualify with my UK ‘travel pass’ which actually represents a lower level of vaccination than is required for the locals. I have refused to wear a mask outside here. Over the last two months, it was mandated again to wear them outside and the cases shot up anyway. Everyone I know seems to have gone down with it even though they were the mask wearers. That’s all anecdotal obviously. The point I’m trying to stress is that making a stand is often as nebulous and divisive as the debate around mask wearing itself and we need to recognise that. Or at least, I’ve had to for my own sanity!
I think it’s important that any ‘counter narrative’ shouldn’t be undermined with shoddy analysis or data gathering but it seems like most people, who’ve looked, think the writer has done a good job. I do think serious, substantive work of this sort will probably have much more impact than the place where I make my stand. I’ll keep trying to make it however.
I find masks repulsive and wearing one is a hostile act. In the past the only people who covered their faces were criminals and Muslim women forced to by their primitive husbands and their evil “religion”. Criminality and Islam hide their faces, the better to destroy the West.
Is the quality of the analysis maybe more important than qualifications? Did Charles Darwin have qualifications? (I would need to check).
Your common sense was spot on, and I never got the idea that it is connected with a freedom struggle (although it could turn out to be the thin end of the wedge)
It is becoming tiresome that people hold ‘experts’ in such high regard. Many so called experts are good at one thing, whereas other people may bring a basket of skills to a problem. That broader knowledge can often allow them to tackle a problem without the myopic lenses, or the acquired biases, of the ‘expert’.
A person may have spent countless hous studying the latest books and reports over the last two years, which may make them more up-to-date with current thinking than an ‘expert’ who graduated three decades ago. They may also bring a smorgasbord of other skills and knowledge that the ‘expert’ is clueless about. In that situation do you blindly trust the ‘expert’.
In addition, it is odd that these same people seem to hero worship Bill, but what skills does he have in medicine?
Whilst we are going down this road would you dismiss Elon’s knowledge of electric cars because he didn’t graduate three decades ago in some motor-vehicle engineering degree. How could a guy who built a financial payment system (Paypal) possibly have the skills to now run businesses involving electric cars and space rockets?
The problem is also that the experts considered are often not actually from the field. Look at Ioannidis, who is one of the foremost actual experts. No one cared about his opinion, because his data clearly showed that the panic was unreasonable.
Some of the people who were genuinely frightened, had every reason to be genuinely frightened. They needed to be sheltering in their homes as much as possible. To the extent that they got the notion that their masks, or other people’s masks made things safe — or safe enough — they abandoned the precautions they would have taken if they had understood that the masks don’t protect at all.
“genuinely frightened” – indeed. And quite logical in early 2020. But as it become obvious that severe illness was confined largely to a few, the health officials aided by a press needing clicks didn’t inform but continued the fear mongering.
That was one of the reasons behind Anders Tegnell’s refusal to advocate masks, that people would not bother to keep their distance since they were ”protected”, and from what I’ve experienced in other countries, he was correct in this assumption.
Alex Bereson’s statement “virus gonna virus” has proven more precise than anything I’ve heard out of the mouths of technocrats. I don’t need “organisational support to run the considerable analysis required to factor in all the variables” because we have all the empirical evidence we need. We’ve lived it.
Indeed we have. My father and brother-in-law died of it. So excuse my scepticism of the scamdemic narrative.
My father was of the “it’s only flu” persuasion and bizarrely decided to visit the Blackpool illuminations in October 2020, on a coach trip
between lockdowns. I don’t support blanket lockdowns at all, but had one been in place I am fairly certain he would still be alive.Some evidence based discussion of their relative benefits and harms does therefore seem relevant.
I’m fairly confident a mask would have made no difference (I’ve no idea whether he wore one on the trip) but am not willing to make definitive statements on that because some bloke called Ian Miller has selected a load of stats to go into a book.
Saying I have all the evidence I need on the myriad responses to a global pandemic because “we lived it,” is a nice soundbite but not much else.
I don’t know anyone who has died. The only people I have heard of second hand who have either died or been seriously ill have caught it as patients/residents or staff in hospitals and care homes or as members of their households.
Mask-wearing by members of the public in the community (in my case a small rural town) would have made no difference whatsoever to those deaths from what is fundamentally, an infection that is spread in hospitals and other ‘care’ institutions.
There is also the question of whether, even if masks do inhibit transmission, that is actually a beneficial aim among young, healthy and vaccinated people. I would suggest that it is not.
How many people living on the streets of LA and SF and NYC died of C-19? If this thing was as deadly as claimed, the homeless population in those cities would have been eliminated by now. Nah, it’s well known that the recovery rate for most people is above 99%. Sending sick elderly into nursing homes was a deliberate act of mass murder. We have yet to see what this shot and its variants will do to the healthy people who submitted to them. But, based on the last two years, we do know that if wide-spread negative reactions occur, the government experts will lie and lie and lie some more.
When you look at the IFR of Covid and compare it to (an adjusted for the population) death rate of the 1968 HK flu, then it is easy to call it a scamdemic.
There is no doubt that millions of people over the years have died of flu every year (more children than Covid), yet we haven’t been locked up in our homes watching businesses fold, millions losing their livelihoods and futures, hundreds of millions going hungry, the rich getting richer, societal fabric decaying, governments becoming more authoritarian and etc. I’ve not used the word scamdemic before, but I am perfectly willing to now.
I believe the responses were driven by the R rate. There seems no doubt it spread a lot faster than flu. The political response was driven by the political (and possibly moral) imperative not to allow the health system to be overrun. Not many votes in hospital car parks full of dying people.
All sorts of poor decisions have been made by governments all over the world. Western populations have been shown to be extraordinarily compliant, driven by a level of risk aversion unknown in our history. There’s a whole other conversation around the societal trends that have brought us to that low.
This conversation, I think, is about who do you believe. My original comment was that I’ve no good reason to believe Ian Murray over anybody else.
Martin, you had the cruise ship at the beginning of 2020 and soon after the German carnival town’s outbreak gave Prof Hendrik Streeck’s a low IFR. Were you not following this? CNN as an alternative perhaps?!
The risk balance is easily calculated and it has been quite age stratified. Those under 50 in decent health are a little risk of death. Those who have good Vitamin D levels are a little risk of death.
The “risk aversion” item is well worth understanding. An over reliance on government might be related.
The whole point of “political mandated”masks is to make the anxious feel less anxious. But it has nothing to do with science as Fauci and others tried to convince us. Saw a program with a German lung specialist and aerosol expert, who said, that he experimented with masks for the last 20 years in laboratory conditions. It seemed that a double FFP2 mask, expertly put on and off, had a very small success rate. Surgical masks, as my GP already told me early in the Covid lockdown period, make hardly any difference as they mostly protect against bacterial infections and even then have to be changed every 2 hours.
Another good article about the masks below… https://swprs.org/face-masks-and-covid-the-evidence/
Sadly, of course, it was the act of putting the filthy rag on your face that made people frightened. As the minutes of the relevant “nudge unit” meetings confirm, it was imposed as a highly effective instrument for generating and sustaining free-floating anxiety in the “insufficiently worried” to coerce compliance.
Curious that you highlight the “fair bit of cash” that you imagine that Miller might make, you express no interest in the ginormous amount of cash reaped by the Chinese manufacturers the Crony Capitalist middle men and the recipients of the usual brown envelopes. Cui bono?
Not OTT just sick of idiot ‘experts” – I sand a lot of wood and wear these masks – I can ALWAYS smell the dust thru them – I dont need some (obviously an idiot) ‘expert’ to let me know if they work or not – why dont you actually experiment yourself ?? It is not rocket science….and you dont need to be an expert to experiment cos it is a very simple experiment. It seems that the planet has lost its critical thinking skills and any practicality !! try flour , try cocaine (perhaps the best cos you will know if you get a ‘hit”).
Your attitude is a threat to our Democracy. (Why should the left have a monopoly on that phrase?) The whole point of democratic representative government is that the people are smart enough to evaluate the choices and chose their own representatives based on what they promise and what they do. The whole point of translating the Bible into English was so everyone could read it for themselves.
Experts are supposed to explain the choices, not obfuscate them and then claim authority to make decisions based solely on their credentials. If “experts” can’t explain the choices and why they are recommending a course of action, then we, the great unwashed masses, are under no obligation to follow their advice.
Yes, but the fear of much of the populace was largely because of a completely unethical and entirely disproportionate government ‘psyops’ operation, designed to terrify them. Laura Dodsworth’s “A State of Fear” is good on this.
And are masks actually harmless? Firstly, they are a real nuisance for people wearing glasses. They greatly worsen communication. Comically people instinctively lean in to hear what people are saying.
And I wonder what science will be in future supressed, if it were to show, for example that the constant close contact breathing in of fibres and dirt particles wasn’t doing people much good anyway? A question never asked, let alone answered.
I recognise the good intentions in trying to ease the fears of others who were ‘genuinely frightened’, but it was governments, aided and abetted by so-called ‘experts’ who created that fear in the first place. They were deliberate employing ‘nudge’ techniques to manipulate citizens’ behaviour, and terrifying people was part of that experiment.
No one is saying that Covid wasn’t a horrible disease that killed many people, but it was not right to put such fear into people for a disease that posed little or no threat to the overwhelming majority. The mandating of masks as a way to ‘protect others’ was a particularly clever bit of flim flam. It set people against each other and caused more fear, along with judgmental self-righteousness by those who chose to use their compliance as a way to shame and browbeat anyone who didn’t go along with the ‘evidence’.
We know for certain that almost all those ‘experts’ who told us wearing masks would save lives (including the despicable Matt Hancock who said if you didn’t you might “kill your gran”) had done a massive reverse ferret from their positions held only months before the pandemic broke.
It’s the sly and manipulative behavioural theorists who led the charge, but they were using a tried and tested way to keep a population
under control:
Divide and Rule.
but I figured if it made many people, who were genuinely frightened, feel a little bit better then it was a small price to pay.
What about the people like me that masking itself was frightening, that people could fall for such an obvious trick akin to rosary beads or worshipping a statue at the instruction of government officials, and attack those who didn’t?
With respect, I must disagree and posit the theory that masks did “work.” To answer the question posed in the headline, masks were certainly not a waste of time.
Masks worked well if you focus on the intent. The goal was to divide society and take control. Remember the Democratic Party mantra (to be fair, also used by Republicans): never let a crisis go to waste? Masks were a visual reminder that we should all be afraid, very afraid, regardless of age (masking children), health status (the healthy young), and that some were virtuous (those with masks) and some were “anti-science,” those without masks. Masks have helped the left gain control and keep control. Finally some–Bravo to Canada–seem to be actively rebelling. It seems very clear that masks have worked as intended–society is clearly even more divided than pre-pandemic and many people are still very afraid, wrongly thinking that only government can save them.
Finally, I should note the obvious that the issues of “masks” is utterly meaningless without discussing what masks and how they are worn. The cheapest pieces of crap that I have worn–and re-worn many times–cannot be deemed effective by anyone. Perhaps a higher quality mask worn properly and replaced often might help somewhat, but this is too burdensome and expensive, so it’s simply not an option. I also vaguely remember–please Gentle Readers, correct me or add to this–that the mask study that found masks were somewhat effective involved high quality masks that were replaced with new masks every day. Somehow I doubt that this is what happened with the vast majority of mask wearers.
Of course! This is particularly true in the UK where for generations the population has been mollycoddled by the government and had no personal risk other than self imposed.
Well in terms of your paragraphs 1 and 2, you are absolutely correct. But I’m not sure whether that was the original intent. I suspect that many believed that masks work to prevent spread of infection but never questioned the actual data.
Masks were never about infection control, just a way to identify the politically reliable. Anyone without one can be immediately identified as a Republican/ Libertarian/ Tory etc, i.e. someone with true liberal thoughts (or in modern parlance an extreme right winger).They were largely left to choice until Trump said that they were a waste of time; from then on Fauci et al couldn’t wait to espouse and mandate their use.
They will never go away as those on the left/ technocrats/ lovers of authoritarian control will not stop wearing them. I know a few people who will not answer the door without donning one. Sadly, whenever this bunch are in power mask mandates will return regularly and the status quo will forever shift in this direction until seeing anyone’s face becomes a rarity.
Last edited 2 years ago by John Wilkes
Philip L
2 years ago
If you’ve ever married a biophysicist you will know that masks are considered of negative benefit if you get them even slightly moist.
So even if you could prove that a mask is an effective barrier when fresh out of the packet, wearing it throughout the day, putting it in your bag, withdrawing it from under your chewing gum and car keys, slapping it on the table at a restaurant and so on, is going to render it worse than useless.
Additionally, masks promote mouth breathing which for years has been associated with tonsil and adenoid issues, dry mouth, bad breath, fatigue, periodontal disease and throat/ear infections, asthma triggering and so on. Mouth breathing is also associated with a higher viral load.
And even if you could demonstrate they DID work, by wearing one for extended periods you are anaesthetising your immune system from the world at large – the world being an encyclopaedic soup of germs that your system needs to encounter to know about and improve its defences.
Dumb times.
I wondered about this. It seems reasonable that if the mask were somehow contaminated–wet, perhaps they stopped Corona–and then re-used, they would be doing MUCH more harm than good. If you are a dentist, for example, and change with every patient and only use high quality masks in a filtered environment, give it a go. But for the average person, ridiculous!
Haha – ALL YOU MASK WEARING SHEEP – I TOLD YOU SO.
As the site’s main ‘Never Masker’ I have undergone the open hostility to never masking from day 1. (except when I must enter a hospital of bank as their security will throw you out – and I need to be there. – but often in banks and health care places I can stare down the security, but mostly not, so put one on as they force compliance 🙁
Masks are your badge of shame that you will not fight the system…. They serve ONE purpose – to make you comply – and it worked for all you masking sheep…..
I’m with you on this one Galeti. I’m now 85 and have never worn a mask in spite of the repercussions from my community.
Graham Stull
2 years ago
I am reminded of the open letter I wrote to Dr Trish Greenhalgh regarding her April 2020 article in the BMJ on recommending facemasks. This article was one of key academic papers which tipped the balance in favour of this dubious practice, later to become an even more dubious mandate. http://grahamstull.com/2020/07/09/open-letter-to-dr-trish-greenhalgh-on-her-bmj-article-concerning-face-masks/
The bone of her contention was that, while there is no evidence masks work, there is also no evidence they don’t. Given the desperate straits we were in with the pandemic (never true, but ok), it was worth doing, because the intervention could be considered essentially costless.
Of course, mask mandates were far from costless. They have contributed to anxiety and isolation. They hurt the hearing impaired and the mental development of small children. They create dangerous precedents regarding civil liberties. They have served as a gateway drug to vaccine mandates and vaccines passports. They have created an environmental catastrophe. And don’t forget: they cost money to produce.
Totally agree. But what’s interesting is that Trish Greenhalgh felt that one may as well give masks a go since if they did work it would be good, but if they didn’t no harm no foul. Yet the same experts effectively outlawed the use of early treatment strategies including ivermectin and hydrochloriquine both of which have incredibly good safety profiles over half a century.
So the logic isn’t there. Masks are mandated although there is no evidence for them being useful. In fact all the data show that they have had no effect. Early treatments are banned even though there is data to suggest they are useful, even if there are no gold standard double blind randomized control trials. Sort of crazy isn’t it?
Worse than crazy. There was no cost for the elites and the work from home crowd. The cost to others was quite dear. This is a mixture of virtue signalling, conformation bias and disdain.
Great article. Another consequence of magical mask thinking is the effect of the environment. I live in Vietnam and am currently visiting my wife’s relatives in the countryside. I can tell you that discarded masks are EVERYWHERE, along main roads and small country tracks, every 10 feet or so. A travesty. At least in this case you could say masks are having some kind of impact – adding to an already serious level of environmental degradation.
Here in Spain as well, the sidewalks and parks are littered with paper masks. They serve as reminders of our failure
Peter LR
2 years ago
These last two years have been nothing less than a propaganda war and an example of elitism closing ranks. Here’s an example from the supposedly balanced BBC; can you spot the sleight of reason to fool the reader:
“ Canadians are broadly supportive of vaccine mandates – nearly 83% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated.”
Indeed. The maxim “is that true, or did you hear it on the BBC” has never been more apposite. I wouldn’t believe them now if they told me the sky was blue.
That example is a binary, trans-colour-phobic microaggression. If the sky (pronouns: wha, zoom, zwha) chooses to identify as atacama yellow, who are you to deny zwha identity?
Paul Smithson
2 years ago
Masks are going to be an iconic image of this whole period. There aim was to stop the spread, but what do we really know.
You’d think after two years we’d be 100% sure about how it spreads, but our govt and big pharma funded scientists don’t seem to care very much about:
1. How it spreads
2. Where it came from
3. What things we can do to prevent catching it that don’t involve political control on a totalitarian scale
4. What we can do if we catch it other than go to bed and hope for the best
Surely our amazing scientists should have definitive answers to all of these important questions.
This whole two years should have made everyone question our politicians, media, pharma industry, tech industry, and celebrities. Some very odd things have happened over the last 24 months and we need answers. If we can’t rely on our supposedly ‘independent scientists’ to give us answers then who can we rely on?
That is precisely why this particular “crisis” was so valuable. There is no certainty to any of these questions. Just like climate change. They both are the perfect subjects to exploit. No definitive answers, just hyperbole and worry.
Martin Bollis
2 years ago
I confidently expect the experts to have an epiphany soon. They will see the damage they have wrought and repent of their hubris.
The hardest word to say in the English language is sorry,
particularly if you are from the ‘government’.
All this is beginning to look like the early days of the Reformation, when ‘deniers’ were gleefully burnt at the stake by such paragons of virtue as the sainted Sir Thomas More & Co.
It was there a minute ago – I’ve just replied to you. Bizarrely my original comment this morning is now showing in my feed as being moderated. Maybe a set numbers of down ticks generates a review.
I don’t think you can delete comments. If the Unherd staff delete a comment then the whole thread can disappear. This happened to me a few times when being subordinate to a Julie B comment. If you contact them and argue for your point they may reinstate the thread. Sometimes the comment at the top of the thread can be contentious or out of order but the reponses can be excellent and not worthy of removal. The Unherd staff are fairly responsive and I’ve always been sent a reply.
Here in the US, the sound you hear is that of mask mandates being dropped by blue states/governors. Why? Critical mid term primaries and elections are coming up and the Democrats’ chances aren’t looking good. So, give the people a little of what they want, i.e. no mask mandates. But avoid the critical issues of soaring inflation and potential war.
Jeffrey Chongsathien
2 years ago
Masks are a sick joke to identify the gullible and the compliant.
Masks DO have some benefit though…. perhaps we can selectively mask certain people?
I advise not to watch to the end of the video – a couple of minutes will do. Nancy Pelosi’s re-election speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYmqIU5TbDo
That’s surely even more dangerous than texting; wearing is one thing but donning is quite another.
SULPICIA LEPIDINA
2 years ago
I found wearing the NATO: Respirator NBC* S6 No. 1 Mark 1 at my GP Surgery & my local NHS facility highly entertaining.
I was begged to take it off as it terrified the other visitors. Apparently it reminded many of Quatermass**.
(* A Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Gas Mask, in English.)
(** Sci-Fi horror character from the 1950’s.)
In the early days I saw a guy in sainsbury’s with a full gas mask, goggles and all.
I don’t know if he was genuinely frightened, or extracting the urine. What I did enjoy was that everybody else in the store studiously “failed” to notice this apparition stalking the aisles.
There are/were pictures doing the rounds of loads of hilarious ‘masks’ being worn. I am presuming mostly in Walmart.
Keith Dudleston
2 years ago
5 things that I got wrong about the virus:
When I read about the Diamond Princess I guessed the IFR would turn out to be about 0.3%. In fact, in most places, it is around 10 times less.
I didn’t think that it was possible to produce a widely available vaccine within a year.
I believed that double vaccination would prevent the virus from spreading widely in my community.
I believed that double vaccination would free the NHS to continue much as before the pandemic.
I believed that the “lab leak theory” was a Trumpian conspiracy theory.
5 things I got right about the virus:
“Non-medical interventions” have a small delaying effect viral on “spread” but they do almost nothing to reduce mortality.
School closures are a very misguided policy. They do little to prevent the spread of the virus, do not reduce mortality and damage children.
Vaccination causes very rare but clinically significant serious side effects which will deserve compensation.
The use of FFP2 masks probably limits viral spread. Less sophisticated cloth and paper masks do not have any significant effect except as “performance art”.
The cost of compensation for financial loss caused by ineffective “non-medical interventions” is very high and will take most of my children’s lifetime to repay.
Hello Keith,
Thanks for the interesting comment! I myself am from the field and have monitored any scientific developments around CoV-2 closely, and my experiences are very similar to yours.
However, I was skeptical of these vaccines from the very beginning, because they are limited to a) systemic injection and b) only one protein of the virus. They were always destined to fail, at least with any subsequent mutation. I mean, this is what we are seeing with influenza, and that needs to get into the lower airways before it can even infect you, so the systemic approach is a little more promising. Trying to prevent CoV-2 infections with a systemic vaccine is downright unscientific. Interestingly, prevention of mild cases is what the original Pfizer study claimed (there was barely any data on severe disease).
Lab leak was always a possibility, we know that there is gain-of-function research going on, so it’s interesting to deny that option from the get-go.
The most effective non-medical intervention is summertime, the effectiveness of everything else is questionable at best. FFP2 masks may limit viral spread, but where does the virus go? Partly into the mask, partly on your hands, partly back into your lungs. FFP2 are masks made for working; when in contact with aerosol, they have to replaced on an hourly basis. In the medical field, they may only be used when every other part of you is sterile, and they may never under any circumstances be re-used (except possibly after professional sterilization).
For lockdowns, school closures and the like, once you consider the side-effects that has on human health (loneliness, fast food, lack of sunlight and activity), there’s an unclear benefit at best. Seeing that high blood pressure is a major factor for COVID deaths, and lockdowns exacerbate or cause high blood pressure, well…
Interesting that you didn’t think vaccines would arrive quickly but had clear views on what you thought they could achieve. As to the lab leak theory and gain of function, Dr Fauci (aka the devil) should be in jail. And not just for lying to congress. Look into his approach to HIV
In the US most non-pharmaceutical interventions only slowed spread. In New Zealand, Australia, and most of Asia, they suppressed spread to the point that very few were infected prior to vaccines. South Korea had less than a 0.5% seroprevalence rate in April 2021 without ever doing a full lockdown or a tight border closure, using just contact tracing, masks, and social distancing. Restaurants were open throughout. But they were wearing real PPE: KF94 masks are equivalent to N95 in efficacy.
Financial Times 7th Feb: “South Korea has recorded just 6,886 Covid-related deaths and avoided a national lockdown throughout the pandemic, which helped its economy grow 4 per cent last year — its highest annual growth in 11 years.
But since Friday, the country has recorded more than 35,000 cases a day, up from about 7,000 daily infections reported two weeks ago. Health authorities estimate that daily cases could reach between 130,000 and 170,000 by the end of the month.”
Yes, which is exactly what the KDCA predicted, as even the South Korean mitigation strategies are no match for omicron without a full lockdown, which they don’t want to do and never have done. But the point is their mitigation strategies worked to keep infections low until now – with 85% of the population double vaccinated and 54% boosted, so despite the scary numbers you just posted, the death rate continues to drop, and currently stands at 19 per day, about 1/30th the death rate in the United States.
I lived in South Korea during most of the pandemic, I have many relatives there, my wife is Korean, so obviously I’ve been following the news there very closely.
When this is over, the South Korean approach is going to be clearly one of the best in the world, as it already is. No full lockdowns, no strict border closure, but they are coming out with a tiny fraction of the death rate in the US.
So you are right South Korea has done an amazing job in delaying the spread of the virus in its population. But I suspect the early closure of the border and efficient contact tracing are the main factors. Masks probably had a marginal benefit in protecting droplet transmission and encouraging everybody to stay within the rules.
But now the virus is spreading rapidly and masks are not stopping it. The virus is in the air in poorly ventilated spaces and masks do not stop small particles from being inhaled. If they did construction workers, dealing with asbestos, would be allowed to wear them.
A big factor is the health of the population. Obesity and co-morbidities often as a result of obesity has caused the huge death count in many Western countries.
Sheridan G
2 years ago
Anybody who struggles with spectacles steamed up with Covid laced breath knows that masks don’t work.
Yes, but the steam is virus-free, since the virus particles are filtered by the mask and… well, what then? Do they just vanish into the infinity of space? Or are they being breathed more deeply into the lungs?
If the health officials and political class were honest they would admit that the real reason people were told to wear masks is that they are a highly visible symbol of compliance and help promote fear which causes greater compliance with all the other silly NPIs.
I heard one UK government minister actually admit this on a radio show a few months back, regarding masking kids in schools. Bit of a slip on their part, and rapidly brushed under the carpet.
Bashar Mardini
2 years ago
I have never hated anything as much as the mask dogma around Covid
Thats not to say that a well-fitted N95 mask with eye goggles will not protect against infection. But the community level masking, is just beyond words. And the places that forced little kids to wear masks for hours on end, may the people behind those choices burn in hell
The covid-19 pandemic exposed only how feeble, hapless and vapid our so called expert class are, and how bankrupt of leadership our politicians have largely been. And, sadly, how gullible and easily frightened a staggeringly high proportion of the population is.
“Most people would rather die than think and most do”.*
(*BR.)
Andrea X
2 years ago
I confess I belong to the category of people who objects to masks on principle, buy this read was still refreshing.
It is amazing how people choose to pick and choose what evidence to take into account… Take Italy where you can’t pee if you are not vaxxed AND masked and compare the outcome of the latest wave to, say, England. The curve is identical and they have more fatalities (same ballpark though). Why are they not walking in the garden of masked Eden?
Last edited 2 years ago by Andrea X
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
I am pleased to be able to say that I have worn a mask for approximately 5 minutes in the last 9 months.
…and I’m pleased to say that I have worn one every single time I’ve visited the village shop here in the last two years. I know it makes no odds as far as Covid is concerned, but it makes the valiant and loyal staff feel valued, since their opinion differs from mine; and as I constantly remind them that the masks make no difference to either of us, we have a useful platform for scientific & political debate.
The ONS tells us that 97.5% of us have Wuhan flu antibodies, and the scientists have conceded that the Omicron strain is almost harmless, so what precisely do masks achieve apart from inducing anxiety and alienation? I’m simply not going to pander to irrationalism.
Well, now that Omicron holds sway I’m inclined to agree with you, as are most of the shop staff, but irrationalism – as it often does – has proved to be an aid to fellow-feeling in this context. We (least of all I) cannot always be shining with that hard, gem-like flame of Popperian rationality, and some of us decline to the weaker level of ‘When in Rome..’. As long as we are not the ones making the rules I think that’s OK.
Exactly. In my local second hand book shop there is sign in the window proclaiming:
MASK FREE ZONE.
It has been there since the beginning of this mask nonsense. The owner, a robust octogenarian is quite correctly appalled by the timid nature of most of the ‘demos’!
What about a situation where the people you’re interacting with are forced to wear masks, on pain of losing their job? Isn’t there a case for solidarity with them, perhaps with some overt statement that you thinking it wrong that anyone should have to mask up? There’s something creepy about the increasingly common sight of (unmasked) customers/guests/VIPs being served by identically masked minions.
“Masks cause anxiety and alienation”.
And your evidence for that is ?
And a comment. Influenza has all but disappeared for the last 2 years. Why ? How ?
I really can’t be bothered to indulge your blatant sea-lioning with regard to a patently obvious truth. Of course masks cause anxiety and alienation. This is so trivially true it’s not worth debating.
Influenza is really easy to drive away with some other viral infection. So in 2009 when H1N1 was the flu pandemic virus of the year, it only took an estimated 6% of the population to get sick with rhinovirus to knock H1N1 right out of the picture.
This is known as viral interference. https://plu.mx/plum/a/?doi=10.1016/S2666-5247(20)30114-2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21975051/ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(20)30114-2/fulltext
The idea is straight-forward. At any given year only about 20% of the population is at risk for catching the flu. The rest are protected, probably because they have already been exposed to something similar enough to what is circulating now in past years that they won’t be getting sick. Thus the flu’s ability to propegate through the population is dependent on being able to find enough of these people to infect.
But it can be very difficult to infect somebody who is already in full-on ‘protect me from viruses’ mode because they are fighting some other viral infection. So the people who were getting sick with rhinovirus were not available to catch H1N1. Sometimes this this meant that they were *late* to the pandemic, in catching H1N1 and sometimes this meant that H1N1 fell out of the population as infection with rhinovirus spread. Rhinovirus outcompeted H1N1 flu.
Now _exactly how_ this happens is subject to a great deal of scientific disagreement. One theory is that it has most to do with the interferon in the cells. But recently, the ‘it’s the increased mucous secretions and general anti virals in your upper respiratory tracks’ (the third article I posted) seems to be getting more traction.
grrr, moderated again.
Thank you for this – a great incentive to dig and delve some more.
I did remember some papers from 2021 looking at co-infection with influenza A and B and Covid so clearly this competition thing resulting in a mono infection doesn’t always play out in real life : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmv.26817 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8135706/
And there is still the puzzle of what happened in Australia in the summer of 2020 when there was very little / no Sars Cov 2 transmission and next to zero flu and RSV (unless you believe the notion that flu only circulates from the northern to southern hemispheres via travel).
Viral displacement – disappeared in Sweden as well and almost everywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere regardless of NPI’s; just out competed by a superior viral strain.
Again, nature – not man.
Interesting. I entered my local post office today and despite a mask mandate here in Queensland (Australia), none of the four members of staff were wearing masks. So refreshing to see. Many of the customers were still complying with the mandates. My face was mask-less and I think they enjoyed seeing me smile
See Warren T below. They would offer me a mask (very politely) and decline to sell me anything if I refused the offer. Village solidarity and the opportunity to hold (and I hope win) the debate, or smiling refusal to sustain their business, on principle? I hope that I am with Ivan Ilich on this one, but it is a conundrum. Keep my money local (and keep the local school going, too), or invest in Waitrose? Luckily I have UnHerd to help me decide.
That’s how this will all change. The moment a clerk tells me to mask up, I simply and politely walk out the door.
Peta Seel
2 years ago
Masks were never anything more than an unpleasant and divisive “obedience training aid”. They have also made the manufacturers, especially in China, very rich indeed. In the meantime, three million non-biodegradable, disposable ones are being discarded into the environment every single minute causing untold damage for future generations to deal with. When the history of mask-wearing is written it will be very ugly indeed.
Michael K
2 years ago
Concerning masks I only have three arguments:
1) No mask is airtight. If a mask is airtight, you won’t be able to breathe normally and it won’t be pleasant.
2) If you touch your mask after opening a door, it’s not unlike licking the doorknob.
3) If your mask filters virus particles, where do they go? Can they go deeper into your lungs, where they will cause a real infection? You bet they can.
Ann Roberts
2 years ago
Here in Scotland, we are still under a mask mandate. Drives me bonkers at times:) I like to see people’s faces. I like smiles. See the Brownstone post. https://brownstone.org/articles/mask-studies-reach-a-new-scientific-low-point/. – the SNP have been heavy-handed all along and are now trying to make permanent some of their emergency measures in a new COVID Bill. I wish the SNP would wake up. The protesting continues in Scotland and is increasing as a result of the Canadian Truckers I feel.
I have stopped wearing a mask since last Sunday after 18 months of compliance (just because I didn’t want hassle from anyone). Nobody has batted an eyelid, not even a cursory glance or some tut-tutting; it has been almost disappointing.
As I said in another comment, the SNP are milking it as much as they possibly can, because of the holier-than-thou attitude that our glorious FM showed from the start and the fact that if she backs down she would look silly, so she has to double down every time. Does anyone know what she is waiting for to remove masks, say, from schools? But more to the point, what are people waiting for to remove them themselves?
So now instead we are supposed to chop the bottom of the doors of? For the grace of the Good Lord, what numpty came up with that idea? SNPs MSPs are generally not the brightest (well, MSPs in general are not the brightest), but still…
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
2 years ago
I am surprised no one has mentioned that experts and politicians appear to fulfill exactly the same roles in the climate debate with the poor old public left to shoulder the burden of their narcissism, hubris, dishonesty and contempt
Indeed. COVID restrictions advocates are the same type of people who impose climate restrictions. No evidence. The results are at best unquantifiable and at worst completely fail to live up to the apocalyptic predictions…and yet they persist.
Indeed even as I write, I am scanning the horizon for some rewarding ‘Climate Scam’ rubbish to invest in.
After my totally undeserved success with the Mask nonsense I feel I cannot loose.
The article summarizes Ian Miller’s book quite well. Although Mr. Miller does not have scientific credentials nor uses sophisticated statistical analysis, by the preponderance of the evidence, clearly demonstrates the pre-pandemic science was right: masks are ineffective for a highly contagious airborne respiratory virus. How the previous science was overturned radically in the space of a few weeks is complicated and beyond the scope of any one article. The specific clues can be found in many places. The simple answer is they panicked, because the previous science indicated there was very little one can do once this type of virus gets loose. Since we cannot accept that in 2022, with all our knowledge and technology, there are things beyond our control, irrationality takes hold. What can’t be condoned has been the continuation of these measures beyond realizing their ineffectiveness. The recent publication of spurious mask studies by the CDC and others is reprehensible and indicates the capture of science by the political and bureaucratic powers.
However let’s look on the bright side. At the very start of this monstrous Scamdemic I was invited to make a very modest four figure investment in a consortium dedicated to the production of Masks & other PCR stuff.
How noble, satisfying, and ultimately rewarding, that decision has been. I have now reaped a seven figure ‘reward’, and amount that it would take most Englishmen about 25O years to earn.*
Fortunately I am to old and decrepit to squander such a windfall, and shall have to delegate that task to my Chief of Staff, who has some expertise in that field.
“How noble, satisfying, and ultimately rewarding, that decision has been. I have now reaped a seven figure ‘reward’,”
Nobel, fat. old vulture….. Much like the ‘Daddy Warbucks’ figures of the WWI armament manufacturing Barons – but without the actual killing….. Let us know how you squander it – I would begin with a Lithuanian Trophy Wife and some Palatial Florida mansion…..
It is not difficult to see why mask mandates proved irresistible to politicians. Masks are the perfect form of hygiene theatre, conveying an intuitive sense of safety regardless of demonstrable efficacy at scale.
It’s more sinister than that. Masks are a way of dehumanising the population, as the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia by forcing everyone to dress in black and China similar. Masks are utterly pointless, and that’s the point of them. The Left want a serf class, where muzzled delivery drivers, waiters, cleaners, nannies struggle to breathe while serving the wealthy Leftoid hypocrites in their restaurants and on their private jests. Masks are a symbol of slavery and oppression, which is always from the Left. They love them on the servant class, but on those private jets and in those restaurants they don’t wear them.
J S
2 years ago
Masks are now just perverse virtue signals to the “bien pensants”, which means they will never go away.
Paul Rogers
2 years ago
“…the temporary political advantages they gained from this will be outweighed by the discrediting effect of their embrace of censorship, propaganda, and rule by decree.”
Very well said.
As I plan to travel to Belgium this week, I am appreciative of one thing that the UK (well, actually English) Government have got right. We are now without any restrictions. Although my kids’ teacher and lecturer unions really wish it were not so. ‘Twas ever thus with these militants and they have enjoyed their little piece of power.
The broader point about the discrediting effect of ‘experts’ cannot be underestimated in Britain. It runs deep now. The ‘news’ is simply not trusted by people who used to (eg my parents).
D Oliver
2 years ago
Excellent piece. It seems quite clear that the noble lie theory is designed to save the blushes of those in power who instead changed their views for reasons only known to themselves.
What I find very interesting from a psychological perspective is how certain scientists who claim to only follow evidence have instead followed their tribe.
For example, I follow one such person on Twitter who in March 2020 noted that the evidence for mask effectiveness was paltry and advised one correspondent to wear a mask as a ‘totem’ if they wanted. That same individual now berates people for being “anti-mask” and not caring about saving lives if they question the dogma.
This is pure tribal politics and nothing else as shown by the fact that no new evidence of masks being any more effective has emerged in the last two years. However the chances of self-reflection from this type of person (who of course considers themselves highly rational) is less than zero. How ironic that the mask is now a totem for their own tribe.
Raymond Inauen
2 years ago
OFF TOPIC | Freedom Convey Ottawa Canada
Listen to how peacefully the leaders of this demonstration are handling the new state of emergency declared by the City of Ottawa.
Freedom Convoy ADDRESS TO THE NATION – Feb.6, 2022 “State of Emergency Update” | IrnieracingNews https://youtu.be/3D3sYDMNiD4
Thanks for the link. They are clearly remaining very calm, counter to Trudeau’s hysterical accusations of rioting etc.
as Brett (Weinstein) and Heather (Haying) said on their latest Darkhorse podcast: the difference between the “mostly peaceful protests” of the BLM riots in 2020 and the Canadian Truckers’ actually peaceful protests in Ottawa is obvious. The difference is the “legacy media” (and thanks to the Truckers for that term – I am going to use it in future instead of MSM) supported the BLM riots but doesn’t like the Truckers’ impudence in standing up for all our rights one little bit.
ps. I will send a link of this to my beleaguered brother in Western Oz, whose PM is not behaving any better than Trudeau).
Found it difficult to hear what they were saying, but I have found the subsequent clip almost hilarious: https://youtu.be/g3u0JhcLiic
(and no, I know nothing about Canadian Politics, except the few snippets we get in the news)
Thank you and good luck to the truckers. Legacy media (a great description) have been painting a negative image: far right, racist, hate speech etc. but listening to these guys is inspiring.
P.S. Compare and contrast with the reporting on the demos in the countries neighbouring Russia.
Excellent, good old Canada, got there in the end and have made a complete mockery of those other bedwetters, Australia & New Zealand.
In fact probably the best thing they done since they helped us burn the White House on the 24th August 1814.
I have a (cloth) mask with my face printed on it. (Amazon Prime.) Mostly it is a great conversation starter & gets people laughing; occasionally it triggers the self-appointed masking nannies (just long enough to realize their mistake . . . which also provokes some laughter — if not always on their part).
Alan Thorpe
2 years ago
There was a study of mask wearing in Bangladesh villages which involved 342,183 people over 8 weeks. In the mask wearing group 1,106 people were infected and the unmasked 1,186. A difference of 20. Masks wearing was pointless.
However the conclusions the researchers made, were just the opposite: that masks were effective! https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/09/02/clinical-trial-bangladesh-shows-masks-stop-covid-19-sort-15777 We need to talk not about the facts, but about the interpretation of facts, the twist that is going on. This study, that did not isolate mask wearing as a variable and had all kinds of bias variables in the study (people got sick or stayed healthy for many other reasons than masks) and that clearly showed that mask-wearing had a minimal effect, concluded that it is “still better than nothing”, and even “imagine if millions are wearing masks, how many lives can be saved”.
If I recall correctly the Bangladesh study showed a 10% reduction in transmission for those wearing surgical masks but not cloth masks, and only in the over 50s (which is peculiar to say the least). The result was statistically significant because of the massive sample size. But from a practical perspective, the result proved beyond any shadow of doubt, irrespective of poor study design and confounding factor, that the impact of mask wearing was minimal at best. Simply ask yourself the following question: if a contraceptive method had only a 10% efficacy would you be OK with your teenage daughter engaging in regular sex using such a method – I think the answer would be a resounding No.
hugh bennett
2 years ago
“Thou shalt wear a mask” Hygenesis 20:20
Jürg Gassmann
2 years ago
For their part, critics of masking and other Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) typically relied on principled assertions of freedom.
I disagree. As you yourself point out, the science from the very beginning said that face masks are at best pointless (outside of clinical settings), and this was said again and again. Until the narrative suddenly changed – the argument was that the science had changed, but no scientific basis was ever adduced to support that contention.
Another bizarre phenomenon is the fact that occupational safety and health guidelines on mask wearing were simply ignored by OS&H agents, regulators, employers, and courts.
But otherwise, many thanks.
“Bait and switch”. When the explanations given do not hold up to peoples experience, it has to be jettisoned and blamed on something else that is plausable. Conveniently pulled mask off the shelf. When the 1917-18 Flu events are examined, the time before any real antibiotics, other factors such as malnutrition and weather and of course, bacterial/fungal infections (sepsis).
christopher Marchant
2 years ago
A great article and confirms much of what so many of us believed .it is still so sad to see people wearing masks in the open air convinced that they are doing it for the common good. I believe we will be living with the pychological damage for decades we have been betrayed by our politicians and many of our scientists.
René Descartes
2 years ago
Excellent article. I disagree that masks are merely a waste of time; they are positively dangerous. Mask wearing is indeed a form of theatre; more to do with virtue signalling than protecting anyone. It’s notable that mask-wearers have to talk more loudly, repeat themselves more often and ultimately lower their masks to make themselves understood thus squirting ever more aerosol particles into the air, and I’ve lost count of the number of ‘altruistic’ mask wearers who stand chatting for ages in the aisles of supermarkets secure in the misapprehension that they are keeping everyone safe. It’s unlikely to do anyone much good when people spend hours with their faces wrapped in germ-soaked bits of cloth.
Warren T
2 years ago
“The most disastrous failing of the experts has been their lack of curiosity about the actual results of the policies they have staked their reputations on.“ With the attention span of the average techno-immersed human being similar to that of a moth, I doubt most folks will remember how silly it was to wear masks during the pandemic of the early “20’s, or who recommended them.
John Riordan
2 years ago
“Before Covid appeared, scientists and officials advised time and again that masks would be ineffective at containing a pandemic respiratory virus, and the evidence Miller has compiled suggests they were correct.
Two years into the pandemic, the experts are now the last to acknowledge the accuracy of their earlier predictions. This raises the question of why they changed course and sacrificed their own credibility in the process. Miller confines himself to the data, and if there’s a limitation to his book, it’s that he does not offer any compelling explanation of why the expert class threw itself a policy it once regarded as worse than useless.”
But here’s the thing we still don’t know: are the “experts” the same people? That is to say, the “scientists and officials” who said before the pandemic, correctly, that masks are pointless – are these the same actual people who later on were persuading us all to adopt mask-wearing? We need to know the answer.
Perry de Havilland
2 years ago
This was pretty obvious back in March-April 2020 when it became clear this was an aerosol disease that masks were an absurdity. So anyone who only just figured out that this was always political “be seen to do something” pandemic theatre has really not been paying attention.
Last edited 2 years ago by Perry de Havilland
Dennis Boylon
2 years ago
I largely agree with Geoff’s conclusion. I’m also going to offer a somewhat kinder explanation. It was just another “noble lie” that would help the technocrats with other NPIs like social distancing and lockdowns. It made people feel like they were in a pandemic. It would keep people scared and eager to listen to authority figures. All the scare stories in the press. The young are filling the hospitals and are not any safer were more “noble lies”. You can see that from Laura Dodsworth’s book State of Fear. The SPI-B group specifically drove that messaging. God Bless her for that book. I wish somebody in the US would do a similar book on Fors Marsh who was contracted by the US government to do that work in the USA. SPI-B is not an anomaly. This is not a new phenomenon either. Governmemts have been using behavioral modification strategies and propaganda as a population control strategy for decades. They’ve become very sophisticated at it and have largely been able to keep that a secret from the public. The public also fails to understand how susceptible they are to propaganda. Edward Bernays should be one of the most well known figures in US history. He pioneered a field in which the US still excells and is the undisputed world leader. In his autobiography he covers Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels had every publication of Bernays in his library and used his work as a blueprint for propaganda in Nazi Germany. He dismisses this as evil people can use any knowledge for evil purposes. We would only use such knowledge for good! The beauty of the noble lie! Or maybe the arrogance of the technocrat?
Last edited 2 years ago by Dennis Boylon
Ernesto Garza
2 years ago
The American strategy was to scare the bejesus out of everyone with lurid scenes of carnage from Italy (and New York), suppress and deplatform (as “disinformation”) evolving data that showed Corona to be a disease of the old and infirm, (Princess Star Cruise Ship) then establish salvation through state mandated lockdowns, masks and finally vaccines.
The population evolved into two antagonistic groups: Those who truly did understand “The Science,” and those who cited “Science” as an authoritarian club to beat their particular population (Usually a blue city) into submission.
The damage, especially to children, is unforgiveable.
Last edited 2 years ago by Ernesto Garza
Roger le Clercq
2 years ago
First class balanced analysis comments to match. Well done Unherd
Martin Smith
2 years ago
Studies, tests, data, books, papers, experiments, science, blah blah blah blah. As my neighbour said back in March 2020, “…it’s all b****cks.” Why did no one listen?
trevor fitzgerald
2 years ago
Exceptional, thanks, I will read the book.
Remember when we were all watching the Swedish strategy? What worries me is the lack of discourse, public debate and evaluation of the data by the ‘scientists’ running public health. Such decisions may come back to haunt us.
J Bryant
2 years ago
When Ian Miller, and the author of this article, say masks don’t work to significantly reduce spread of covid, what do they mean exactly?
Do they mean that no masks, of the types available to the general public, stop the spread of covid when worn correctly? If so, that seems surprising to me and also raises important questions about how covid spreads.
The “correct” way to mask up is to wear an N95, or equivalent, with a surgical mask on top. The surgical mask should be replaced each day. How many people followed that protocol, assuming they could obtain N95s and afford to replace the surgical mask daily? Not many, I suspect.
My guess is most people wore masks (e.g., surgical masks) not designed to stop virus particles efficiently, and even those masks were probably not worn correctly. So when we read that masked LA county has covid mortality statistics similar to unmasked neighboring counties the similar outcome is probably due to improper masking.
If my guess is wrong and wearing a properly fitted N95 (which is capable of trapping virus particles) doesn’t stop covid spread, then how does covid spread? Does it mostly spread at home where people take their masks off? I ask not to stir up an argument but because I want to know (a) the limitations of the mask data, and (b) what does the data tell us about how covid spreads? It’s the science I’m interested in, not the politics of mask wearing.
Many people have spoken about the efficacy of N95 vs other masks, but wearing N95 masks when out and at home is not 1. feasible or 2. desirable for society – especially for a disease with such a low IFR. And how are you going to get children and babies to wear these effectively. Glue them to their faces?
Not quite the same reasons though. Mustard gas affected cavalry and military dogs too. Change of tack. My personal observation in France, which has a strong mask mandate, that as soon as they were introduced, social distancing in supermarkets disappeared. It was only mandated at a meter, so hardly effective but distancing ceased. You can still see people wearing them in their own cars when driving alone. I have seen very elderly people wear them in their huge gardens. Our commune provided everyone with a black fabric mask and a washable quasi medical one. The Paris protest drive has been threatened with anyone causing an obstruction with a 2 year prison sentence. The land of liberty.
Well as to France and virtually everywhere else in so called Western Civilisation, (with notable exception of Sweden), the response to this Scamdemic has been utterly pathetic, even spastic.
If Darwinian is correct and it is “survival of the fittest”, then ‘we’ have had it, and that oft repeated quip that the “Yellow Race shall rule the word”* will become reality.
Why would you not be interested in the politics, if it is the politicians who have been the ones wanting to inflict the masks on the masses. When conducting a scientific study one needs to factor in all the variables and not just the ones you choose.
Everyone goes on about N95 masks, as if they are a panacea. They’re not really any better than any other mask. Their specification is to filter 95% of particles 0.3 microns or larger. Virus particles can be much smaller than that. They also have to be fitted properly and changed regularly. It’s simply not practical, and eventually the virus will “get you” anyway, as most mask fanatics have found out. Unless you’re going to wear a proper respirator, forget it. The medical and scientific establishment know this, and have been promoting nonsense clown theatre for 2 years.
N95s have a polypropylene layer with an electrostatic effect that traps the aerosols that carry the virus. Even so, I think they may not work well outside a clinical setting
I’ve often wondered if the best policy throughout the pandemic would have been to focus solely on the vulnerable portion of the population and let everyone else get on with their lives unmolested.
If there is a type of mask (and replacement protocol) which effectively traps the virus, why not give them free to the old and infirm and let the rest of us go about unmasked?
Ditto: vaccines and lockdowns. If we had stuck to vaccination for pensioners and only locking down care homes and geriatric wards, we could have had similar results for a fraction of the costs, both financial and psychological.
Was that the gist of the Great Barrington Declaration?
Preliminary reports in places which have moved to N95 masks due to ‘the infectious nature of Omicron’ — it is making no difference, they are all getting sick.
When you look at the contact tracing data, such as it is, and it’s not of great quality anywhere, including South Korea and other places with tracing apps, you find that around 80% of people infect *nobody*. No matter what, or how strict your interventions are. Of the 20% of people who infect somebody, 80% of them only infect the other people they share a home with.
But it is premature to conclude that this is ‘because the masks are off at home’ … because the masks are, in general, _on_ at work and the people who catch it at work tend to catch it like households do — all the people who work together catch it together. And work is where people are getting sick the second most, after homes. People who are wearing masks in their homes (i.e. army recruits who are ordered to do so, so we can be pretty sure that the are really doing it, and not just saying they did) are getting all sick together, too.
One of the great problems in how we have looked at infection rates is that we have focused on ‘how many people a sick person infects’, with the idea that if we could control some of the sick people, they would infect fewer people, and all would be improved, because the other people would infect as many as they otherwise would, and the numbers go down.
Instead, it seems that if you control some of the sick people, and force them to infect fewer people, the remaining sick people just get busier and infect more people so that the number of people getting sick stays pretty much the same. And no, I don’t mean that they are actually going out there and working harder at coughing on people, etc — it’s just that enough virus is being produced by them that it’s out there for the healthy people to catch. And ‘allowing people out to go grocery shopping’ seems to give them plenty of opportunity to catch things, whether or not they wear masks.
This is very much akin to the problem of trying to reduce the population of feral cats (where you aren’t allowed to kill any) by trapping and then spaying or neutering any cats you trap. Neutering the toms has no effect unless you can be sure of neutering every tom, so don’t waste your time and money on them.
… continued because I thought unherd would decide to moderate if I posted too much in one reply.
While the home and the school/work are the top places for where we believe people catch covid, part of this is because this is where people spend most of their time. We don’t have a good way of telling if you caught covid from your officemate or on the bus on the way to work, and if your officemate was sick 2 days before you when we look at the data we are going to bin your result in with ‘caught at work’. This makes ‘work’ and ‘at home’ look worse than they are — to the detriment of the ‘someplace else’ bin which is already looking rather large. Restaurants, by the way, do not look so bad when you eliminate the restaurant workers (who spread it to each other, same as every other occupation where people work in person, together). Families and coworkers may possibly infect each other while eating lunch in a restaurant together, but we have classified them as ‘home’ and ‘work’ infections. Strangers infecting other people at the restaurant does not seem to be much of a thing. Strangers infecting others on the bus seems to be more of a thing, but still not up there with ‘work’ and ‘home’. People get infected shopping.
The upshot is that, once you have shut down the nightclubs, which is a good idea, there still is plenty sick, all around for people to catch. Locking yourself away indoors, and never going out mostly works, and when it doesn’t its a measure of how you could not do this perfectly. Anything else doesn’t seem to be doing all that much,though the effect of stuffing people with lots of vitamin D certainly deserves more study. It is amazing how little we know about how it is that healthy people with robust immune systems stay healthy.
But oh, how I wish I had more data to work with!. But I understand. Getting the data is expensive. With the same money you can hire more nurses, and that’s a better use of it in terms of saving lives.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I have read many articles about masks and other preventive measures and I still feel there are basic scientific questions that remain unanswered. The pandemic is so politicized science has taken a back seat to propaganda, but science free of politics is our only way out of this mess.
My own take on masks is they’re only likely to make a difference if the highest quality masks are used consistently and pretty much forever unless a sterilizing vaccine is developed which doesn’t seem likely. That leaves strict lockdowns as the only successful containment measure and that is only feasible for short periods of time and even then has extremely negative consequences. I’ve always supported the Great Barrington Declaration: shield the vulnerable; limit very high density public gatherings, at least for the early part of the pandemic, but otherwise let the virus spread among the healthy.
There are two issues. First a N95 is very difficult to wear for any prolonged period of time. Second it needs to be fitted. (Not sure where you come up with having a surgical mask over it – I fail to see that that does anything. Third, N95s don’t filter forever: indoors in a filtered air environment (such as an OR) they are good for about 2 hours; in unfiltered air inside they are good for about 30 min.
In terms of protection, you would be OK wearing a P100, but not only are they hugely expensive but trying wearing one of those for any length of time.
Now it seems to me that the fallacy was that the real claim about masks was that they acted as a source control on the basis that it’s easier to prevent egress than ingress. That’s true but the question is how many COVID ill people are there wondering around. Very few because they are home in bed. So the whole thing was based on the assumption that asymptomatic transmission was a major pathway of infection. However, as was later realized there is no such thing as asymptomatic transmission. If you are producing enough viral particles to infect somebody you will exhibit symptoms.
Surgeons don’t usually wear N95 masks! They wear regular surgical masks. It’s very difficult to carry out surgery with an N95 mask on. Now it is perfectly true that the main use of masks in the OR is to prevent the surgeon from being contaminated by blood splatters.
I’m not sure how anybody can know this and nor am I sure that any controlled experiments were done to actually ascertain this. I realize this has been repeated many times, but that doesn’t necessarily make it true. What I do know is that evidence for asymptomatic spread is extremely weak. What you are actually talking about is pre-symptomatic spread which is not quite the same as asymptomatic spread. During the pre-symptomatic period (the 12 hrs you are talking about), the patient is not free of symptoms. Rather they are free of severe symptoms. But they do exhibit symptoms whether a runny nose, a slight cough, a tinkling in the throat presaging a sore throat, etc….
We have people who were exhibiting no symptoms at all who appear to have infected people before they started gettting any. If they aren’t the source of the infections we traced, then we are even worse at tracing the source of infections than we thought, and we aren’t boasting about our skill in this matter.
The new people who are volunteering to be in the human challenge trail ought to settle the issue one way or another.
I have no idea who you are, but this post is insane. There was a great analogy stated about the effectiveness of masks. Think about throwing a handful of marbles at some scaffolding. Maybe 1 marble in a million might be blocked…. Covid particles are so small that even N-95 masks are unlikely to be effective……and then came Omnicrom……the common cold
How does one account for the efficacy of masks in ICU’s where they obviously work quite well in environments of enormous contagion? The problem with masks and masks mandates is that the government never provided actually GOOD masks to everyone, nor indicated what a good mask was, nor how to get one. I don’t argue that the way the mask mandates were done here were useless. Yes, they were hygiene theater. But that doesn’t resolve the issue at all.
If I’m not mistaken that paper talks about FFP3 masks. That would be the EU equivalent of an N100 mask not an N95. An N100 mask is even more difficult to wear for a prolonged period than an N95. i.e. the use of FFP3/N100 masks is just impractical. If you’re going to go that route you’re better off with a P100 or PAPR system so that you can breathe unimpeded. But those cost a fortune.
This study seems to show that swapping surgical masks for filtering face piece 3 (FFP3) respirators substantially reduced the risk of infection in healthcare workers in clinical settings; although difficult to use, well-fitting respirators will work, but cloth and surgical masks don’t. I think that’s the point.
Aside from mask types, one major difference is that people who work in ICUs are actually aware of how to use masks, ie. touch by handles only, change regularly, do not re-use, dispose of safely. There was never any clear advice to the public to do the same, and instead, you see the opposite, with masks frequently worn over chins or mouths only and allowed to get filthy – at work, I’ve regularly taken masks off people that are stained and black with mould on the inside, but there’s never been a word about the risk of fungal or bacterial lung infections either. Definitely theatre rather than health-driven.
Anything that works in an ICU can’t just be translated to the general public willy-nilly. There were two arguments at the beginning of it all that were used against masks: first, they are useless when not worn correctly, second, they are only helpful when sterile and should not be re-used. Both are still true today and are major arguments against the wearing of any mask at all. Can you guarantee that I won’t infect myself even worse by breathing through a soiled piece of cloth? Can you guarantee that masking doesn’t create a false sense of security that causes more harm than would otherwise be necessary?
On the contrary, if a person is immunodeficient, they can make a mask work with proper handling. But you can’t expect the general public to make anything better by improperly wearing soiled, non-standardized masks (even FFP2 are not standardized, as both the fit and filter are vastly different for most models). By allowing people to make the free choice, it would be much easier to recognize those who may want you to keep some distance to them; whereas you could still function normally with anybody not wearing a mask.
As it is, these things are political symbols, and potential health hazards.
Peter Lee
2 years ago
After some photographs of mask contamination (an orange substance) worn by Joe B. and Jen P., it appears masks do have some use. It will be interesting to know what they are congesting.
Graeme Archer
2 years ago
Great piece.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago
I had such fun wearing a full face welders mask replete with window, and testing the reaction at Tesco, Sainsbury and other venues…. they complained that they could not hear me, but also when I raised the visor to be heard!!! Magic fun!
Kiat Huang
2 years ago
If statistics indicated with high confidence that masks – even the best N95 ones – are largely ineffective against noroviruses, then how are they getting transmitted?
Are the particles so numerous, small and virulent that even the very best surgical quality masks, likes N95, are completely ineffective?
Or is most transmission by touch from infected material to mouth or nose? Because, as Ignaz Semmelweis proved for childbed fever, neglecting to thoroughly was ones hands vastly increases infection?
Or is it something else, like a latent propensity to catch certain diseases within our bodies: a kind of regulation mechanism that Nature controls excessive population growth.
Either way, science should be able to inform us very reliably, by now.
Small and numerous, we believe. Touching doesn’t seem to be doing much or more people would have been getting sick even though sheltering in place from virus on the surface of the things they ordered delivered to the door.
But why some people have more robust immune systems than others is something we know very little about, still.
We actually know a lot about the latter. It’s not a secret why old people are most susceptible to disease: they have co-morbidities like high blood pressure, silent inflammation, a dysregulated energy metabolism and others that make it much harder for the immune system to function and uphold it’s delicate balance between inflammation and tolerance.
There is also the fact of previous immunity; infections that were not noticed or detected and left antibodies that make disease defense a lot easier.
There is the factor of exposure: how many viral particles were inhaled? It’s a difference between being infected in your upper airways or breathing in loads of viral particles deep into your lungs.
Finally, there is a bit of luck involved, with how efficiently at a time the primary immune system works. Dry, warm inside air can weaken this part of immunity, and virus exposure will more likely lead to an infection in such cases.
The factor of exposure is the one that I am most worried about, with respect to masks. If masks really do trap the virus particles in behind the mask when you breathe them out when you are sick, and you rebreathe them, you logically should end up with an increased viral load compared to the unmasked. And an increased viral load, again logically, should lead to a worse illness. But do these logical inferences actually bear out in practice? This whole pandemic is full of ‘proof by I am a clever person and this sounds right to me’ instead of actual experiements, or observational data.
This point has actually been discussed by some physicists, one of who claimed that masks actually reduce viral particle inhalation, because without a mask “the aerosols stay in front of your face”. Which makes absolutely zero sense, but a mask-advocate will say anything in defense of their hallowed dirty rug.
I, too, am worried to breathe in pathogens through my mask, and I am 100% sure that somewhere, at some point, someone made their disease worse by breathing in their own viral particles. Quantifying this factor will be hard, but we should have a discussion about it.
Plenty of evidence as to how Noroviruses transmit – via saliva, faeces and vomit. Classically people are infected via food that has been handled by an infected individual who hasn’t washed their hands like a surgeon.
Jane Awdry
1 year ago
I’m reminded of the words of the late Dr David Sackett, known as the ‘father of evidence based medicine’:
“…experts like me commit two sins that retard the advance of science and harm the young. Firstly, adding our prestige to our opinions gives the latter far greater persuasive power than they deserve on scientific grounds alone. Whether through deference, fear, or respect, others tend not to challenge them, and progress towards the truth is impaired in the presence of an expert.”
He thought that the only way for ‘experts’ to avoid the trap of believing in their own infallibility is for them to step down from pronouncing on any given area after a maximum of 10 years.
Unsurprisingly, not many ‘experts’ seem particularly interested in doing that!
Jane Awdry
1 year ago
I’m reminded of the words of the late Dr David Sackett, known as the ‘father of evidence based medicine’:
“…experts like me commit two sins that retard the advance of science and harm the young. Firstly, adding our prestige to our opinions gives the latter far greater persuasive power than they deserve on scientific grounds alone. Whether through deference, fear, or respect, others tend not to challenge them, and progress towards the truth is impaired in the presence of an expert.”
He thought that the only way for ‘experts’ to avoid the trap of believing in their own infallibility is for them to step down from pronouncing on any given area after a maximum of 10 years.
Unsurprisingly, not many ‘experts’ seem particularly interested in doing that!
Michael Askew
2 years ago
Cloth masks limit the virus projection distance when an infected person coughs or sneezes. That’s probably all they have been proved to do.
Wonder no longer – they wear them in the main to prevent saliva entering open wounds during surgery. They do not wear them to prevent transmission of viral infection.
Though even with bacterial infections, a prominent study has shown that the surgical masks are wholly ineffective.
Deb Grant
2 years ago
Miller’s data wouldn’t stand up to scritiny by professional researchers. Demography, population density, people’s occupations and cultural differences between areas wouldn’t allow equivalent sample data. The damage could’ve been even worse in mask wearing areas depending on the people mix.
In addition, mask wearing gave the public more confidence to engage in some normal activities including working, which had a beneficial economic effect.
You hit the nail on the head. Masks generate strong emotional reactions signalling that the wearer accepts the imposition of NMIs (non-medical interventions) while giving confidence that the wearer is protected. However, they have little practical value beyond limiting droplet spread. Construction workers may not enter a space contaminated with asbestos dust wearing only a cloth, surgical or N95 mask as these carcinogenic fibres will still get through to their lungs. Asbestos fibres are larger than COVID aerosols.
Last edited 2 years ago by Keith Dudleston
Mitsu Hadeishi
2 years ago
I’m sorry, but this article, and the book it is predicated on, is simply not based on scientific evidence. Scientific analysis is not simply eyeballing graphs or looking at a single study. You need to do an in depth analysis and try to deal with confounding factors.
The most comprehensive analysis done by actual scientists in a peer reviewed journal concludes masks are quite efficacious at reducing spread.
The biggest problem we face right now is the spread of headline-based scientific-ish speculation rather than careful review of peer-reviewed literature. Some of the comments here: oh, masks fog up my glasses therefore they don’t work! Is this supposed to be evenhanded analysis and discussion? This issue has been covered endlessly, through lab results and you can actually measure how much filtration you get with N95 and KF94 masks properly fitted – as advertised, it is around 95%, which reduces viral load enough to be significantly protective.
I spent most of the pandemic in Asia (Korea, specifically), where a serological study done in April 2021 showed less than one half of one percent of the population had been infected prior to vaccines. They had widespread mask mandates and contact tracing, that’s basically it.
This trend towards anti-intellectual rejection of peer reviewed science in favor of “let’s look at graphs as laypeople and make some pronouncements in a book” is really quite disturbing.
The Nature paper was mentioned in the article, and has been debunked, as having far too many confounders. Meanwhile the Danish mask study was quietly ignored, as was the 50 years of peer reviewed science on the efficacy of masks, even in clinical settings.
You criticise amateurs for looking at graphs, but at the end of the day, charts showing cases and mortality in masked and unmasked countries and areas amount to a whole heap of observational evidence that masks are ineffective. In fact it’s so overwhelming you can’t ignore it, just by demanding more “gold standard” trials. Look at what’s in front of your eyes!
The study I linked is just one of a very large number of studies showing quite definitively that masks work.
If you have decided the study I posted has too many “confounders” (people seem to love to throw that term around as though it invalidates a study – every study has to deal with confounders, that is not prima facie evidence it is invalid), consider this meta-analysis which covers hundreds of studies.
Masks don’t work. They simply can’t. First of all, almost nobody is wearing them properly. If properly worn, any mask that has an actual filtering effect will simply not allow you to breathe properly. Ask anybody who has been working with aerosols and FFP2 masks long before COVID.
Secondly, the public generally re-uses masks, and they are not meant to be re-used due to the danger of harboring microbes. They’re literally directly in your face, and if you touch your mask, anything that was on your hands lands directly in your face as well.
Finally, where do you think the viral particles go? Do you think they vanish into the void of the universe?
Scientific studies can never show beyond the shadow of a doubt that masks are effective or ineffective, because there are vast confounders. However, if you use your common sense paired with the knowledge that a) aerosols can never be filtered with any efficiency, b) masks are practically never worn properly and c) masks are practically never sterile then you will have to arrive at the conclusion that they are pointless anywhere outside a monitored, professional setting.
Except if the trend data in the graphs actively works against your hypothesis that masks work because there is no correlation (correlation doesn’t equal causation; but there is no causation without correlation), then all this other stuff that you regard as real science is doing is just convincing you they should work.
It doesn’t explain why they clearly don’t (lab experiments are not translatable to community?), why previous scientific consensus was that they didn’t (maybe they just didn’t get the memo) or what really happened in East Asia which made their experience unique by an order of magnitude (as opposed to the more incremental benefits that could be expected from just better human mitigation measures).
The experience in East Asia being so different (despite the variance in stringency of measures being as much of a range as in the West), suggests either natural explanations to do with the virus, pre existing immunity or both.
There was evidence that masks do work, including case control studies of airplane flights and studies of health care workers. Nearly every East Asian public health authority recommended masks, and there were already case control studies indicating mask efficacy then. The CDC was simply wrong; they were ignoring the evidence that already existed. There was a general bias against masks in the West, and they weren’t being objective about the evidence, but they also said they thought people would wear the masks wrong etc. It’s rather contradictory: why would health care workers need masks but they “don’t work”? They do work. The CDC was afraid that normal people wouldn’t be able to wear them “correctly”.
Have you a link to one such paper pre 2020? Here is a report from the Irish Times in March 2020 noting the lack of evidence. Are you suggesting they were ill informed?
It is true there weren’t a LOT of studies, but there were studies. I looked into this at the time because I was puzzled by the fact that most East Asian health authorities were recommending masks and the CDC and WHO were not. However, what I found is, there were indeed studies which clearly indicated an effect, both case control and randomized. Here’s a very good example of one study I found at the time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/
In this case, it was influenza, but it was very clear that medical grade masks provided statistically significant protection.
There were many others which I won’t post now for lack of time, but one involved mask wearing during the SARS-1 epidemic, and case control studies of mask wearing during airplane superclusters of influenza in which no one who wore a mask were infected, despite a large number of passengers infected on the flight, and so on.
Thanks for the link. That paper notes that cloth masks are basically useless while surgical masks are far from foolproof. In other words, with enough exposure you’ll get it, mask or not. With that type of result for cloth masks, why do you think they were recommended?
In the (near?) future people will have to name the journal used for the peer review. The system has been scammed on purpose and the results published. There were more than 400 citings of one article which was deliberately fashioned to provide whatever proof you wanted to make. I am surprised that it hasn’t been brought up every time someone claims to have had their work peer reviewed. I’m only an old greybeard sailor but I am now very wary of anyone who claims to have had their work “peer reviewed” without naming the journal. I am also surprised that a league table of ‘useful’ journals isn’t on the web or perhaps “scientists” already know.
It actually helps to read the paper because the Nature paper you refer to, no matter what conclusions the authors draw, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that cloth masks are useless and surgical masks are marginal at best. Irrespective of study design flaws and confounding factors, what the authors actually found what that surgical mask wearing in the over 50s conferred a 10% reduction in transmission. Yes that number was statistically significant but given the sample size, even 1% might have been been statistically significant. But the fact remains that 10% in the real world is as good as zero and not better. As I noted above but I’ll repeat if you had a contraceptive method that only had a 10% efficacy would you be happy with your teenage daughter engaging in frequent sexual encounters – I believe most people would answer with a resounding No. i.e. 10% is basically no effect of any consequence in terms of the spread of infection through the population. All it may do is prolong the agony for a few days longer.
Intuitively that seems right, but in reality it isn’t. 10% makes a massive difference if you are at the edge of R=1.0 using other mitigation methods. One thing that is counterintuitive about disease spread is that it is an exponential process. Even 10% reduction can make a gigantic difference because it can lower the reproduction number.
I agree however that in the West especially we were hamstrung by poor quality masks. As I noted in my comment in East Asia masks were much higher quality. Most people in Korea for instance wear KF94 masks which have a much higher filtration rate and Korea as we all know was able to use non-pharmaceutical interventions to keep the spread of COVID down to less than 0.5% of the population through April 2021. As a result, they delayed the spread of this virus to the point that now, during omicron, they’ve managed to get 85% of the population vaccinated and 54% boosted, so their death rate is flat despite an explosion of cases. NPIs work, when done properly. I won’t argue that they weren’t done well in the West for the most part, but there are nevertheless many other studies than the one I linked that show masks, especially N95 and KF94, are quite effective.
Not really, and that is absolutely evident when one simply compares hospitalizations and deaths between different states and countries. Really doesn’t matter what was done, the results were all more or less the same within “experimental error”. For example, Sweden did not to worse than the UK yet the UK had mask mandates and Sweden didn’t. Sweden didn’t even have any lockdowns. Same sort of thing for California versus Florida etc etc etc….
The problem is that reducing the R0 to below 1 is meaningless, because the moment even any successful mitigation measures are lifted you’re back to square 1. Reduction the R0 to below 1 is only useful if you can maintain it there, for example by herd immunity.
Speaking of confounding factors, Sweden and the UK are massively different countries, geographically, culturally, in terms of population density, and so on. A better comparison would be Sweden and Norway. Sweden had 5.5x the death rate of Norway, but those countries actually do have similar geographies and culture.
But again, as I was saying, South Korea had 1/12th the death rate of Sweden, yet if anything was less restricted than Sweden was during the pandemic. They were able to hold R to close to 1.0 until omicron using largely NPI. So for them, even a small effect from masks was very significant.
But again, just swapping stats like this is silly. The best way to look for evidence is to look at comprehensive meta-analyses of many studies. Any single study is unreliable, but looking at many studies, you’re going to get a much better estimate of whether or not there’s a real effect.
For example, this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-01814-3 My main objection to this article and all this armchair analysis is that it is far more reliable to look at large numbers of peer-reviewed papers to get a sense of what’s going on than amateurs looking at graphs and swapping anecdotes.
First amateur’s can do an excellent job of looking at the real case/hospitalization/death data available in the public domain. That is the best way to look at what’s going on in reality. Second, there have been many many RCTs on the use of masks to prevent influenza transmission dating back to 1918 all the way to 2018. Every single one showed absolutely no benefit in the community. That was the policy espoused by the WHO and by Fauci prior to April 2020. They then switched 180 degrees on a dime with absolutely no real world evidence.
As for Sweden versus Norway they are actually very different, especially when it comes to nursing homes. But as I said, the best comparisons are afforded by comparing the various states in the US. They are all much of a muchness and whether NPI or not was employed had basically ZERO effect.
The other thing to note is that if you introduce masks prior to the peak, and cases continue to grow it is evident masks are not doing anything. Similarly if you introduce masks after the peak and the drop in cases doesn’t accelerate, likewise masks are having no effect in the community.
Now one might ask why. First most of the infections have occurred in hospital-like environments, including and especially nursing homes, where transmission is very difficult to control. Second, a very large proportion of remaining transmission has occurred within the home.
Re. Sweden, you’ve no idea what you’re taking about, the demographics are fairly similar. Norway and Finland had different elderly care facilities and they shut their borders very early.
Sweden’s care homes were much larger, were mostly private and were mostly for end of life residents….
Laura Cattell
2 years ago
This is a perfect piece for the‘Torygraph’ – they love this stuff. They don’t believe in any form of mitigation including vaccines. As someone with no immunity who continues to mask up in shops and on public transport and who had their 4th vaccination yesterday, I’ll stick with my plan.
It seems your plan is to protect yourself with a mask. That’s fine by me. Just don’t expect me to “protect” you by carrying out pointless, harmful gestures like mask wearing without some rock solid evidence.
Your answer would indicate that you do not understand what the original purpose of masking back in April 2020 was. It wasn’t to advise mask wearing to protect oneself, but rather the idea was a method of source control to reduce viral egress (it’s easier to prevent emission than inhalation): in other words “I wear a mask to protect you, you wear one to protect me.” Nobody ever thought that a surgical mask offered any sort of protection (although it obviously morphed into just that), and indeed the Danish Randomized Control Trial showed exactly that – no evidence of any statistically significant protection.
Now the whole basis of mask wearing therefore is predicated on the notion of asymptomatic transmission because anybody who is symptomatic (truly symptomatic) would be wondering about in public but would be lying at home in bed. Unfortunately, it was clear later on that there is no such thing as asymptomatic transmission.
I think the same could be said for an article offering the opposing view when it comes to the Guardian.
So, even though the consensus – even amongst those who support masking – is that they offer very little protection to the wearer and virtually none at all with Omicron, you will continue to wear one?
I think you are becoming a little defensive, which begs the question of whether you came on here merely to pick an argument? You also did not answer my question.
Yes, I will continue to wear a mask. In shops, on public transport, on aircraft which is a requirement anyway. I already said that in my original comment. I’m not picking arguments, I’m having a debate.
How do people who support masking say they offer very little protection to the wearer and virtually none at all with Omicron. Why don’t they just stop wearing them if that’s what they think? They are no longer a general requirement.
You also – like so many others – construct a false dichotomy with your assumption that those who are sceptical about masks are also anti vaccines. I have had 3 jabs and have had large doubts about masking all along.
I am pro freedom of speech, anti masks, anti hard lockdown, pro sensible restrictions (i.e. limiting numbers in indoor shouty places during the alpha, beta, delta waves – not omicron), pro taking therapeutics before being carted off to hospital, anti setting PCR tests to cycles higher than about 25, anti recording deaths as Covid when people enter hospital for other reasons, anti vaccine mandates and passports, pro revealing raw data around Covid and vaccines, pro being sceptical about the unholy and evil matrimony between governments, big pharma, governmental organisations, corporate media and the like.
I don’t read the Daily Telegraph and don’t live in the UK, but these Torygraph readers sound like a smart bunch if this is what they believe.
What an unusual spelling for fart! Are you perhaps from the Fatherland?
No matter, by your vulgarity you only demean yourself. Perhaps you should consider another platform to blaspheme on?
I used to read it back in the 60s and 70s when I was a young right wing Fart. Some people grow out of it. Some, but not so many, Gruniad readers do the same.
They were wearing masks a long time before Covid came along. So I guess surgeons aren’t wearing masks to prevent Covid!! Perhaps to stop spittle and bits of breakfast falling into open wounds?
Mostly to stop blood and fluids from the patient spattering them, as well as to prevent debris (hair/snot?) falling into the surgical field from them. It’s nothing to do with viruses, let alone respiratory ones. Furthermore, studies have shown no difference in post operative wound infections, with or without masks, and many surgeons don’t actually wear them.
OK I get it. I was just asking the question. I wasn’t trying to make a point.
All the same, it seems intuitive that wearing a mask would help stop transmission of the virus.
Everyone across Southeast Asia thinks so. They have been wearing masks for decades as soon as they think they are getting a cold. They do it to protect other people. What a concept.
But they end up with the same percentage of people getting sick with flu every year as places that do not mask, including places in the same country that does not mask.
I was travelling to Asia a lot during the original SARS, and up until 2007. Mostly Japan and Hong Kong, but Bangkok too. I don’t recall loads of people in masks everywhere, and I certainly never wore one, and was never asked to or thought I should.
This whole “they’ve always worn masks in Asia” is a myth, I’m afraid. Perhaps when they have a cold? But then really, perhaps they should just stay at home, rather than infecting people, as we know masks don’t work….
Are you living in a parallel universe? The article is about a book that debunks the worldwide mask mandates, during the pandemic. Before the pandemic the scientific consensus was that masks were useless for respiratory disease prevention. This was curiously overturned with no new evidence, and yet you are happy to say “we know masks definitely work”.
How do you know masks work, out of interest? I’ve seen no convincing proof at all.
No we don’t know any of that. Who is the author of this book? Is he some kind of super human mask expert? There’s evidence showing particles dispersing. You can find it with a Google search. I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change mine so lets just leave it there.
They also eat dogs & live frogs!
Additionally mask wearing, particularly amongst women is prised because it stops the face being tanned. Pale or white complexion is desirable for some unaccountable reason.
A good medical grade mask will filter out most of the virus. Viral load determines how sick someone will get. So if you receive 10% of airborne virus particles, that has to be better than 100%. Wouldn’t you think?
I agree that the right mask, that seals well, will block most aerosols that carry the virus.
From your observations, what percentage of people wear the “proper” N95, KN95, FFP2 or FFP3 masks? Do you they look like they fit well? Do they look grubby from wearing many times?
Most people will, or can’t, spend money on decent masks and don’t replace them frequently. Outside a clinical setting (or some work-based settings), how do you even find ones that fit properly?
I’m not surprised that it’s hard to find any statistical evidence of effectiveness, especially since it seems that data is not being gathered
I have a great many FFP2 masks with a metal nose piece as well as foam. I also have some FFP3 masks. They may well protect me in a supermarket, but not during my daily visit to the local café.
We still haven’t found FFP2s that fit my wife well enough, even after adding separate foam.
Rather like being hit with 10 rounds of 7.62 ball rather than 100 rounds?
The only difference is the later is slightly messier, but in both cases you are stone dead.
You may wish to read this paper which examined the effectiveness of surgical masks in a substantial cohort from the general population in Denmark during the epidemic under real-life conditions in Spring 2020. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/
This was a carefully conducted study on a significant sample and the authors found (to the disappointment of some of them apparently) that as far as Covid was concerned there was no statistically significant reduction in infection. This is consistent with subsequent careful studies and with Miller’s findings.
My father’s hospital did a huge two year study, in the 1970s or early 1980s comparing mask wearing and not mask wearing. No difference in the infectious outcomes for surgery patients. It does nothing for viruses. It could do something for bacteria, but they are already disinfecting for that. The hospital was overjoyed at the money they could start saving and moved to end the use of masks in surgery …. and just that week discovered that you could catch AIDS from infected blood. Oooops, nobody wanted to risk getting splashed by a patient’s blood at this time.
Plus the patients believe that the masks are to protect them, not to protect the surgery staff _from_ them. So they get understandably upset at the prospect of having surgery from the unmaksed.
Thanks Laura, it occurred to me that the Hepatitis vaccination which medical staff are required to have is also more to do with protecting staff than patient.
I have to congratulate the author on this article. A brilliant summary of Miller’s book, the issues and the data. Miller, of course, is absolutely spot on, as is evident to anybody who bothers to open their eyes to the actual data. Indeed, just a comparison of the daily deaths per capita and daily cases per capita between North and South Dakota, two states with very similar demographics, population density, etc: North Dakota had mask mandates and other restrictions; South Dakota had nothing. The result: the curves for daily deaths and daily cases per capita in the two states are quantitatively superimposable.
These particular topics always generate much heated debate, with many links posted and lofty assertions of fact based on selective readings of various documents by, in the main, laymen.
In the interests of detonating a small grenade, I would point out that Ian Miller, like most YouTube dissidents, has no pertinent qualifications, no organisational support to run the considerable analysis required to factor in all the variables and is presumably making a fair bit of cash off his book.
Common sense told me that the filthy rag I kept pulling in and out of my pocket, dropping on the floor, and putting down on various surfaces, wasn’t likely to be doing much good, but I figured if it made many people, who were genuinely frightened, feel a little bit better then it was a small price to pay. Making it a symbol of some bizarre freedom struggle felt rather OTT.
If nothing else, this pandemic has taught us to be very sceptical of the “expert” class, weighing in to blow any argument away, solely with the weight of their own credentials. It has also shown us that intelligent people can become “citizen scientists” and read and work out stuff for themselves. They have often made fools of the experts. Einstein was a patent clerk when he formulated his relativity theory.
You are undoubtedly correct. Equally it has shown that anybody with a google search engine, and a YouTube account, can generate theories out of nothing.
Whether they do so out of genuine interest, political conviction, a desire for fame, or in the hope of cash, is as unknowable as the motives of the “elites.”
All I’m doing is pointing out these threads are always full of selective evidence seeking to rationalise an already held opinion (either way.)
I have good reason to believe that discussions like this only reinforce already held opinions
You always have to question it if people are selling you on something very one-sided. However, in terms of general masking, there was so little afterthought that literally anything is plausible – even that the masks worsen COVID by allowing the viral particles to get deeper into your lungs.
Like you said above, wearing a dirty mask is obviously not going to help, but can it hurt? Yes, most definitely, and in so many ways.
Exactly the point in the peer reviewed Danish study. Mask handling led to more illness.
That’s the point of them. To cause discomfort and dehumanise. That’s why Muslim men shroud “their” women in burkhas.
In 2020, having worn a clean mask solely for the dash in and out of a supermarket, I got a fungal infection on my chin. If that happened to me, a very healthy individual, what my have happened to others, as they breathed in carbon dioxide etc?
If Norman Tebbit refused to have ‘face covered’ individuals, into his surgery, how come this problem disappeared with Covid-19?
Let me clear that up for you since you don’t get it. When the techocrats get the governmemt to lock us in our homes, shut our businesses, force us to wear masks, mandate injections of unknown ingredients… some us get very motivated to find out why. I call that a self preservation instinct.
The chief virtue of wiki-world: complete lack of editorial filters. The chief vice of wiki-world: complete lack of editorial filters.
Without knowing Ian personally, his ability to create numerous charts from the data shows some analytic skills. Further Ian has been posting those charts throughout the pandemic. If the charts he created are factual (my checks say they are), his analyses show the failure of most of the mitigations. The lockdown analysis by John Hopkins used statistical techniques to arrive at the same failure conclusion.
The difference is that governments essentially junked the entire assumptions of a liberal society, not to mention all the established wisdom of how to address a pandemic, overnight in a state of panic (let us say charitably). Legal sanctions, fines and imprisonment were visited on the population by authoritarian government action, not by any ‘sceptical’ voices.
The fact that governments and public institutions can lie and even rewrite the past (such as on previous medical advice) with impunity is by far the most worrying thing to come out from this pandemic.
I think this from the article is important “scientific and medical establishment’s uncritical support of masks and other dubious policies is just the latest manifestation of its lack of independence from political imperatives”. Is there independent science?
Many on unherd would say no, but is it true? I try to avoid being sucked into conspiracy theories, but there needs to be an investigation to learn from the mask fiasco
To play devil’s advocate… some of the technocrats have stated the masks were useful to drive other policies. Citizens felt like they were in a dangerous pandemic. It could help drive vaccine uptake or other NPIs like lockdowns or track and trace. The noble lie. I really encourage people to read Laura Dodsworth’s State of Fear. People in the USA should get to know firms like the Fors Marsh group and Hill & Knowlton. Understanding the public campaign around messaging, nudging, behavioral modification strategies would clear up a lot of confusion.
The revelation that experts had been biasing advice to worst case scenarios was also damaging.
Doing that in any similar scenario drawing situation is always questionable, but how much more so when it was the situation we have been in for the last two years. or so.
It was very poor and also damaged trust.
Yes perhaps, but what about MY feelings? Are they less worthy than the masked classes’? I must acquiesce in order to spare someone’s feelings, but my feeling are expendable.
Are we helping or enabling, then?
Surely not the “my lived experience”
argument from you Andrea?
Are the feelings of the gender dysphoric less worthy than the cis classes? Must we make their feelings expendable?
Rightly or wrongly, many more people were genuinely concerned than were blasé. It’s a utilitarian argument, but it’s reasonable to expect the minority to take into account the majority stance in any communal activity, such as shopping or using a public loo.
I was about to make the gender dysphoric example, but you beat me to it.
In conclusion, feelings are everything, while truth is expendable.
And therein lies the nub. What is the truth?
The amount of data this thing has generated is colossal. Do I have the time or the expertise to make sense of it? Unlike many commenters on the Covid threads, my answer is a clear no.
Do I trust the establishment and big pharma? No.
Do I think the literally thousands of people involved in generating pandemic response measures of every type are all evil conspiracists in thrall to the architects of the great reset? No.
Are they capable of group think. Yes.
Will many have the moral strength to stand up if they really think conscious harm is being wrought? Yes
Are the garage based experts capable of coming up with better analysis of this volume of data? Possibly.
Am I in any better position to trust the motives and expertise of all the amateurs that have sprung up? No.
So commenting on this topic, in the vehement style so often adopted in these threads, can only possibly be an exercise in emotion.
One of the things I’ve found educative about Unherd is seeing people on “my” side using all the irrational, ad hominem and “you’re not just wrong you’re stupid/evil,” arguments I so abhor in the woke. These threads seem to highlight that tendency more than any other.
My little grenade has also demonstrated to me that down ticks are more fun than upticks, but I really do need to get on with my day
I gave you an uptick… I detected sarcasm!
Thanks Lesley. Not entirely sarcasm, arguing is more stimulating than agreeing… but I’m still failing to do something more useful with my day!
I agree wholeheartedly with your comment except one point.
You say, “Will many have the moral strength to stand up if they really think conscious harm is being brought? Yes’
Not sure about that. It is true that I stopped wearing a mask for just over a week now (nobody has paid the slightest attention to it; not even a glance or a passing tut-tut), but I am in a small minority.
Pieces of cloth have been worn for over 18 months here and no explanation was given on their introduction (cases were at rock bottom then and there had been no deaths for weeks) or the condition for removing them. That was the day when I lost confidence in my devolved assembly.
They have been playing politic (or should I say “parlour”) games for years and they see that fear brings good returns when polling.
However I feel I have to make a small stand, insignificant though it might be, as I have had quite enough of the games.
There is a master design for a great reset? I don’t think so, but undoubtedly Covid is being milked to the last drop for political gain.
Thanks Andrea. I agree it’s being milked. It can only be milked because polls seem to continuously show support for “safety” measures. That’s starting to turn, I think, so hopefully the political response will follow.
On moral strength, I was thinking more of the thousands of scientists and assorted experts that have driven everything from mask wearing to vaccine development. There was an article on Unherd recently from a relevant professor making the case that the science isn’t settled. I don’t think the sheer numbers involved would have allowed a pure conspiracy without any basis in any science.
The issue is the MSM which has not allowed for ANY debate to be had. If you contradict the dogma you are heretical and need to be erased (not unlike the trans “debate”).
Where I am (Scotland) we had the lovely Devi Sridhar advising the First Minister like she was the Archangel Gabriel telling the Virgin Mary about the birth of the Messiah. She has been the instigator of school closures, masks everywhere, zero covid and so on. Now she has been somewhat “discredited”, so she seems to keep a lower profile, but the damage is done (and the secondary school kids still have to go to school masked as have done since last August) as the people are by and large still in a trance. And it doesn’t help that Covid is conflated with separatism, but that’s another story.
Now the latest from the devolved administration is to chop the bottom of the doors off to improve air circulation in schools. One could NOT make it up. At least now she, the First Minister, is pretty much being ridiculed by everyone.
On the miserable failings of the MSM we are in total agreement. Good to hear wee kranky is getting some come uppance!
Ridiuled by everyone… If only!
Well, she got a fair amount of laughter thrown at her (and certainly a larger amount than usual). I am still to see a positive comment on that policy announcement.
Wow, that’s a depressing tale. Devi Sridhar and her appointment as a public health specialist is just a symptom of the chronic sickness which Scotland has been afflicted with over the last 5-6 years. The current status with masks there, if I’m to believe you, is the classic example of the most damaging consequences of politicians playing the expert role when they have absolutely no authority for doing this although the experts who did a 180 degree turn concerning mask effectiveness at the start of the pandemic are the real culprits, purely out of not knowing what else to do. I’ve just booked my first trip back to Glasgow for two years, and coming from mask-free Sweden it’s not something I’m looking forward to.
Personally I wouldn’t come, unless you had to.
Said that, my limited experience here in the central belt is that pretty much everyone is wearing a mask, but nobody seems to care if you don’t. I saw the other day a clip on FB from Dundee (about something totally unrelated) where they were showing people boarding a bus and every single one was maskless. OK, they were young, but still.
I have an apartment that’s been lying empty for two years. It’s now or never and I’m assuming the golf courses will be mask-free.
Is the “ lovely” Devi Sridhar of the same ilk as Cambridge’s super star Priyamvada Gopal by any chance?
Was there ever anyone more profoundly stupid than “Professor” of Grievance Studies, the depthlessly ignorant and arrogant Priyamvada Gopal?
Not that I can recall. Frankly it just brings Cambridge’s name into disrepute, employing such a contentious individual.
Have you explored the WEF Great Reset web pages? Please do, then tell me there isn’t at least a concerted and coordinated effort, if not quite a “master design.”
I absolutely agree about the muck slinging…ugh. I disagree with the argument that most will have the moral strength to stand up if they believe harm is being done. Serious, unfixable harm has been done, especially in the silent corners where children, the disabled and the old live. People knew/know that care homes are still operating like prisons and yet it is considered necessary to stop the spread of covid. Cognitive dissonance, prejudice & bias are very weakening to the knees.
You don’t need a conspiracy. You just need a journalist class with stock portfoilios that all bought stock in drug companies, and stand to make a few thousand dollars if only they can get everybody vaccinated. Which they may believe is a good idea, anyway … as Samuel Pepys wondered, is it really a bribe if I was going to vote that way anyway? If I didn’t know how much the ‘gift’ would be worth until after I voted?
Corruption is so much easier now.
No, I don’t believe that. A much more likely explanation is that they are interested in clicks, so they peddle whatever story is more likely to generate a bigger interaction (a bit like UnHerd does with these posts 😀 ).
I am sorry that just doesn’t make sense. Downticks are more fun than upticks? Really? I am not sure that I feel that I am having more fun when I decide that I agree with someone’s point as opposed to disagree.
The covid threads are always the ones that excite the most vehement debates. Overwhelming they anti vax, anti lockdown, anti any other risk reduction interventions. The implicit assumption is that governments (including the thousands of normal people who generate the data on what they base decisions) are devious liars with an agenda, whilst odd blokes on the internet are entirely trustworthy.
I’ve tended to steer clear of these debates because, as I stated, the issue is so big,the sources of info so varied, it tends to become just tribal quite quickly.
Posting a contra view, on a subject sure to be explosive, was bound to create a reaction. Some responses made me think about my stance, some exposed me to a couple of angles I hadn’t thought of, and it filled a morning with some mental gymnastics I wouldn’t have had if I’d ignored it or gone with the Herd (with whom I’m more often in agreement.)
It also sorted the debaters from the numpties in one thread, which is useful for future reference.
Hence more fun, and 88 down ticks and counting must be getting close to a record 🙂
Very well said.
“And therein lies the nub. What is the truth?”
The totality of instances satisfying the Tarskian truth schema for any given proposition p.
T: “p” is true if and only if p.
Regarding moral strength, the way researchers who a few days before were saying they thought it was a lab leak fell in line when their funding source, Fauci, told them to say “natural origin” tells me that moral strength is in very short supply.
‘Will many have the moral strength to stand up if they really think conscious harm is being wrought? Yes’
While I agree with you on the other points you made, I do not agree with you on that one!
Conforming to mass hysteria is not the answer for me. ‘It’s easier just to go along with it’ never ends well- at some point you have to make a stand. Or where does it end?
His argument boils down to … it is impossible to know everything for certain so why bother. It is a shallow argument.
Well… he does wind up saying I need to go do something productive. If by that he means ignoring covid hysteria and moving on with life he has a good point and we should all do that
And taking a dogmatic and vehement stance, denying any contrary evidence because the narrative “has been rigged to suit the elites,” is a reasonable definition of critical theory.
It’s the fanatics on whatever fringe, with no doubts about their cause, that are responsible for many of the worlds ills.
I feel like there are many things over which I should make a stand, living in Italy. Don’t get me started on the emergency mandates here. I would be a massive outlier if I did however since most of the native people I speak to consider acceptance of state rules as a given – yes that’s Italians I’m talking about.
I’ve taken a small stand with regards to the unilateral decision of my sports club to adopt the Vaccine Super Green Pass, even though it is not obligatory for them to do so, by not signing up again. I don’t feel like it will make any difference and I don’t really want to not take part in something I love – I’m taking a stand for others, not myself since I qualify with my UK ‘travel pass’ which actually represents a lower level of vaccination than is required for the locals.
I have refused to wear a mask outside here. Over the last two months, it was mandated again to wear them outside and the cases shot up anyway. Everyone I know seems to have gone down with it even though they were the mask wearers. That’s all anecdotal obviously. The point I’m trying to stress is that making a stand is often as nebulous and divisive as the debate around mask wearing itself and we need to recognise that. Or at least, I’ve had to for my own sanity!
I think it’s important that any ‘counter narrative’ shouldn’t be undermined with shoddy analysis or data gathering but it seems like most people, who’ve looked, think the writer has done a good job. I do think serious, substantive work of this sort will probably have much more impact than the place where I make my stand. I’ll keep trying to make it however.
I find masks repulsive and wearing one is a hostile act. In the past the only people who covered their faces were criminals and Muslim women forced to by their primitive husbands and their evil “religion”. Criminality and Islam hide their faces, the better to destroy the West.
Is the quality of the analysis maybe more important than qualifications? Did Charles Darwin have qualifications? (I would need to check).
Your common sense was spot on, and I never got the idea that it is connected with a freedom struggle (although it could turn out to be the thin end of the wedge)
It is becoming tiresome that people hold ‘experts’ in such high regard. Many so called experts are good at one thing, whereas other people may bring a basket of skills to a problem. That broader knowledge can often allow them to tackle a problem without the myopic lenses, or the acquired biases, of the ‘expert’.
A person may have spent countless hous studying the latest books and reports over the last two years, which may make them more up-to-date with current thinking than an ‘expert’ who graduated three decades ago. They may also bring a smorgasbord of other skills and knowledge that the ‘expert’ is clueless about. In that situation do you blindly trust the ‘expert’.
In addition, it is odd that these same people seem to hero worship Bill, but what skills does he have in medicine?
Whilst we are going down this road would you dismiss Elon’s knowledge of electric cars because he didn’t graduate three decades ago in some motor-vehicle engineering degree. How could a guy who built a financial payment system (Paypal) possibly have the skills to now run businesses involving electric cars and space rockets?
The problem is also that the experts considered are often not actually from the field. Look at Ioannidis, who is one of the foremost actual experts. No one cared about his opinion, because his data clearly showed that the panic was unreasonable.
Some of the people who were genuinely frightened, had every reason to be genuinely frightened. They needed to be sheltering in their homes as much as possible. To the extent that they got the notion that their masks, or other people’s masks made things safe — or safe enough — they abandoned the precautions they would have taken if they had understood that the masks don’t protect at all.
Than you. A rational, fact based comment.
“genuinely frightened” – indeed. And quite logical in early 2020. But as it become obvious that severe illness was confined largely to a few, the health officials aided by a press needing clicks didn’t inform but continued the fear mongering.
That was one of the reasons behind Anders Tegnell’s refusal to advocate masks, that people would not bother to keep their distance since they were ”protected”, and from what I’ve experienced in other countries, he was correct in this assumption.
Alex Bereson’s statement “virus gonna virus” has proven more precise than anything I’ve heard out of the mouths of technocrats. I don’t need “organisational support to run the considerable analysis required to factor in all the variables” because we have all the empirical evidence we need. We’ve lived it.
Indeed we have. My father and brother-in-law died of it. So excuse my scepticism of the scamdemic narrative.
My father was of the “it’s only flu” persuasion and bizarrely decided to visit the Blackpool illuminations in October 2020, on a coach trip
between lockdowns. I don’t support blanket lockdowns at all, but had one been in place I am fairly certain he would still be alive.Some evidence based discussion of their relative benefits and harms does therefore seem relevant.
I’m fairly confident a mask would have made no difference (I’ve no idea whether he wore one on the trip) but am not willing to make definitive statements on that because some bloke called Ian Miller has selected a load of stats to go into a book.
Saying I have all the evidence I need on the myriad responses to a global pandemic because “we lived it,” is a nice soundbite but not much else.
Sure they did. i know 1000s of people who died. Entire generations of families wiped out in one wave
I don’t know anyone who has died. The only people I have heard of second hand who have either died or been seriously ill have caught it as patients/residents or staff in hospitals and care homes or as members of their households.
Mask-wearing by members of the public in the community (in my case a small rural town) would have made no difference whatsoever to those deaths from what is fundamentally, an infection that is spread in hospitals and other ‘care’ institutions.
There is also the question of whether, even if masks do inhibit transmission, that is actually a beneficial aim among young, healthy and vaccinated people. I would suggest that it is not.
How many people living on the streets of LA and SF and NYC died of C-19? If this thing was as deadly as claimed, the homeless population in those cities would have been eliminated by now. Nah, it’s well known that the recovery rate for most people is above 99%. Sending sick elderly into nursing homes was a deliberate act of mass murder. We have yet to see what this shot and its variants will do to the healthy people who submitted to them. But, based on the last two years, we do know that if wide-spread negative reactions occur, the government experts will lie and lie and lie some more.
When you look at the IFR of Covid and compare it to (an adjusted for the population) death rate of the 1968 HK flu, then it is easy to call it a scamdemic.
There is no doubt that millions of people over the years have died of flu every year (more children than Covid), yet we haven’t been locked up in our homes watching businesses fold, millions losing their livelihoods and futures, hundreds of millions going hungry, the rich getting richer, societal fabric decaying, governments becoming more authoritarian and etc. I’ve not used the word scamdemic before, but I am perfectly willing to now.
Once again a stat I have no means of verifying.
I believe the responses were driven by the R rate. There seems no doubt it spread a lot faster than flu. The political response was driven by the political (and possibly moral) imperative not to allow the health system to be overrun. Not many votes in hospital car parks full of dying people.
All sorts of poor decisions have been made by governments all over the world. Western populations have been shown to be extraordinarily compliant, driven by a level of risk aversion unknown in our history. There’s a whole other conversation around the societal trends that have brought us to that low.
This conversation, I think, is about who do you believe. My original comment was that I’ve no good reason to believe Ian Murray over anybody else.
Martin, you had the cruise ship at the beginning of 2020 and soon after the German carnival town’s outbreak gave Prof Hendrik Streeck’s a low IFR. Were you not following this? CNN as an alternative perhaps?!
The risk balance is easily calculated and it has been quite age stratified. Those under 50 in decent health are a little risk of death. Those who have good Vitamin D levels are a little risk of death.
The “risk aversion” item is well worth understanding. An over reliance on government might be related.
The whole point of “political mandated”masks is to make the anxious feel less anxious. But it has nothing to do with science as Fauci and others tried to convince us. Saw a program with a German lung specialist and aerosol expert, who said, that he experimented with masks for the last 20 years in laboratory conditions. It seemed that a double FFP2 mask, expertly put on and off, had a very small success rate. Surgical masks, as my GP already told me early in the Covid lockdown period, make hardly any difference as they mostly protect against bacterial infections and even then have to be changed every 2 hours.
Another good article about the masks below…
https://swprs.org/face-masks-and-covid-the-evidence/
Sadly, of course, it was the act of putting the filthy rag on your face that made people frightened. As the minutes of the relevant “nudge unit” meetings confirm, it was imposed as a highly effective instrument for generating and sustaining free-floating anxiety in the “insufficiently worried” to coerce compliance.
Your comment is back. Seemingly it had been reported (goodness only knows why).
That’s a ridiculous conclusion. You are pandering to ignorance. Taken the rag off.
I agree – but you could always have washed your masks! Man thing?
If people are frightened of seeing a human face, that’s their problem. They should get over it or stay in.
Curious that you highlight the “fair bit of cash” that you imagine that Miller might make, you express no interest in the ginormous amount of cash reaped by the Chinese manufacturers the Crony Capitalist middle men and the recipients of the usual brown envelopes. Cui bono?
No relevant qualifications? No organisational support (to read a few papers and run a few scripts in R)? Making a profit despite all of the above?
Won’t someone think of the children?
Not OTT just sick of idiot ‘experts” – I sand a lot of wood and wear these masks – I can ALWAYS smell the dust thru them – I dont need some (obviously an idiot) ‘expert’ to let me know if they work or not – why dont you actually experiment yourself ?? It is not rocket science….and you dont need to be an expert to experiment cos it is a very simple experiment. It seems that the planet has lost its critical thinking skills and any practicality !! try flour , try cocaine (perhaps the best cos you will know if you get a ‘hit”).
Your attitude is a threat to our Democracy. (Why should the left have a monopoly on that phrase?) The whole point of democratic representative government is that the people are smart enough to evaluate the choices and chose their own representatives based on what they promise and what they do. The whole point of translating the Bible into English was so everyone could read it for themselves.
Experts are supposed to explain the choices, not obfuscate them and then claim authority to make decisions based solely on their credentials. If “experts” can’t explain the choices and why they are recommending a course of action, then we, the great unwashed masses, are under no obligation to follow their advice.
Yes, but the fear of much of the populace was largely because of a completely unethical and entirely disproportionate government ‘psyops’ operation, designed to terrify them. Laura Dodsworth’s “A State of Fear” is good on this.
And are masks actually harmless? Firstly, they are a real nuisance for people wearing glasses. They greatly worsen communication. Comically people instinctively lean in to hear what people are saying.
And I wonder what science will be in future supressed, if it were to show, for example that the constant close contact breathing in of fibres and dirt particles wasn’t doing people much good anyway? A question never asked, let alone answered.
I recognise the good intentions in trying to ease the fears of others who were ‘genuinely frightened’, but it was governments, aided and abetted by so-called ‘experts’ who created that fear in the first place. They were deliberate employing ‘nudge’ techniques to manipulate citizens’ behaviour, and terrifying people was part of that experiment.
No one is saying that Covid wasn’t a horrible disease that killed many people, but it was not right to put such fear into people for a disease that posed little or no threat to the overwhelming majority. The mandating of masks as a way to ‘protect others’ was a particularly clever bit of flim flam. It set people against each other and caused more fear, along with judgmental self-righteousness by those who chose to use their compliance as a way to shame and browbeat anyone who didn’t go along with the ‘evidence’.
We know for certain that almost all those ‘experts’ who told us wearing masks would save lives (including the despicable Matt Hancock who said if you didn’t you might “kill your gran”) had done a massive reverse ferret from their positions held only months before the pandemic broke.
It’s the sly and manipulative behavioural theorists who led the charge, but they were using a tried and tested way to keep a population
under control:
Divide and Rule.
What about the people like me that masking itself was frightening, that people could fall for such an obvious trick akin to rosary beads or worshipping a statue at the instruction of government officials, and attack those who didn’t?
With respect, I must disagree and posit the theory that masks did “work.” To answer the question posed in the headline, masks were certainly not a waste of time.
Masks worked well if you focus on the intent. The goal was to divide society and take control. Remember the Democratic Party mantra (to be fair, also used by Republicans): never let a crisis go to waste? Masks were a visual reminder that we should all be afraid, very afraid, regardless of age (masking children), health status (the healthy young), and that some were virtuous (those with masks) and some were “anti-science,” those without masks. Masks have helped the left gain control and keep control. Finally some–Bravo to Canada–seem to be actively rebelling. It seems very clear that masks have worked as intended–society is clearly even more divided than pre-pandemic and many people are still very afraid, wrongly thinking that only government can save them.
Finally, I should note the obvious that the issues of “masks” is utterly meaningless without discussing what masks and how they are worn. The cheapest pieces of crap that I have worn–and re-worn many times–cannot be deemed effective by anyone. Perhaps a higher quality mask worn properly and replaced often might help somewhat, but this is too burdensome and expensive, so it’s simply not an option. I also vaguely remember–please Gentle Readers, correct me or add to this–that the mask study that found masks were somewhat effective involved high quality masks that were replaced with new masks every day. Somehow I doubt that this is what happened with the vast majority of mask wearers.
I think you should have stopped writing after the 2nd paragraph.
Fair play.
Your post suggests a remarkable lack of intelligence among the population.
Well, think of all the people who vote SNP despite all their failings.
Fair play, but am I wrong?
Of course! This is particularly true in the UK where for generations the population has been mollycoddled by the government and had no personal risk other than self imposed.
And ?
Well in terms of your paragraphs 1 and 2, you are absolutely correct. But I’m not sure whether that was the original intent. I suspect that many believed that masks work to prevent spread of infection but never questioned the actual data.
But the ‘cheap’ masks dont work – I have testd them – very simple really………….
Masks were never about infection control, just a way to identify the politically reliable. Anyone without one can be immediately identified as a Republican/ Libertarian/ Tory etc, i.e. someone with true liberal thoughts (or in modern parlance an extreme right winger).They were largely left to choice until Trump said that they were a waste of time; from then on Fauci et al couldn’t wait to espouse and mandate their use.
They will never go away as those on the left/ technocrats/ lovers of authoritarian control will not stop wearing them. I know a few people who will not answer the door without donning one. Sadly, whenever this bunch are in power mask mandates will return regularly and the status quo will forever shift in this direction until seeing anyone’s face becomes a rarity.
If you’ve ever married a biophysicist you will know that masks are considered of negative benefit if you get them even slightly moist.
So even if you could prove that a mask is an effective barrier when fresh out of the packet, wearing it throughout the day, putting it in your bag, withdrawing it from under your chewing gum and car keys, slapping it on the table at a restaurant and so on, is going to render it worse than useless.
Additionally, masks promote mouth breathing which for years has been associated with tonsil and adenoid issues, dry mouth, bad breath, fatigue, periodontal disease and throat/ear infections, asthma triggering and so on. Mouth breathing is also associated with a higher viral load.
And even if you could demonstrate they DID work, by wearing one for extended periods you are anaesthetising your immune system from the world at large – the world being an encyclopaedic soup of germs that your system needs to encounter to know about and improve its defences.
Dumb times.
I wondered about this. It seems reasonable that if the mask were somehow contaminated–wet, perhaps they stopped Corona–and then re-used, they would be doing MUCH more harm than good. If you are a dentist, for example, and change with every patient and only use high quality masks in a filtered environment, give it a go. But for the average person, ridiculous!
Haha – ALL YOU MASK WEARING SHEEP – I TOLD YOU SO.
As the site’s main ‘Never Masker’ I have undergone the open hostility to never masking from day 1. (except when I must enter a hospital of bank as their security will throw you out – and I need to be there. – but often in banks and health care places I can stare down the security, but mostly not, so put one on as they force compliance 🙁
Masks are your badge of shame that you will not fight the system…. They serve ONE purpose – to make you comply – and it worked for all you masking sheep…..
(No Vax, No Cell Phone, No Mask)
I’m with you on this one Galeti. I’m now 85 and have never worn a mask in spite of the repercussions from my community.
I am reminded of the open letter I wrote to Dr Trish Greenhalgh regarding her April 2020 article in the BMJ on recommending facemasks. This article was one of key academic papers which tipped the balance in favour of this dubious practice, later to become an even more dubious mandate.
http://grahamstull.com/2020/07/09/open-letter-to-dr-trish-greenhalgh-on-her-bmj-article-concerning-face-masks/
The bone of her contention was that, while there is no evidence masks work, there is also no evidence they don’t. Given the desperate straits we were in with the pandemic (never true, but ok), it was worth doing, because the intervention could be considered essentially costless.
Of course, mask mandates were far from costless. They have contributed to anxiety and isolation. They hurt the hearing impaired and the mental development of small children. They create dangerous precedents regarding civil liberties. They have served as a gateway drug to vaccine mandates and vaccines passports. They have created an environmental catastrophe. And don’t forget: they cost money to produce.
Totally agree. But what’s interesting is that Trish Greenhalgh felt that one may as well give masks a go since if they did work it would be good, but if they didn’t no harm no foul. Yet the same experts effectively outlawed the use of early treatment strategies including ivermectin and hydrochloriquine both of which have incredibly good safety profiles over half a century.
So the logic isn’t there. Masks are mandated although there is no evidence for them being useful. In fact all the data show that they have had no effect. Early treatments are banned even though there is data to suggest they are useful, even if there are no gold standard double blind randomized control trials. Sort of crazy isn’t it?
Not crazy. Sinister.
I’m with Nick. It’s crazy like a fox.
Worse than crazy. There was no cost for the elites and the work from home crowd. The cost to others was quite dear. This is a mixture of virtue signalling, conformation bias and disdain.
And what did she say?
She told him that his name has been written down as a suspected ‘anti-vaxer’ and they are watching him.
More shocking things have been happening…
No reply.
Great article. Another consequence of magical mask thinking is the effect of the environment. I live in Vietnam and am currently visiting my wife’s relatives in the countryside. I can tell you that discarded masks are EVERYWHERE, along main roads and small country tracks, every 10 feet or so. A travesty. At least in this case you could say masks are having some kind of impact – adding to an already serious level of environmental degradation.
Here in Spain as well, the sidewalks and parks are littered with paper masks. They serve as reminders of our failure
These last two years have been nothing less than a propaganda war and an example of elitism closing ranks. Here’s an example from the supposedly balanced BBC; can you spot the sleight of reason to fool the reader:
“ Canadians are broadly supportive of vaccine mandates – nearly 83% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated.”
Slippery….
It’s a good thing the public isn’t mandated to pay a license for this kind of content.
Indeed. The maxim “is that true, or did you hear it on the BBC” has never been more apposite. I wouldn’t believe them now if they told me the sky was blue.
That example is a binary, trans-colour-phobic microaggression. If the sky (pronouns: wha, zoom, zwha) chooses to identify as atacama yellow, who are you to deny zwha identity?
Masks are going to be an iconic image of this whole period. There aim was to stop the spread, but what do we really know.
You’d think after two years we’d be 100% sure about how it spreads, but our govt and big pharma funded scientists don’t seem to care very much about:
1. How it spreads
2. Where it came from
3. What things we can do to prevent catching it that don’t involve political control on a totalitarian scale
4. What we can do if we catch it other than go to bed and hope for the best
Surely our amazing scientists should have definitive answers to all of these important questions.
This whole two years should have made everyone question our politicians, media, pharma industry, tech industry, and celebrities. Some very odd things have happened over the last 24 months and we need answers. If we can’t rely on our supposedly ‘independent scientists’ to give us answers then who can we rely on?
That is precisely why this particular “crisis” was so valuable. There is no certainty to any of these questions. Just like climate change. They both are the perfect subjects to exploit. No definitive answers, just hyperbole and worry.
I confidently expect the experts to have an epiphany soon. They will see the damage they have wrought and repent of their hubris.
After all, we are now on the road to Demaskus.
Very good!
Somehow I doubt it when it comes to masks. The ExpertsTM have become the new religious fanatics.
The hardest word to say in the English language is sorry,
particularly if you are from the ‘government’.
All this is beginning to look like the early days of the Reformation, when ‘deniers’ were gleefully burnt at the stake by such paragons of virtue as the sainted Sir Thomas More & Co.
Demaskus, hahahahahaha didn’t get it straight away.
(But what happened to the discussion we were having upthread?)
It was there a minute ago – I’ve just replied to you. Bizarrely my original comment this morning is now showing in my feed as being moderated. Maybe a set numbers of down ticks generates a review.
Go me
I don’t see it any of the conversation anymore.
I have sent a stroppy email to UnHerd. Probably it is all automated, but still…
Was there a comment on a higher level? I have experienced that my comment (answer) disappeared because the original post was deleted (by the author)
I thought you could not totally delete a comment
yes and it is now back (but it is a reply to a different comment)
Yes, I made a bunch of gentle comments earlier, but I no longer see them. When I could still see them, I saw no downticks
I don’t think you can delete comments. If the Unherd staff delete a comment then the whole thread can disappear. This happened to me a few times when being subordinate to a Julie B comment. If you contact them and argue for your point they may reinstate the thread. Sometimes the comment at the top of the thread can be contentious or out of order but the reponses can be excellent and not worthy of removal. The Unherd staff are fairly responsive and I’ve always been sent a reply.
I’m impressed with your number. Not sure I’ve ever seen -57. It wasn’t me!
I like your pun, hope you’re right, but fear you’re wrong. More likely to double down than say Oops….
Here in the US, the sound you hear is that of mask mandates being dropped by blue states/governors. Why? Critical mid term primaries and elections are coming up and the Democrats’ chances aren’t looking good. So, give the people a little of what they want, i.e. no mask mandates. But avoid the critical issues of soaring inflation and potential war.
Masks are a sick joke to identify the gullible and the compliant.
I wear them to avoid frightening little old ladies. I also ensure that my fly is zipped up.
Masks DO have some benefit though…. perhaps we can selectively mask certain people?
I advise not to watch to the end of the video – a couple of minutes will do. Nancy Pelosi’s re-election speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYmqIU5TbDo
She is obviously “inebriated by the exuberance of her own verbosity.”*
(* nearly Benjamin Disraeli.)
Indeed! Especially those who don a mask whilst driving their car alone or walking alone on a city street.
That’s surely even more dangerous than texting; wearing is one thing but donning is quite another.
I found wearing the NATO: Respirator NBC* S6 No. 1 Mark 1 at my GP Surgery & my local NHS facility highly entertaining.
I was begged to take it off as it terrified the other visitors. Apparently it reminded many of Quatermass**.
(* A Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Gas Mask, in English.)
(** Sci-Fi horror character from the 1950’s.)
In the early days I saw a guy in sainsbury’s with a full gas mask, goggles and all.
I don’t know if he was genuinely frightened, or extracting the urine. What I did enjoy was that everybody else in the store studiously “failed” to notice this apparition stalking the aisles.
There are/were pictures doing the rounds of loads of hilarious ‘masks’ being worn. I am presuming mostly in Walmart.
5 things that I got wrong about the virus:
When I read about the Diamond Princess I guessed the IFR would turn out to be about 0.3%. In fact, in most places, it is around 10 times less.
I didn’t think that it was possible to produce a widely available vaccine within a year.
I believed that double vaccination would prevent the virus from spreading widely in my community.
I believed that double vaccination would free the NHS to continue much as before the pandemic.
I believed that the “lab leak theory” was a Trumpian conspiracy theory.
5 things I got right about the virus:
“Non-medical interventions” have a small delaying effect viral on “spread” but they do almost nothing to reduce mortality.
School closures are a very misguided policy. They do little to prevent the spread of the virus, do not reduce mortality and damage children.
Vaccination causes very rare but clinically significant serious side effects which will deserve compensation.
The use of FFP2 masks probably limits viral spread. Less sophisticated cloth and paper masks do not have any significant effect except as “performance art”.
The cost of compensation for financial loss caused by ineffective “non-medical interventions” is very high and will take most of my children’s lifetime to repay.
Hello Keith,
Thanks for the interesting comment! I myself am from the field and have monitored any scientific developments around CoV-2 closely, and my experiences are very similar to yours.
However, I was skeptical of these vaccines from the very beginning, because they are limited to a) systemic injection and b) only one protein of the virus. They were always destined to fail, at least with any subsequent mutation. I mean, this is what we are seeing with influenza, and that needs to get into the lower airways before it can even infect you, so the systemic approach is a little more promising. Trying to prevent CoV-2 infections with a systemic vaccine is downright unscientific. Interestingly, prevention of mild cases is what the original Pfizer study claimed (there was barely any data on severe disease).
Lab leak was always a possibility, we know that there is gain-of-function research going on, so it’s interesting to deny that option from the get-go.
The most effective non-medical intervention is summertime, the effectiveness of everything else is questionable at best. FFP2 masks may limit viral spread, but where does the virus go? Partly into the mask, partly on your hands, partly back into your lungs. FFP2 are masks made for working; when in contact with aerosol, they have to replaced on an hourly basis. In the medical field, they may only be used when every other part of you is sterile, and they may never under any circumstances be re-used (except possibly after professional sterilization).
For lockdowns, school closures and the like, once you consider the side-effects that has on human health (loneliness, fast food, lack of sunlight and activity), there’s an unclear benefit at best. Seeing that high blood pressure is a major factor for COVID deaths, and lockdowns exacerbate or cause high blood pressure, well…
Thanks for your comment. Very helpful.
Interesting that you didn’t think vaccines would arrive quickly but had clear views on what you thought they could achieve. As to the lab leak theory and gain of function, Dr Fauci (aka the devil) should be in jail. And not just for lying to congress. Look into his approach to HIV
I would add one suggestion:
-Preventing open dialogue and castigating dissenting views is utterly shameful.
In the US most non-pharmaceutical interventions only slowed spread. In New Zealand, Australia, and most of Asia, they suppressed spread to the point that very few were infected prior to vaccines. South Korea had less than a 0.5% seroprevalence rate in April 2021 without ever doing a full lockdown or a tight border closure, using just contact tracing, masks, and social distancing. Restaurants were open throughout. But they were wearing real PPE: KF94 masks are equivalent to N95 in efficacy.
Financial Times 7th Feb: “South Korea has recorded just 6,886 Covid-related deaths and avoided a national lockdown throughout the pandemic, which helped its economy grow 4 per cent last year — its highest annual growth in 11 years.
But since Friday, the country has recorded more than 35,000 cases a day, up from about 7,000 daily infections reported two weeks ago. Health authorities estimate that daily cases could reach between 130,000 and 170,000 by the end of the month.”
Yes, which is exactly what the KDCA predicted, as even the South Korean mitigation strategies are no match for omicron without a full lockdown, which they don’t want to do and never have done. But the point is their mitigation strategies worked to keep infections low until now – with 85% of the population double vaccinated and 54% boosted, so despite the scary numbers you just posted, the death rate continues to drop, and currently stands at 19 per day, about 1/30th the death rate in the United States.
I lived in South Korea during most of the pandemic, I have many relatives there, my wife is Korean, so obviously I’ve been following the news there very closely.
When this is over, the South Korean approach is going to be clearly one of the best in the world, as it already is. No full lockdowns, no strict border closure, but they are coming out with a tiny fraction of the death rate in the US.
So you are right South Korea has done an amazing job in delaying the spread of the virus in its population. But I suspect the early closure of the border and efficient contact tracing are the main factors. Masks probably had a marginal benefit in protecting droplet transmission and encouraging everybody to stay within the rules.
But now the virus is spreading rapidly and masks are not stopping it. The virus is in the air in poorly ventilated spaces and masks do not stop small particles from being inhaled. If they did construction workers, dealing with asbestos, would be allowed to wear them.
A big factor is the health of the population. Obesity and co-morbidities often as a result of obesity has caused the huge death count in many Western countries.
Anybody who struggles with spectacles steamed up with Covid laced breath knows that masks don’t work.
Yes, but the steam is virus-free, since the virus particles are filtered by the mask and… well, what then? Do they just vanish into the infinity of space? Or are they being breathed more deeply into the lungs?
They simply go round it, like flood water round defences.
Good point…
If the health officials and political class were honest they would admit that the real reason people were told to wear masks is that they are a highly visible symbol of compliance and help promote fear which causes greater compliance with all the other silly NPIs.
No shit Sherlock
now now…
Using the terms “honest” and “political class” in the same sentence outside a joke is, well, simply dishonest.
I heard one UK government minister actually admit this on a radio show a few months back, regarding masking kids in schools. Bit of a slip on their part, and rapidly brushed under the carpet.
I have never hated anything as much as the mask dogma around Covid
Thats not to say that a well-fitted N95 mask with eye goggles will not protect against infection. But the community level masking, is just beyond words. And the places that forced little kids to wear masks for hours on end, may the people behind those choices burn in hell
The covid-19 pandemic exposed only how feeble, hapless and vapid our so called expert class are, and how bankrupt of leadership our politicians have largely been. And, sadly, how gullible and easily frightened a staggeringly high proportion of the population is.
“Most people would rather die than think and most do”.*
(*BR.)
I confess I belong to the category of people who objects to masks on principle, buy this read was still refreshing.
It is amazing how people choose to pick and choose what evidence to take into account… Take Italy where you can’t pee if you are not vaxxed AND masked and compare the outcome of the latest wave to, say, England. The curve is identical and they have more fatalities (same ballpark though). Why are they not walking in the garden of masked Eden?
I am pleased to be able to say that I have worn a mask for approximately 5 minutes in the last 9 months.
…and I’m pleased to say that I have worn one every single time I’ve visited the village shop here in the last two years. I know it makes no odds as far as Covid is concerned, but it makes the valiant and loyal staff feel valued, since their opinion differs from mine; and as I constantly remind them that the masks make no difference to either of us, we have a useful platform for scientific & political debate.
The ONS tells us that 97.5% of us have Wuhan flu antibodies, and the scientists have conceded that the Omicron strain is almost harmless, so what precisely do masks achieve apart from inducing anxiety and alienation? I’m simply not going to pander to irrationalism.
Well, now that Omicron holds sway I’m inclined to agree with you, as are most of the shop staff, but irrationalism – as it often does – has proved to be an aid to fellow-feeling in this context. We (least of all I) cannot always be shining with that hard, gem-like flame of Popperian rationality, and some of us decline to the weaker level of ‘When in Rome..’. As long as we are not the ones making the rules I think that’s OK.
With respect, I don’t think it is ok. Masks cause anxiety and alienation. We need to stop tolerating them as part of everyday life.
Exactly. In my local second hand book shop there is sign in the window proclaiming:
MASK FREE ZONE.
It has been there since the beginning of this mask nonsense. The owner, a robust octogenarian is quite correctly appalled by the timid nature of most of the ‘demos’!
That’s absolutely brilliant. Would you mind saying where this is? I may go and spend some money there.
Need to know basis only I’m afraid.If I recall correctly you live near Bristol, which would make it quite a slog to get to.
‘O Tempora O Mores’!
You are quite correct, and don’t worry I understand.
What about a situation where the people you’re interacting with are forced to wear masks, on pain of losing their job? Isn’t there a case for solidarity with them, perhaps with some overt statement that you thinking it wrong that anyone should have to mask up? There’s something creepy about the increasingly common sight of (unmasked) customers/guests/VIPs being served by identically masked minions.
I just made a restaurant reservation where the staff “will wear a mask if requested by you”. Nicely put I thought.
Go maskless, and sympathise with those staff who would like to do so too.
“Masks cause anxiety and alienation”.
And your evidence for that is ?
And a comment. Influenza has all but disappeared for the last 2 years. Why ? How ?
I really can’t be bothered to indulge your blatant sea-lioning with regard to a patently obvious truth. Of course masks cause anxiety and alienation. This is so trivially true it’s not worth debating.
Influenza is really easy to drive away with some other viral infection. So in 2009 when H1N1 was the flu pandemic virus of the year, it only took an estimated 6% of the population to get sick with rhinovirus to knock H1N1 right out of the picture.
This is known as viral interference.
https://plu.mx/plum/a/?doi=10.1016/S2666-5247(20)30114-2
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21975051/
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(20)30114-2/fulltext
The idea is straight-forward. At any given year only about 20% of the population is at risk for catching the flu. The rest are protected, probably because they have already been exposed to something similar enough to what is circulating now in past years that they won’t be getting sick. Thus the flu’s ability to propegate through the population is dependent on being able to find enough of these people to infect.
But it can be very difficult to infect somebody who is already in full-on ‘protect me from viruses’ mode because they are fighting some other viral infection. So the people who were getting sick with rhinovirus were not available to catch H1N1. Sometimes this this meant that they were *late* to the pandemic, in catching H1N1 and sometimes this meant that H1N1 fell out of the population as infection with rhinovirus spread. Rhinovirus outcompeted H1N1 flu.
Now _exactly how_ this happens is subject to a great deal of scientific disagreement. One theory is that it has most to do with the interferon in the cells. But recently, the ‘it’s the increased mucous secretions and general anti virals in your upper respiratory tracks’ (the third article I posted) seems to be getting more traction.
grrr, moderated again.
Thank you for this – a great incentive to dig and delve some more.
I did remember some papers from 2021 looking at co-infection with influenza A and B and Covid so clearly this competition thing resulting in a mono infection doesn’t always play out in real life :
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmv.26817
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8135706/
And there is still the puzzle of what happened in Australia in the summer of 2020 when there was very little / no Sars Cov 2 transmission and next to zero flu and RSV (unless you believe the notion that flu only circulates from the northern to southern hemispheres via travel).
Viral displacement – disappeared in Sweden as well and almost everywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere regardless of NPI’s; just out competed by a superior viral strain.
Again, nature – not man.
Presumably good old Corona got them first?*
(* I assume you are old enough to recall that we used to call ‘Flu’ “ the old man’s friend?)
Interesting. I entered my local post office today and despite a mask mandate here in Queensland (Australia), none of the four members of staff were wearing masks. So refreshing to see. Many of the customers were still complying with the mandates. My face was mask-less and I think they enjoyed seeing me smile
You are pandering to their hypochondria and not doing them any favours.
I boycott any business that expects masks.
Fair enough. There’s only one shop in the village, and they need the business to keep the post office going. I can tell you’re not a politician.
So walk into the shop smiling and maskless and spend some money.
See Warren T below. They would offer me a mask (very politely) and decline to sell me anything if I refused the offer. Village solidarity and the opportunity to hold (and I hope win) the debate, or smiling refusal to sustain their business, on principle? I hope that I am with Ivan Ilich on this one, but it is a conundrum. Keep my money local (and keep the local school going, too), or invest in Waitrose? Luckily I have UnHerd to help me decide.
That’s how this will all change. The moment a clerk tells me to mask up, I simply and politely walk out the door.
Masks were never anything more than an unpleasant and divisive “obedience training aid”. They have also made the manufacturers, especially in China, very rich indeed. In the meantime, three million non-biodegradable, disposable ones are being discarded into the environment every single minute causing untold damage for future generations to deal with. When the history of mask-wearing is written it will be very ugly indeed.
Concerning masks I only have three arguments:
1) No mask is airtight. If a mask is airtight, you won’t be able to breathe normally and it won’t be pleasant.
2) If you touch your mask after opening a door, it’s not unlike licking the doorknob.
3) If your mask filters virus particles, where do they go? Can they go deeper into your lungs, where they will cause a real infection? You bet they can.
Here in Scotland, we are still under a mask mandate. Drives me bonkers at times:) I like to see people’s faces. I like smiles. See the Brownstone post. https://brownstone.org/articles/mask-studies-reach-a-new-scientific-low-point/. – the SNP have been heavy-handed all along and are now trying to make permanent some of their emergency measures in a new COVID Bill. I wish the SNP would wake up. The protesting continues in Scotland and is increasing as a result of the Canadian Truckers I feel.
I have stopped wearing a mask since last Sunday after 18 months of compliance (just because I didn’t want hassle from anyone). Nobody has batted an eyelid, not even a cursory glance or some tut-tutting; it has been almost disappointing.
As I said in another comment, the SNP are milking it as much as they possibly can, because of the holier-than-thou attitude that our glorious FM showed from the start and the fact that if she backs down she would look silly, so she has to double down every time. Does anyone know what she is waiting for to remove masks, say, from schools? But more to the point, what are people waiting for to remove them themselves?
So now instead we are supposed to chop the bottom of the doors of? For the grace of the Good Lord, what numpty came up with that idea? SNPs MSPs are generally not the brightest (well, MSPs in general are not the brightest), but still…
I am surprised no one has mentioned that experts and politicians appear to fulfill exactly the same roles in the climate debate with the poor old public left to shoulder the burden of their narcissism, hubris, dishonesty and contempt
Indeed. COVID restrictions advocates are the same type of people who impose climate restrictions. No evidence. The results are at best unquantifiable and at worst completely fail to live up to the apocalyptic predictions…and yet they persist.
Indeed even as I write, I am scanning the horizon for some rewarding ‘Climate Scam’ rubbish to invest in.
After my totally undeserved success with the Mask nonsense I feel I cannot loose.
If you identify anything that looks like a good prospect can you share
Off course, it would be my pleasure!
The article summarizes Ian Miller’s book quite well. Although Mr. Miller does not have scientific credentials nor uses sophisticated statistical analysis, by the preponderance of the evidence, clearly demonstrates the pre-pandemic science was right: masks are ineffective for a highly contagious airborne respiratory virus. How the previous science was overturned radically in the space of a few weeks is complicated and beyond the scope of any one article. The specific clues can be found in many places. The simple answer is they panicked, because the previous science indicated there was very little one can do once this type of virus gets loose. Since we cannot accept that in 2022, with all our knowledge and technology, there are things beyond our control, irrationality takes hold. What can’t be condoned has been the continuation of these measures beyond realizing their ineffectiveness. The recent publication of spurious mask studies by the CDC and others is reprehensible and indicates the capture of science by the political and bureaucratic powers.
Thanks for posting. This is very helpful.
How very depressing!
However let’s look on the bright side. At the very start of this monstrous Scamdemic I was invited to make a very modest four figure investment in a consortium dedicated to the production of Masks & other PCR stuff.
How noble, satisfying, and ultimately rewarding, that decision has been. I have now reaped a seven figure ‘reward’, and amount that it would take most Englishmen about 25O years to earn.*
Fortunately I am to old and decrepit to squander such a windfall, and shall have to delegate that task to my Chief of Staff, who has some expertise in that field.
(* UK average earning :£26,000 pa.)
I venture to suggest your Chief of Staff will have considerably less expertise than my own in the field of squandering.
If you need any assistance please do get in touch.
Thank you for that!
Thank you for that.
I shall mention it at the next ‘O group’.
I’m sure she will spend it wisely. Great post
“How noble, satisfying, and ultimately rewarding, that decision has been. I have now reaped a seven figure ‘reward’,”
Nobel, fat. old vulture….. Much like the ‘Daddy Warbucks’ figures of the WWI armament manufacturing Barons – but without the actual killing….. Let us know how you squander it – I would begin with a Lithuanian Trophy Wife and some Palatial Florida mansion…..
Tut, tut, jealousy will get you nowhere. Given the same opportunity you would have undoubtedly done the same.
As to the Lithuanian wife and Palatial Florida mansion, no thanks!
I foresee very soon the day where there is no one who ever supported masks, lockdowns or school closures.
The planes to Damascus are fully booked already.
It’ll be looked upon like we look on Salem.
It’s more sinister than that. Masks are a way of dehumanising the population, as the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia by forcing everyone to dress in black and China similar. Masks are utterly pointless, and that’s the point of them. The Left want a serf class, where muzzled delivery drivers, waiters, cleaners, nannies struggle to breathe while serving the wealthy Leftoid hypocrites in their restaurants and on their private jests.
Masks are a symbol of slavery and oppression, which is always from the Left. They love them on the servant class, but on those private jets and in those restaurants they don’t wear them.
Masks are now just perverse virtue signals to the “bien pensants”, which means they will never go away.
“…the temporary political advantages they gained from this will be outweighed by the discrediting effect of their embrace of censorship, propaganda, and rule by decree.”
Very well said.
As I plan to travel to Belgium this week, I am appreciative of one thing that the UK (well, actually English) Government have got right. We are now without any restrictions. Although my kids’ teacher and lecturer unions really wish it were not so. ‘Twas ever thus with these militants and they have enjoyed their little piece of power.
The broader point about the discrediting effect of ‘experts’ cannot be underestimated in Britain. It runs deep now. The ‘news’ is simply not trusted by people who used to (eg my parents).
Excellent piece. It seems quite clear that the noble lie theory is designed to save the blushes of those in power who instead changed their views for reasons only known to themselves.
What I find very interesting from a psychological perspective is how certain scientists who claim to only follow evidence have instead followed their tribe.
For example, I follow one such person on Twitter who in March 2020 noted that the evidence for mask effectiveness was paltry and advised one correspondent to wear a mask as a ‘totem’ if they wanted. That same individual now berates people for being “anti-mask” and not caring about saving lives if they question the dogma.
This is pure tribal politics and nothing else as shown by the fact that no new evidence of masks being any more effective has emerged in the last two years. However the chances of self-reflection from this type of person (who of course considers themselves highly rational) is less than zero. How ironic that the mask is now a totem for their own tribe.
OFF TOPIC | Freedom Convey Ottawa Canada
Listen to how peacefully the leaders of this demonstration are handling the new state of emergency declared by the City of Ottawa.
Freedom Convoy ADDRESS TO THE NATION – Feb.6, 2022 “State of Emergency Update” | IrnieracingNews
https://youtu.be/3D3sYDMNiD4
Thanks for the link. I encourage everyone to listen, and to compare and contrast with today’s report on the BBC website
U r welcome!
Thanks for the link. They are clearly remaining very calm, counter to Trudeau’s hysterical accusations of rioting etc.
as Brett (Weinstein) and Heather (Haying) said on their latest Darkhorse podcast: the difference between the “mostly peaceful protests” of the BLM riots in 2020 and the Canadian Truckers’ actually peaceful protests in Ottawa is obvious. The difference is the “legacy media” (and thanks to the Truckers for that term – I am going to use it in future instead of MSM) supported the BLM riots but doesn’t like the Truckers’ impudence in standing up for all our rights one little bit.
ps. I will send a link of this to my beleaguered brother in Western Oz, whose PM is not behaving any better than Trudeau).
Found it difficult to hear what they were saying, but I have found the subsequent clip almost hilarious:
https://youtu.be/g3u0JhcLiic
(and no, I know nothing about Canadian Politics, except the few snippets we get in the news)
Even worse in Australia & New Zealand I gather.
Thank you and good luck to the truckers. Legacy media (a great description) have been painting a negative image: far right, racist, hate speech etc. but listening to these guys is inspiring.
P.S. Compare and contrast with the reporting on the demos in the countries neighbouring Russia.
Excellent, good old Canada, got there in the end and have made a complete mockery of those other bedwetters, Australia & New Zealand.
In fact probably the best thing they done since they helped us burn the White House on the 24th August 1814.
I stopped listening after “Chinese are watching us”… So sad…
I had such great sport going into various places wearing a full welders mask with pop up window… magic to see how many it confused and annoyed!
Me and my motorbike helmet…
I have a (cloth) mask with my face printed on it. (Amazon Prime.) Mostly it is a great conversation starter & gets people laughing; occasionally it triggers the self-appointed masking nannies (just long enough to realize their mistake . . . which also provokes some laughter — if not always on their part).
There was a study of mask wearing in Bangladesh villages which involved 342,183 people over 8 weeks. In the mask wearing group 1,106 people were infected and the unmasked 1,186. A difference of 20. Masks wearing was pointless.
However the conclusions the researchers made, were just the opposite: that masks were effective! https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/09/02/clinical-trial-bangladesh-shows-masks-stop-covid-19-sort-15777 We need to talk not about the facts, but about the interpretation of facts, the twist that is going on. This study, that did not isolate mask wearing as a variable and had all kinds of bias variables in the study (people got sick or stayed healthy for many other reasons than masks) and that clearly showed that mask-wearing had a minimal effect, concluded that it is “still better than nothing”, and even “imagine if millions are wearing masks, how many lives can be saved”.
If I recall correctly the Bangladesh study showed a 10% reduction in transmission for those wearing surgical masks but not cloth masks, and only in the over 50s (which is peculiar to say the least). The result was statistically significant because of the massive sample size. But from a practical perspective, the result proved beyond any shadow of doubt, irrespective of poor study design and confounding factor, that the impact of mask wearing was minimal at best. Simply ask yourself the following question: if a contraceptive method had only a 10% efficacy would you be OK with your teenage daughter engaging in regular sex using such a method – I think the answer would be a resounding No.
“Thou shalt wear a mask” Hygenesis 20:20
I disagree. As you yourself point out, the science from the very beginning said that face masks are at best pointless (outside of clinical settings), and this was said again and again. Until the narrative suddenly changed – the argument was that the science had changed, but no scientific basis was ever adduced to support that contention.
Another bizarre phenomenon is the fact that occupational safety and health guidelines on mask wearing were simply ignored by OS&H agents, regulators, employers, and courts.
But otherwise, many thanks.
“Bait and switch”. When the explanations given do not hold up to peoples experience, it has to be jettisoned and blamed on something else that is plausable. Conveniently pulled mask off the shelf. When the 1917-18 Flu events are examined, the time before any real antibiotics, other factors such as malnutrition and weather and of course, bacterial/fungal infections (sepsis).
A great article and confirms much of what so many of us believed .it is still so sad to see people wearing masks in the open air convinced that they are doing it for the common good. I believe we will be living with the pychological damage for decades we have been betrayed by our politicians and many of our scientists.
Excellent article. I disagree that masks are merely a waste of time; they are positively dangerous. Mask wearing is indeed a form of theatre; more to do with virtue signalling than protecting anyone. It’s notable that mask-wearers have to talk more loudly, repeat themselves more often and ultimately lower their masks to make themselves understood thus squirting ever more aerosol particles into the air, and I’ve lost count of the number of ‘altruistic’ mask wearers who stand chatting for ages in the aisles of supermarkets secure in the misapprehension that they are keeping everyone safe. It’s unlikely to do anyone much good when people spend hours with their faces wrapped in germ-soaked bits of cloth.
“The most disastrous failing of the experts has been their lack of curiosity about the actual results of the policies they have staked their reputations on.“
With the attention span of the average techno-immersed human being similar to that of a moth, I doubt most folks will remember how silly it was to wear masks during the pandemic of the early “20’s, or who recommended them.
“Before Covid appeared, scientists and officials advised time and again that masks would be ineffective at containing a pandemic respiratory virus, and the evidence Miller has compiled suggests they were correct.
Two years into the pandemic, the experts are now the last to acknowledge the accuracy of their earlier predictions. This raises the question of why they changed course and sacrificed their own credibility in the process. Miller confines himself to the data, and if there’s a limitation to his book, it’s that he does not offer any compelling explanation of why the expert class threw itself a policy it once regarded as worse than useless.”
But here’s the thing we still don’t know: are the “experts” the same people? That is to say, the “scientists and officials” who said before the pandemic, correctly, that masks are pointless – are these the same actual people who later on were persuading us all to adopt mask-wearing? We need to know the answer.
This was pretty obvious back in March-April 2020 when it became clear this was an aerosol disease that masks were an absurdity. So anyone who only just figured out that this was always political “be seen to do something” pandemic theatre has really not been paying attention.
I largely agree with Geoff’s conclusion. I’m also going to offer a somewhat kinder explanation. It was just another “noble lie” that would help the technocrats with other NPIs like social distancing and lockdowns. It made people feel like they were in a pandemic. It would keep people scared and eager to listen to authority figures. All the scare stories in the press. The young are filling the hospitals and are not any safer were more “noble lies”. You can see that from Laura Dodsworth’s book State of Fear. The SPI-B group specifically drove that messaging. God Bless her for that book. I wish somebody in the US would do a similar book on Fors Marsh who was contracted by the US government to do that work in the USA. SPI-B is not an anomaly. This is not a new phenomenon either. Governmemts have been using behavioral modification strategies and propaganda as a population control strategy for decades. They’ve become very sophisticated at it and have largely been able to keep that a secret from the public. The public also fails to understand how susceptible they are to propaganda. Edward Bernays should be one of the most well known figures in US history. He pioneered a field in which the US still excells and is the undisputed world leader. In his autobiography he covers Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels had every publication of Bernays in his library and used his work as a blueprint for propaganda in Nazi Germany. He dismisses this as evil people can use any knowledge for evil purposes. We would only use such knowledge for good! The beauty of the noble lie! Or maybe the arrogance of the technocrat?
The American strategy was to scare the bejesus out of everyone with lurid scenes of carnage from Italy (and New York), suppress and deplatform (as “disinformation”) evolving data that showed Corona to be a disease of the old and infirm, (Princess Star Cruise Ship) then establish salvation through state mandated lockdowns, masks and finally vaccines.
The population evolved into two antagonistic groups: Those who truly did understand “The Science,” and those who cited “Science” as an authoritarian club to beat their particular population (Usually a blue city) into submission.
The damage, especially to children, is unforgiveable.
First class balanced analysis comments to match. Well done Unherd
Studies, tests, data, books, papers, experiments, science, blah blah blah blah. As my neighbour said back in March 2020, “…it’s all b****cks.” Why did no one listen?
Exceptional, thanks, I will read the book.
Remember when we were all watching the Swedish strategy? What worries me is the lack of discourse, public debate and evaluation of the data by the ‘scientists’ running public health. Such decisions may come back to haunt us.
When Ian Miller, and the author of this article, say masks don’t work to significantly reduce spread of covid, what do they mean exactly?
Do they mean that no masks, of the types available to the general public, stop the spread of covid when worn correctly? If so, that seems surprising to me and also raises important questions about how covid spreads.
The “correct” way to mask up is to wear an N95, or equivalent, with a surgical mask on top. The surgical mask should be replaced each day. How many people followed that protocol, assuming they could obtain N95s and afford to replace the surgical mask daily? Not many, I suspect.
My guess is most people wore masks (e.g., surgical masks) not designed to stop virus particles efficiently, and even those masks were probably not worn correctly. So when we read that masked LA county has covid mortality statistics similar to unmasked neighboring counties the similar outcome is probably due to improper masking.
If my guess is wrong and wearing a properly fitted N95 (which is capable of trapping virus particles) doesn’t stop covid spread, then how does covid spread? Does it mostly spread at home where people take their masks off? I ask not to stir up an argument but because I want to know (a) the limitations of the mask data, and (b) what does the data tell us about how covid spreads? It’s the science I’m interested in, not the politics of mask wearing.
Many people have spoken about the efficacy of N95 vs other masks, but wearing N95 masks when out and at home is not 1. feasible or 2. desirable for society – especially for a disease with such a low IFR. And how are you going to get children and babies to wear these effectively. Glue them to their faces?
Don’t give them ideas.
Yes, we have watched the theories becoming fact…
We had ‘masks’ for dogs & horses in 1938. Be careful what you wish for!
Not quite the same reasons though. Mustard gas affected cavalry and military dogs too. Change of tack. My personal observation in France, which has a strong mask mandate, that as soon as they were introduced, social distancing in supermarkets disappeared. It was only mandated at a meter, so hardly effective but distancing ceased. You can still see people wearing them in their own cars when driving alone. I have seen very elderly people wear them in their huge gardens. Our commune provided everyone with a black fabric mask and a washable quasi medical one. The Paris protest drive has been threatened with anyone causing an obstruction with a 2 year prison sentence. The land of liberty.
Agreed about Mustard Gas, plus Phosgene etc.
Well as to France and virtually everywhere else in so called Western Civilisation, (with notable exception of Sweden), the response to this Scamdemic has been utterly pathetic, even spastic.
If Darwinian is correct and it is “survival of the fittest”, then ‘we’ have had it, and that oft repeated quip that the “Yellow Race shall rule the word”* will become reality.
More tea Vicar?
(* Napoleon Bonaparte?)
Why would you not be interested in the politics, if it is the politicians who have been the ones wanting to inflict the masks on the masses. When conducting a scientific study one needs to factor in all the variables and not just the ones you choose.
Everyone goes on about N95 masks, as if they are a panacea. They’re not really any better than any other mask. Their specification is to filter 95% of particles 0.3 microns or larger. Virus particles can be much smaller than that. They also have to be fitted properly and changed regularly. It’s simply not practical, and eventually the virus will “get you” anyway, as most mask fanatics have found out. Unless you’re going to wear a proper respirator, forget it. The medical and scientific establishment know this, and have been promoting nonsense clown theatre for 2 years.
N95s have a polypropylene layer with an electrostatic effect that traps the aerosols that carry the virus. Even so, I think they may not work well outside a clinical setting
Yes I have used this argument many times. Millions of people who have contracted Covid have worn masks!
I’ve often wondered if the best policy throughout the pandemic would have been to focus solely on the vulnerable portion of the population and let everyone else get on with their lives unmolested.
If there is a type of mask (and replacement protocol) which effectively traps the virus, why not give them free to the old and infirm and let the rest of us go about unmasked?
Ditto: vaccines and lockdowns. If we had stuck to vaccination for pensioners and only locking down care homes and geriatric wards, we could have had similar results for a fraction of the costs, both financial and psychological.
Was that the gist of the Great Barrington Declaration?
If the old and infirm were given effective masks they would almost directly be affected by breathing difficulties and later possibly cardiac issues.
If you can breathe with the mask on, that means it is not working to stop the exhalation of aerosolized particles that can contain virions.
Another way of putting it is; if you can smell a fart, it isn’t working.
Prefer smelling the hyacinths in my favourite cafe
Preliminary reports in places which have moved to N95 masks due to ‘the infectious nature of Omicron’ — it is making no difference, they are all getting sick.
When you look at the contact tracing data, such as it is, and it’s not of great quality anywhere, including South Korea and other places with tracing apps, you find that around 80% of people infect *nobody*. No matter what, or how strict your interventions are. Of the 20% of people who infect somebody, 80% of them only infect the other people they share a home with.
But it is premature to conclude that this is ‘because the masks are off at home’ … because the masks are, in general, _on_ at work and the people who catch it at work tend to catch it like households do — all the people who work together catch it together. And work is where people are getting sick the second most, after homes. People who are wearing masks in their homes (i.e. army recruits who are ordered to do so, so we can be pretty sure that the are really doing it, and not just saying they did) are getting all sick together, too.
One of the great problems in how we have looked at infection rates is that we have focused on ‘how many people a sick person infects’, with the idea that if we could control some of the sick people, they would infect fewer people, and all would be improved, because the other people would infect as many as they otherwise would, and the numbers go down.
Instead, it seems that if you control some of the sick people, and force them to infect fewer people, the remaining sick people just get busier and infect more people so that the number of people getting sick stays pretty much the same. And no, I don’t mean that they are actually going out there and working harder at coughing on people, etc — it’s just that enough virus is being produced by them that it’s out there for the healthy people to catch. And ‘allowing people out to go grocery shopping’ seems to give them plenty of opportunity to catch things, whether or not they wear masks.
This is very much akin to the problem of trying to reduce the population of feral cats (where you aren’t allowed to kill any) by trapping and then spaying or neutering any cats you trap. Neutering the toms has no effect unless you can be sure of neutering every tom, so don’t waste your time and money on them.
… continued because I thought unherd would decide to moderate if I posted too much in one reply.
While the home and the school/work are the top places for where we believe people catch covid, part of this is because this is where people spend most of their time. We don’t have a good way of telling if you caught covid from your officemate or on the bus on the way to work, and if your officemate was sick 2 days before you when we look at the data we are going to bin your result in with ‘caught at work’. This makes ‘work’ and ‘at home’ look worse than they are — to the detriment of the ‘someplace else’ bin which is already looking rather large. Restaurants, by the way, do not look so bad when you eliminate the restaurant workers (who spread it to each other, same as every other occupation where people work in person, together). Families and coworkers may possibly infect each other while eating lunch in a restaurant together, but we have classified them as ‘home’ and ‘work’ infections. Strangers infecting other people at the restaurant does not seem to be much of a thing. Strangers infecting others on the bus seems to be more of a thing, but still not up there with ‘work’ and ‘home’. People get infected shopping.
The upshot is that, once you have shut down the nightclubs, which is a good idea, there still is plenty sick, all around for people to catch. Locking yourself away indoors, and never going out mostly works, and when it doesn’t its a measure of how you could not do this perfectly. Anything else doesn’t seem to be doing all that much,though the effect of stuffing people with lots of vitamin D certainly deserves more study. It is amazing how little we know about how it is that healthy people with robust immune systems stay healthy.
But oh, how I wish I had more data to work with!. But I understand. Getting the data is expensive. With the same money you can hire more nurses, and that’s a better use of it in terms of saving lives.
Stop worrying. Omnicrom is a cold
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I have read many articles about masks and other preventive measures and I still feel there are basic scientific questions that remain unanswered. The pandemic is so politicized science has taken a back seat to propaganda, but science free of politics is our only way out of this mess.
My own take on masks is they’re only likely to make a difference if the highest quality masks are used consistently and pretty much forever unless a sterilizing vaccine is developed which doesn’t seem likely. That leaves strict lockdowns as the only successful containment measure and that is only feasible for short periods of time and even then has extremely negative consequences. I’ve always supported the Great Barrington Declaration: shield the vulnerable; limit very high density public gatherings, at least for the early part of the pandemic, but otherwise let the virus spread among the healthy.
There are two issues. First a N95 is very difficult to wear for any prolonged period of time. Second it needs to be fitted. (Not sure where you come up with having a surgical mask over it – I fail to see that that does anything. Third, N95s don’t filter forever: indoors in a filtered air environment (such as an OR) they are good for about 2 hours; in unfiltered air inside they are good for about 30 min.
In terms of protection, you would be OK wearing a P100, but not only are they hugely expensive but trying wearing one of those for any length of time.
Now it seems to me that the fallacy was that the real claim about masks was that they acted as a source control on the basis that it’s easier to prevent egress than ingress. That’s true but the question is how many COVID ill people are there wondering around. Very few because they are home in bed. So the whole thing was based on the assumption that asymptomatic transmission was a major pathway of infection. However, as was later realized there is no such thing as asymptomatic transmission. If you are producing enough viral particles to infect somebody you will exhibit symptoms.
N95 masks were developed to help surgeons from inhaling blood splatters while performing operations. Keep it real
Surgeons don’t usually wear N95 masks! They wear regular surgical masks. It’s very difficult to carry out surgery with an N95 mask on. Now it is perfectly true that the main use of masks in the OR is to prevent the surgeon from being contaminated by blood splatters.
The data we have indicates that people start infecting people with covid about 12 hours before they show symptoms.
I’m not sure how anybody can know this and nor am I sure that any controlled experiments were done to actually ascertain this. I realize this has been repeated many times, but that doesn’t necessarily make it true. What I do know is that evidence for asymptomatic spread is extremely weak. What you are actually talking about is pre-symptomatic spread which is not quite the same as asymptomatic spread. During the pre-symptomatic period (the 12 hrs you are talking about), the patient is not free of symptoms. Rather they are free of severe symptoms. But they do exhibit symptoms whether a runny nose, a slight cough, a tinkling in the throat presaging a sore throat, etc….
We have people who were exhibiting no symptoms at all who appear to have infected people before they started gettting any. If they aren’t the source of the infections we traced, then we are even worse at tracing the source of infections than we thought, and we aren’t boasting about our skill in this matter.
The new people who are volunteering to be in the human challenge trail ought to settle the issue one way or another.
Nope. Some presymptomatics have no symptoms.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32283156/
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/4/20-4576_article
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762028
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32271722/
Thank you.
I have no idea who you are, but this post is insane. There was a great analogy stated about the effectiveness of masks. Think about throwing a handful of marbles at some scaffolding. Maybe 1 marble in a million might be blocked…. Covid particles are so small that even N-95 masks are unlikely to be effective……and then came Omnicrom……the common cold
…. or putting a chain-link fence round your house to keep out mosquitoes.
“(b) what does the data tell us about how covid spreads?”
Well your starter for 10 might be this narrative review highlighting airborne transmission, cluster events, and presymptomatic transmission.
https://www.theinsight.org/p/the-gaslighting-of-science
and then more indigestibly there is this huge systematic review with international contributors looking at household transmission versus other settings :
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-11-27-COVID19-Report-38.pdf
and the easier to read summary :
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/209673/covid-19-spread-different-social-settings-imperial/
and then just for fun there is this mediocre study trying to use childrens’ birthday parties as a surrogate measure of transmission events :
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2031915?query=featured_home
and …. could go on and on.
If people meet the virus will transmit. How easily and rapidly that transmission occurs will vary acording to a list of factors that would fill 2 sides of an A4 piece of paper… at least.
Sounds like “we’re doomed” as Private Frazer said.
Nope. Because transmission is meaningless unless it translates into hospitalisations, death or fast generation of more concerning mutations.
“Heaven be praised”. Thank you.
How does one account for the efficacy of masks in ICU’s where they obviously work quite well in environments of enormous contagion? The problem with masks and masks mandates is that the government never provided actually GOOD masks to everyone, nor indicated what a good mask was, nor how to get one. I don’t argue that the way the mask mandates were done here were useless. Yes, they were hygiene theater. But that doesn’t resolve the issue at all.
But, how do you quantify the efficacy of masks in ICU to state they work quite well?
Peer reviewed studies? It’s not difficult to find.
https://elifesciences.org/articles/71131
Nice one. Thank you.
If I’m not mistaken that paper talks about FFP3 masks. That would be the EU equivalent of an N100 mask not an N95. An N100 mask is even more difficult to wear for a prolonged period than an N95. i.e. the use of FFP3/N100 masks is just impractical. If you’re going to go that route you’re better off with a P100 or PAPR system so that you can breathe unimpeded. But those cost a fortune.
This study seems to show that swapping surgical masks for filtering face piece 3 (FFP3) respirators substantially reduced the risk of infection in healthcare workers in clinical settings; although difficult to use, well-fitting respirators will work, but cloth and surgical masks don’t. I think that’s the point.
Aside from mask types, one major difference is that people who work in ICUs are actually aware of how to use masks, ie. touch by handles only, change regularly, do not re-use, dispose of safely. There was never any clear advice to the public to do the same, and instead, you see the opposite, with masks frequently worn over chins or mouths only and allowed to get filthy – at work, I’ve regularly taken masks off people that are stained and black with mould on the inside, but there’s never been a word about the risk of fungal or bacterial lung infections either. Definitely theatre rather than health-driven.
Anything that works in an ICU can’t just be translated to the general public willy-nilly. There were two arguments at the beginning of it all that were used against masks: first, they are useless when not worn correctly, second, they are only helpful when sterile and should not be re-used. Both are still true today and are major arguments against the wearing of any mask at all. Can you guarantee that I won’t infect myself even worse by breathing through a soiled piece of cloth? Can you guarantee that masking doesn’t create a false sense of security that causes more harm than would otherwise be necessary?
On the contrary, if a person is immunodeficient, they can make a mask work with proper handling. But you can’t expect the general public to make anything better by improperly wearing soiled, non-standardized masks (even FFP2 are not standardized, as both the fit and filter are vastly different for most models). By allowing people to make the free choice, it would be much easier to recognize those who may want you to keep some distance to them; whereas you could still function normally with anybody not wearing a mask.
As it is, these things are political symbols, and potential health hazards.
After some photographs of mask contamination (an orange substance) worn by Joe B. and Jen P., it appears masks do have some use. It will be interesting to know what they are congesting.
Great piece.
I had such fun wearing a full face welders mask replete with window, and testing the reaction at Tesco, Sainsbury and other venues…. they complained that they could not hear me, but also when I raised the visor to be heard!!! Magic fun!
If statistics indicated with high confidence that masks – even the best N95 ones – are largely ineffective against noroviruses, then how are they getting transmitted?
Are the particles so numerous, small and virulent that even the very best surgical quality masks, likes N95, are completely ineffective?
Or is most transmission by touch from infected material to mouth or nose? Because, as Ignaz Semmelweis proved for childbed fever, neglecting to thoroughly was ones hands vastly increases infection?
Or is it something else, like a latent propensity to catch certain diseases within our bodies: a kind of regulation mechanism that Nature controls excessive population growth.
Either way, science should be able to inform us very reliably, by now.
Small and numerous, we believe. Touching doesn’t seem to be doing much or more people would have been getting sick even though sheltering in place from virus on the surface of the things they ordered delivered to the door.
But why some people have more robust immune systems than others is something we know very little about, still.
We actually know a lot about the latter. It’s not a secret why old people are most susceptible to disease: they have co-morbidities like high blood pressure, silent inflammation, a dysregulated energy metabolism and others that make it much harder for the immune system to function and uphold it’s delicate balance between inflammation and tolerance.
There is also the fact of previous immunity; infections that were not noticed or detected and left antibodies that make disease defense a lot easier.
There is the factor of exposure: how many viral particles were inhaled? It’s a difference between being infected in your upper airways or breathing in loads of viral particles deep into your lungs.
Finally, there is a bit of luck involved, with how efficiently at a time the primary immune system works. Dry, warm inside air can weaken this part of immunity, and virus exposure will more likely lead to an infection in such cases.
The factor of exposure is the one that I am most worried about, with respect to masks. If masks really do trap the virus particles in behind the mask when you breathe them out when you are sick, and you rebreathe them, you logically should end up with an increased viral load compared to the unmasked. And an increased viral load, again logically, should lead to a worse illness. But do these logical inferences actually bear out in practice? This whole pandemic is full of ‘proof by I am a clever person and this sounds right to me’ instead of actual experiements, or observational data.
This point has actually been discussed by some physicists, one of who claimed that masks actually reduce viral particle inhalation, because without a mask “the aerosols stay in front of your face”. Which makes absolutely zero sense, but a mask-advocate will say anything in defense of their hallowed dirty rug.
I, too, am worried to breathe in pathogens through my mask, and I am 100% sure that somewhere, at some point, someone made their disease worse by breathing in their own viral particles. Quantifying this factor will be hard, but we should have a discussion about it.
Plenty of evidence as to how Noroviruses transmit – via saliva, faeces and vomit. Classically people are infected via food that has been handled by an infected individual who hasn’t washed their hands like a surgeon.
I’m reminded of the words of the late Dr David Sackett, known as the ‘father of evidence based medicine’:
“…experts like me commit two sins that retard the advance of science and harm the young. Firstly, adding our prestige to our opinions gives the latter far greater persuasive power than they deserve on scientific grounds alone. Whether through deference, fear, or respect, others tend not to challenge them, and progress towards the truth is impaired in the presence of an expert.”
He thought that the only way for ‘experts’ to avoid the trap of believing in their own infallibility is for them to step down from pronouncing on any given area after a maximum of 10 years.
Unsurprisingly, not many ‘experts’ seem particularly interested in doing that!
I’m reminded of the words of the late Dr David Sackett, known as the ‘father of evidence based medicine’:
“…experts like me commit two sins that retard the advance of science and harm the young. Firstly, adding our prestige to our opinions gives the latter far greater persuasive power than they deserve on scientific grounds alone. Whether through deference, fear, or respect, others tend not to challenge them, and progress towards the truth is impaired in the presence of an expert.”
He thought that the only way for ‘experts’ to avoid the trap of believing in their own infallibility is for them to step down from pronouncing on any given area after a maximum of 10 years.
Unsurprisingly, not many ‘experts’ seem particularly interested in doing that!
Cloth masks limit the virus projection distance when an infected person coughs or sneezes. That’s probably all they have been proved to do.
Exactly, they’re basically as good as the advice to sneeze into your elbow, just that they pose additional infection hazards via touching your face.
You’ ve got to wonder why surgeons and nurses wear masks during operations.
Wonder no longer – they wear them in the main to prevent saliva entering open wounds during surgery. They do not wear them to prevent transmission of viral infection.
Though even with bacterial infections, a prominent study has shown that the surgical masks are wholly ineffective.
Miller’s data wouldn’t stand up to scritiny by professional researchers. Demography, population density, people’s occupations and cultural differences between areas wouldn’t allow equivalent sample data. The damage could’ve been even worse in mask wearing areas depending on the people mix.
In addition, mask wearing gave the public more confidence to engage in some normal activities including working, which had a beneficial economic effect.
You hit the nail on the head. Masks generate strong emotional reactions signalling that the wearer accepts the imposition of NMIs (non-medical interventions) while giving confidence that the wearer is protected. However, they have little practical value beyond limiting droplet spread. Construction workers may not enter a space contaminated with asbestos dust wearing only a cloth, surgical or N95 mask as these carcinogenic fibres will still get through to their lungs. Asbestos fibres are larger than COVID aerosols.
I’m sorry, but this article, and the book it is predicated on, is simply not based on scientific evidence. Scientific analysis is not simply eyeballing graphs or looking at a single study. You need to do an in depth analysis and try to deal with confounding factors.
The most comprehensive analysis done by actual scientists in a peer reviewed journal concludes masks are quite efficacious at reducing spread.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02457-y
The biggest problem we face right now is the spread of headline-based scientific-ish speculation rather than careful review of peer-reviewed literature. Some of the comments here: oh, masks fog up my glasses therefore they don’t work! Is this supposed to be evenhanded analysis and discussion? This issue has been covered endlessly, through lab results and you can actually measure how much filtration you get with N95 and KF94 masks properly fitted – as advertised, it is around 95%, which reduces viral load enough to be significantly protective.
I spent most of the pandemic in Asia (Korea, specifically), where a serological study done in April 2021 showed less than one half of one percent of the population had been infected prior to vaccines. They had widespread mask mandates and contact tracing, that’s basically it.
This trend towards anti-intellectual rejection of peer reviewed science in favor of “let’s look at graphs as laypeople and make some pronouncements in a book” is really quite disturbing.
The Nature paper was mentioned in the article, and has been debunked, as having far too many confounders. Meanwhile the Danish mask study was quietly ignored, as was the 50 years of peer reviewed science on the efficacy of masks, even in clinical settings.
You criticise amateurs for looking at graphs, but at the end of the day, charts showing cases and mortality in masked and unmasked countries and areas amount to a whole heap of observational evidence that masks are ineffective. In fact it’s so overwhelming you can’t ignore it, just by demanding more “gold standard” trials. Look at what’s in front of your eyes!
The study I linked is just one of a very large number of studies showing quite definitively that masks work.
If you have decided the study I posted has too many “confounders” (people seem to love to throw that term around as though it invalidates a study – every study has to deal with confounders, that is not prima facie evidence it is invalid), consider this meta-analysis which covers hundreds of studies.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-01814-3
Masks don’t work. They simply can’t. First of all, almost nobody is wearing them properly. If properly worn, any mask that has an actual filtering effect will simply not allow you to breathe properly. Ask anybody who has been working with aerosols and FFP2 masks long before COVID.
Secondly, the public generally re-uses masks, and they are not meant to be re-used due to the danger of harboring microbes. They’re literally directly in your face, and if you touch your mask, anything that was on your hands lands directly in your face as well.
Finally, where do you think the viral particles go? Do you think they vanish into the void of the universe?
Scientific studies can never show beyond the shadow of a doubt that masks are effective or ineffective, because there are vast confounders. However, if you use your common sense paired with the knowledge that a) aerosols can never be filtered with any efficiency, b) masks are practically never worn properly and c) masks are practically never sterile then you will have to arrive at the conclusion that they are pointless anywhere outside a monitored, professional setting.
Except if the trend data in the graphs actively works against your hypothesis that masks work because there is no correlation (correlation doesn’t equal causation; but there is no causation without correlation), then all this other stuff that you regard as real science is doing is just convincing you they should work.
It doesn’t explain why they clearly don’t (lab experiments are not translatable to community?), why previous scientific consensus was that they didn’t (maybe they just didn’t get the memo) or what really happened in East Asia which made their experience unique by an order of magnitude (as opposed to the more incremental benefits that could be expected from just better human mitigation measures).
The experience in East Asia being so different (despite the variance in stringency of measures being as much of a range as in the West), suggests either natural explanations to do with the virus, pre existing immunity or both.
Not germ covered cloth rags.
What’s “anti-intellectual” is pretending that the evidence changed in Spring 2020 so as to justify the dramatic about-turn in policy.
There was evidence that masks do work, including case control studies of airplane flights and studies of health care workers. Nearly every East Asian public health authority recommended masks, and there were already case control studies indicating mask efficacy then. The CDC was simply wrong; they were ignoring the evidence that already existed. There was a general bias against masks in the West, and they weren’t being objective about the evidence, but they also said they thought people would wear the masks wrong etc. It’s rather contradictory: why would health care workers need masks but they “don’t work”? They do work. The CDC was afraid that normal people wouldn’t be able to wear them “correctly”.
Have you a link to one such paper pre 2020? Here is a report from the Irish Times in March 2020 noting the lack of evidence. Are you suggesting they were ill informed?
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/no-evidence-to-support-wearing-of-surgical-masks-by-healthcare-workers-1.4216207
It is true there weren’t a LOT of studies, but there were studies. I looked into this at the time because I was puzzled by the fact that most East Asian health authorities were recommending masks and the CDC and WHO were not. However, what I found is, there were indeed studies which clearly indicated an effect, both case control and randomized. Here’s a very good example of one study I found at the time:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/
In this case, it was influenza, but it was very clear that medical grade masks provided statistically significant protection.
There were many others which I won’t post now for lack of time, but one involved mask wearing during the SARS-1 epidemic, and case control studies of mask wearing during airplane superclusters of influenza in which no one who wore a mask were infected, despite a large number of passengers infected on the flight, and so on.
Thanks for the link. That paper notes that cloth masks are basically useless while surgical masks are far from foolproof. In other words, with enough exposure you’ll get it, mask or not. With that type of result for cloth masks, why do you think they were recommended?
In the (near?) future people will have to name the journal used for the peer review. The system has been scammed on purpose and the results published. There were more than 400 citings of one article which was deliberately fashioned to provide whatever proof you wanted to make. I am surprised that it hasn’t been brought up every time someone claims to have had their work peer reviewed. I’m only an old greybeard sailor but I am now very wary of anyone who claims to have had their work “peer reviewed” without naming the journal. I am also surprised that a league table of ‘useful’ journals isn’t on the web or perhaps “scientists” already know.
It actually helps to read the paper because the Nature paper you refer to, no matter what conclusions the authors draw, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that cloth masks are useless and surgical masks are marginal at best. Irrespective of study design flaws and confounding factors, what the authors actually found what that surgical mask wearing in the over 50s conferred a 10% reduction in transmission. Yes that number was statistically significant but given the sample size, even 1% might have been been statistically significant. But the fact remains that 10% in the real world is as good as zero and not better. As I noted above but I’ll repeat if you had a contraceptive method that only had a 10% efficacy would you be happy with your teenage daughter engaging in frequent sexual encounters – I believe most people would answer with a resounding No. i.e. 10% is basically no effect of any consequence in terms of the spread of infection through the population. All it may do is prolong the agony for a few days longer.
Intuitively that seems right, but in reality it isn’t. 10% makes a massive difference if you are at the edge of R=1.0 using other mitigation methods. One thing that is counterintuitive about disease spread is that it is an exponential process. Even 10% reduction can make a gigantic difference because it can lower the reproduction number.
I agree however that in the West especially we were hamstrung by poor quality masks. As I noted in my comment in East Asia masks were much higher quality. Most people in Korea for instance wear KF94 masks which have a much higher filtration rate and Korea as we all know was able to use non-pharmaceutical interventions to keep the spread of COVID down to less than 0.5% of the population through April 2021. As a result, they delayed the spread of this virus to the point that now, during omicron, they’ve managed to get 85% of the population vaccinated and 54% boosted, so their death rate is flat despite an explosion of cases. NPIs work, when done properly. I won’t argue that they weren’t done well in the West for the most part, but there are nevertheless many other studies than the one I linked that show masks, especially N95 and KF94, are quite effective.
Not really, and that is absolutely evident when one simply compares hospitalizations and deaths between different states and countries. Really doesn’t matter what was done, the results were all more or less the same within “experimental error”. For example, Sweden did not to worse than the UK yet the UK had mask mandates and Sweden didn’t. Sweden didn’t even have any lockdowns. Same sort of thing for California versus Florida etc etc etc….
The problem is that reducing the R0 to below 1 is meaningless, because the moment even any successful mitigation measures are lifted you’re back to square 1. Reduction the R0 to below 1 is only useful if you can maintain it there, for example by herd immunity.
Speaking of confounding factors, Sweden and the UK are massively different countries, geographically, culturally, in terms of population density, and so on. A better comparison would be Sweden and Norway. Sweden had 5.5x the death rate of Norway, but those countries actually do have similar geographies and culture.
But again, as I was saying, South Korea had 1/12th the death rate of Sweden, yet if anything was less restricted than Sweden was during the pandemic. They were able to hold R to close to 1.0 until omicron using largely NPI. So for them, even a small effect from masks was very significant.
But again, just swapping stats like this is silly. The best way to look for evidence is to look at comprehensive meta-analyses of many studies. Any single study is unreliable, but looking at many studies, you’re going to get a much better estimate of whether or not there’s a real effect.
For example, this:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-01814-3
My main objection to this article and all this armchair analysis is that it is far more reliable to look at large numbers of peer-reviewed papers to get a sense of what’s going on than amateurs looking at graphs and swapping anecdotes.
First amateur’s can do an excellent job of looking at the real case/hospitalization/death data available in the public domain. That is the best way to look at what’s going on in reality. Second, there have been many many RCTs on the use of masks to prevent influenza transmission dating back to 1918 all the way to 2018. Every single one showed absolutely no benefit in the community. That was the policy espoused by the WHO and by Fauci prior to April 2020. They then switched 180 degrees on a dime with absolutely no real world evidence.
As for Sweden versus Norway they are actually very different, especially when it comes to nursing homes. But as I said, the best comparisons are afforded by comparing the various states in the US. They are all much of a muchness and whether NPI or not was employed had basically ZERO effect.
The other thing to note is that if you introduce masks prior to the peak, and cases continue to grow it is evident masks are not doing anything. Similarly if you introduce masks after the peak and the drop in cases doesn’t accelerate, likewise masks are having no effect in the community.
Now one might ask why. First most of the infections have occurred in hospital-like environments, including and especially nursing homes, where transmission is very difficult to control. Second, a very large proportion of remaining transmission has occurred within the home.
Re. Sweden, you’ve no idea what you’re taking about, the demographics are fairly similar. Norway and Finland had different elderly care facilities and they shut their borders very early.
Sweden’s care homes were much larger, were mostly private and were mostly for end of life residents….
This is a perfect piece for the‘Torygraph’ – they love this stuff. They don’t believe in any form of mitigation including vaccines. As someone with no immunity who continues to mask up in shops and on public transport and who had their 4th vaccination yesterday, I’ll stick with my plan.
It seems your plan is to protect yourself with a mask. That’s fine by me. Just don’t expect me to “protect” you by carrying out pointless, harmful gestures like mask wearing without some rock solid evidence.
I don’t care what you do.
I bet you do, really
I don’t. I’m done. Not remotely interested.
Are you by any chance the late Julie Blinde?
That’s all we ask
Excellent. But the article and most of the discussion is about mask mandates, therefore what other people are made to do is pertinent.
Your answer would indicate that you do not understand what the original purpose of masking back in April 2020 was. It wasn’t to advise mask wearing to protect oneself, but rather the idea was a method of source control to reduce viral egress (it’s easier to prevent emission than inhalation): in other words “I wear a mask to protect you, you wear one to protect me.” Nobody ever thought that a surgical mask offered any sort of protection (although it obviously morphed into just that), and indeed the Danish Randomized Control Trial showed exactly that – no evidence of any statistically significant protection.
Now the whole basis of mask wearing therefore is predicated on the notion of asymptomatic transmission because anybody who is symptomatic (truly symptomatic) would be wondering about in public but would be lying at home in bed. Unfortunately, it was clear later on that there is no such thing as asymptomatic transmission.
I think the same could be said for an article offering the opposing view when it comes to the Guardian.
So, even though the consensus – even amongst those who support masking – is that they offer very little protection to the wearer and virtually none at all with Omicron, you will continue to wear one?
Sorry no, I don’t buy that. You do what you want to do but don’t criticise me for doing what I think is best.
I think you are becoming a little defensive, which begs the question of whether you came on here merely to pick an argument? You also did not answer my question.
Yes, I will continue to wear a mask. In shops, on public transport, on aircraft which is a requirement anyway. I already said that in my original comment. I’m not picking arguments, I’m having a debate.
How do people who support masking say they offer very little protection to the wearer and virtually none at all with Omicron. Why don’t they just stop wearing them if that’s what they think? They are no longer a general requirement.
You also – like so many others – construct a false dichotomy with your assumption that those who are sceptical about masks are also anti vaccines. I have had 3 jabs and have had large doubts about masking all along.
I didn’t say that. I said there were lot of anti-vaxers and anti-mask wearers on the ‘torygraph’. That’s them not everyone else including you.
With respect, you very strongly implied it.
I am pro freedom of speech, anti masks, anti hard lockdown, pro sensible restrictions (i.e. limiting numbers in indoor shouty places during the alpha, beta, delta waves – not omicron), pro taking therapeutics before being carted off to hospital, anti setting PCR tests to cycles higher than about 25, anti recording deaths as Covid when people enter hospital for other reasons, anti vaccine mandates and passports, pro revealing raw data around Covid and vaccines, pro being sceptical about the unholy and evil matrimony between governments, big pharma, governmental organisations, corporate media and the like.
I don’t read the Daily Telegraph and don’t live in the UK, but these Torygraph readers sound like a smart bunch if this is what they believe.
No they’re not. They are a bunch of old right wing fahrts.
I’m swayed by that well reasoned argument.
False dichotomies and argumentum ad hominem. Unherd becoming a logic textbook.
What an unusual spelling for fart! Are you perhaps from the Fatherland?
No matter, by your vulgarity you only demean yourself. Perhaps you should consider another platform to blaspheme on?
Such a shame there isn’t a blocking feature on this site.
QED. You’re in the wrong Forum.
I used to read it back in the 60s and 70s when I was a young right wing Fart. Some people grow out of it. Some, but not so many, Gruniad readers do the same.
I got Covid from a family member who was triple vaccinated. You do what you want, but stop telling me what to do
What were the circumstances?
Definitely stick to your plan, and try to use good fitting masks of the correct type, if you don’t already
I do and I will.
Why do surgeons and nurses wear masks in operating theatres if they have no effect?
To stop stuff getting into open wounds.
They were wearing masks a long time before Covid came along. So I guess surgeons aren’t wearing masks to prevent Covid!! Perhaps to stop spittle and bits of breakfast falling into open wounds?
Not because of a concern for spreading virus.
Mostly to stop blood and fluids from the patient spattering them, as well as to prevent debris (hair/snot?) falling into the surgical field from them. It’s nothing to do with viruses, let alone respiratory ones. Furthermore, studies have shown no difference in post operative wound infections, with or without masks, and many surgeons don’t actually wear them.
Do you of any medical operations involving mask wearing doctors that last two years?
OK I get it. I was just asking the question. I wasn’t trying to make a point.
All the same, it seems intuitive that wearing a mask would help stop transmission of the virus.
Everyone across Southeast Asia thinks so. They have been wearing masks for decades as soon as they think they are getting a cold. They do it to protect other people. What a concept.
Facts do not care about your feelings, or what you think, however.
Fine. I don’t care about your facts.
But they end up with the same percentage of people getting sick with flu every year as places that do not mask, including places in the same country that does not mask.
I was travelling to Asia a lot during the original SARS, and up until 2007. Mostly Japan and Hong Kong, but Bangkok too. I don’t recall loads of people in masks everywhere, and I certainly never wore one, and was never asked to or thought I should.
This whole “they’ve always worn masks in Asia” is a myth, I’m afraid. Perhaps when they have a cold? But then really, perhaps they should just stay at home, rather than infecting people, as we know masks don’t work….
No, we don’t know that masks don’t work. We know they definitely do work. But you keep parroting the nonsense if it makes you feel better.
Are you living in a parallel universe? The article is about a book that debunks the worldwide mask mandates, during the pandemic. Before the pandemic the scientific consensus was that masks were useless for respiratory disease prevention. This was curiously overturned with no new evidence, and yet you are happy to say “we know masks definitely work”.
How do you know masks work, out of interest? I’ve seen no convincing proof at all.
No we don’t know any of that. Who is the author of this book? Is he some kind of super human mask expert? There’s evidence showing particles dispersing. You can find it with a Google search. I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change mine so lets just leave it there.
Laura, millions of mask wearing people have caught Covid. Let’s just cut to the chase.
How do you know that? You’re making a wild statement that isn’t true.
They also eat dogs & live frogs!
Additionally mask wearing, particularly amongst women is prised because it stops the face being tanned. Pale or white complexion is desirable for some unaccountable reason.
My experience in the East is that they mainly wear masks because of traffic pollution.
I thought that whilst bicycling around Hanoi, but was told by my guide that it had more to do with complexion.*
He also paid me an amusing compliment:
“You cycle very well………………for old man”.
(* Mainly female.)
Only if the mask was dense enough to filter out the virus. There are numerous studies already that show this is a fallacy
A good medical grade mask will filter out most of the virus. Viral load determines how sick someone will get. So if you receive 10% of airborne virus particles, that has to be better than 100%. Wouldn’t you think?
I agree that the right mask, that seals well, will block most aerosols that carry the virus.
From your observations, what percentage of people wear the “proper” N95, KN95, FFP2 or FFP3 masks? Do you they look like they fit well? Do they look grubby from wearing many times?
Most people will, or can’t, spend money on decent masks and don’t replace them frequently. Outside a clinical setting (or some work-based settings), how do you even find ones that fit properly?
I’m not surprised that it’s hard to find any statistical evidence of effectiveness, especially since it seems that data is not being gathered
KN95’s fit well, FFP3’s fit better. A pack of 6 on Amazon is about £15. The data has been gathered – it’s online.
I have a great many FFP2 masks with a metal nose piece as well as foam. I also have some FFP3 masks. They may well protect me in a supermarket, but not during my daily visit to the local café.
We still haven’t found FFP2s that fit my wife well enough, even after adding separate foam.
A great many people cannot afford £15
Thanks to people like you I have made a small fortune from this mask nonsense.
My sincere thanks.
I thought it was quite a big fortune, from an earlier comment
Not say by comparative analysis with a retired High Court Judge
sitting as a non-permanent member of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal for example.*
(* There are currently eight of them.)
Rather like being hit with 10 rounds of 7.62 ball rather than 100 rounds?
The only difference is the later is slightly messier, but in both cases you are stone dead.
You may wish to read this paper which examined the effectiveness of surgical masks in a substantial cohort from the general population in Denmark during the epidemic under real-life conditions in Spring 2020.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/
This was a carefully conducted study on a significant sample and the authors found (to the disappointment of some of them apparently) that as far as Covid was concerned there was no statistically significant reduction in infection. This is consistent with subsequent careful studies and with Miller’s findings.
The studies are written by science deniers, anti maskers and the like.
You are going to be masked up till the day you die. You do know that, don’t you? What a terrible burden….
No, I don’t know that. Do you think I sit in restaurants with a mask on? Not one person has looked at this from a sensible viewpoint.
Correction: one person has.
My father’s hospital did a huge two year study, in the 1970s or early 1980s comparing mask wearing and not mask wearing. No difference in the infectious outcomes for surgery patients. It does nothing for viruses. It could do something for bacteria, but they are already disinfecting for that. The hospital was overjoyed at the money they could start saving and moved to end the use of masks in surgery …. and just that week discovered that you could catch AIDS from infected blood. Oooops, nobody wanted to risk getting splashed by a patient’s blood at this time.
Plus the patients believe that the masks are to protect them, not to protect the surgery staff _from_ them. So they get understandably upset at the prospect of having surgery from the unmaksed.
Thanks Laura, it occurred to me that the Hepatitis vaccination which medical staff are required to have is also more to do with protecting staff than patient.
To stop stuff getting into their mouths or noses. You need to watch ER
You mean “Sturgeon”, i take It. I know…. Autocorrect.
Sturgeon always wears a mask when she does theatre.
Probably like the odious guy in California – Newsom. Until he drops his guard!