For the past two years, we have lived with federal edicts telling us to wear masks when in public settings. While recently most states have dropped these requirements, there are still rumblings by the current administration about a coming "second pandemic," and masks are still required in certain public settings in some states.
The rationale for the federal government mandates regarding this and other health measures that abridge personal choice has been “protecting the public health.” But do masks protect public health from COVID (or any other virus)? Is there reliable data regarding the effectiveness of wearing masks, or were these mandates put in place simply to exert central, authoritarian control over the average citizen?
To answer this, let’s look at the results of some clinical, randomized, controlled trials – studies where the effects of wearing a mask (the “intervention”) are compared with the effects of not wearing masks (the “control” in the trial). These types of comparison trials are considered the best way to determine whether an intervention is helpful or not.
A Danish study was done by Bundgaard, et al. in 2020. “Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers. A Randomized Controlled Trial”(1) looked at 3,030 people who wore face masks and compared them to 2,994 who did not. The study found “a recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, incident SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with no mask recommendation.”
Simply put, this study showed that masks don’t work, and this study was suppressed for some time.
In 2019, the World Health Organization did a review of non-pharmaceutical interventions for COVID, including 10 randomized clinical trials of the effectiveness of masks in preventing viral transmission. In doing their review, the WHO took into consideration the quality of the evidence, the study design (a poorly designed study cannot give good information), the sample size, and other factors. None of the studies showed that face masks were effective in preventing viral transmission.
Swiss Policy Research conducted a review of the research regarding mask effectiveness and concluded that “so far, most studies found little to no evidence for the effectiveness of cloth face masks in the general population, neither as personal protective equipment nor as a source control.” They also reviewed recent studies that supposedly showed the effectiveness of face masks and stated that “most of these studies suffer from poor methodology, and sometimes show the opposite of what they claim” (ibid).
This, of course, raises a question: “Then why did the federal public health agencies in the United States mandate mask-wearing? Why did they – with access to the same studies - reach a different conclusion?”
School districts have been notoriously slow to abandon mask-wearing. But a study was done in 2021 by Ambarish Chandra, Ph.D. and Tracy Beth Høeg, Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, which used a larger sample size (which increases reliability) and a longer period for their study (which again increases the reliability of the data) than those done previously by the CDC. Their study results showed that there was “no significant relationship between mask mandates and case rates,” leading the authors to conclude that “our study demonstrates that observational studies of interventions with small to moderate effect sizes are prone to bias caused by selection and omitted variables.” (Revisiting Covid-19 cases in Counties With and Without School Mask Requirements— United States, July 1—October 2021). In other words, when a small sample is looked at, over a short period (such as the prior study by the CDC), the little data available is more open to interpretation according to the bias of the researcher.
So, why did some states require face masks for school children?
There have also been concerning reports about the effects of wearing masks on the young children who spent several years with their breathing and social development affected by these mandates. In “Experimental Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Content in Inhaled Air With or Without Face Masks in Healthy Children: A Randomized Clinical Trial” (JAMA Pediatrics, published online 6/30/2021), Walach and other European researchers conducted a study about the effects of face masks on children. The study found that when the face mask was worn for more than three minutes, carbon dioxide levels rose and that this effect was seen most markedly in small children. The study noted “most of the complaints reported by children can be understood as consequences of elevated carbon dioxide levels in inhaled air.... This leads in turn to impairments attributable to hypercapnia (note: this means high levels of carbon dioxide).”
This study was done over a year ago – yet has not been widely reported. Could this be because the recommendations of the researchers go against the public narrative being given by government agencies?
There are other documented risks to wearing masks, including the fact that masks can carry large amounts of bacteria, fungi, and other disease-causing agents. Borovoy, Huger, and Crisler, in “Masks, false safety, and real dangers, Part 2: Microbial challenges from masks” reviewed several studies on this very topic, and conclude: “Specifically, regarding COVID-19, we have shown in this paper that mask use is not correlated with lower death rates nor with lower positive PCR tests. Masks have also been demonstrated historically to contribute to increased infections within the respiratory tract. We have demonstrated from the clinical and historical data cited herein, that we conclude the use of face masks will contribute to far more morbidity and mortality than has occurred due to COVID-19.”
Masks are not only ineffective, but they also contribute to morbidity and mortality.
With studies like these, by reputable scientists, the question is raised: Why did our federal government mandate masks?
Surely those who made recommendations were aware of the above studies and yet chose to ignore them.
Finally, there is the question of ethics. Regardless of what the science shows, should people be forced to wear masks? With discussions of monkeypox and recently, the speculation of another pandemic raised recently by President Biden, this is not a moot point, but could become highly relevant if another viral wave were to occur.
If the answer is “yes” to mandates, then it leads us down a slippery path of government control that has historically been dangerous to personal rights.
Do we want to give the federal government the ability to broach a fundamental right in our nation, the right to refuse a measure we do not agree with?
The response of the states during the pandemic shows what happens when the government at the state level makes choices that it believes are in the best interest of the people living within the state. For instance, the eleven states that chose to not impose mask mandates at all had a death rate from COVID that was similar – and no higher – than states that did impose mask mandates.
Perhaps it makes sense to allow the public health officials within individual states to decide what “mandates” should or should not be imposed, after reviewing the current data. The personal right to choose an intervention or not comes under our First Amendment rights, and people should not be mandated to accept any medical intervention, especially in situations where either the data does not show a significant advantage to doing so, or there are conflicting data sets.
As a nation, we need to think long and hard while reflecting on the clinical studies regarding mandates before we are caught in another national crisis or “state of emergency.”
Otherwise, we may be simply giving away personal autonomy, and allowing our rights to be broached, unnecessarily.
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