The Case Against Face Masks By Mrs Vera West

Face masks now are part of going out attire and most people mindless wear them, even where they are permitted by our fascist rulers to be allowed to breath the free air, even for a time. However, the scientific case against face masks is very strong: masks do not do what the authorities say they do. Here is an excellent research summary detailing the limits of masks. Go to the original article if one needs links to the scientific papers summarised in the article. There is enough information for most reader’s purposes. My own hypothesis on the mask wearing regime is that it is a sociological effect, social conditioning to produce added conformity and a public display mechanism to show obedience to the Covid tyranny.

https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/

A) Studies on the effectiveness of face masks

So far, most studies found little to no evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in the general population, neither as personal protective equipment nor as a source control.

1. A May 2020 meta-study on pandemic influenza published by the US CDCfound that face masks had no effect, neither as personal protective equipment nor as a source control.
2. A WHO reviewof ten randomized controlled trials of face masks against influenza-like illness, published in September 2019, found no statistically significant benefit.
3. A Danish randomized controlled trialwith 6000 participants, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in November 2020, found no statistically significant effect of high-quality medical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection in a community setting.
4. A large randomized controlled trial with close to 8000 participants, published in October 2020 in PLOS One, found that face masks “did not seem to be effective against laboratory-confirmed viral respiratory infections nor against clinical respiratory infection.”
5. A February 2021 review by the European CDCfound no high-quality evidence in favor of face masks and recommended their use only based on the ‘precautionary principle’.
6. A July 2020 review by the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicinefound that there is no evidence for the effectiveness of face masks against virus infection or transmission.
7. A November 2020 Cochrane reviewfound that face masks did not reduce influenza-like illness (ILI) cases, neither in the general population nor in health care workers.
8. An August 2021 study published in the  Research Journal of Public Healthfound “no association between mask mandates or use and reduced COVID-19 spread in US states.”
9. A July 2021 experimental study published by the American Institute of Physicsfound that face masks reduced indoor aerosols by at most 12% and even increased them locally.

• A May 2020 article by researchers from Harvard Medical School, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, concluded that face masks offer “little, if any, protection”.
• A 2015 study in the British Medical Journal BMJ Openfound that cloth masks were penetrated by 97% of particles and may increase infection risk by retaining moisture or repeated use.
• An August 2020 review by a German professorin virology, epidemiology and hygiene found that there is no evidence for the effectiveness of face masks and that the improper daily use of masks by the public may in fact lead to an increase in infections.

For a review of studies claiming face masks are effective, see section G) below.

B) WHO review of face mask trials (2019)

In September 2019, shortly before the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a comprehensive report on “Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza”.

The report reviewed ten randomized controlled trials concerning the effectiveness of face masks against influenza-like illness (ILI).

C) Development of cases after mask mandates

In many states, coronavirus infections strongly increased after mask mandates had been introduced. The following charts show the typical examples of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the UK, California and Hawaii. Furthermore, a direct comparison between US states with and without mask mandates indicates that mask mandates have made no difference. (Charts: Y. Weiss)

For an updated version of these charts, see the postscript below.

 

D) Effectiveness of N95/FFP2 mask mandates

In January 2021, the German state of Bavaria was one of the first places in the world to mandate N95/FFP2 masks in most public settings. A comparison with other German states, which required cloth or medical masks, indicates that even N95/FFP2 masks have made no difference.

In January 2021, Austria was the first country in the world to introduce an N95/FFP2 mask mandate at the national level. The mandate was further expanded in September 2021. Nevertheless, by November 2021 Austria reported the highest infection rate in the world.

E) Additional aspects

1. There isincreasing evidence that the novel coronavirus is transmitted, at least in indoor settings, not primarily by droplets but by much smaller aerosols. However, due to their large pore size and poor fit, most face masks cannot filter out aerosols (see video analysis below): over 90% of aerosols penetrate or bypass the mask and fill a medium-sized room within minutes.
2. The WHOadmitted to the BBC that its June 2020 mask policy update was due not to new evidence but “political lobbying”: “We had been told by various sources WHO committee reviewing the evidence had not backed masks but they recommended them due to political lobbying. This point was put to WHO who did not deny.” (D. Cohen, BBC Medical Corresponent).
3. To date, the only randomized controlled trial (RCT)on face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection in a community setting found no statistically significant benefit (see above). However, three major journals refused to publish this study, delaying its publication by several months.
4. An analysis by the US CDCfound that 85% of people infected with the new coronavirus reported wearing a mask “always” (70.6%) or “often” (14.4%). Compared to the control group of uninfected people, always wearing a mask did not reduce the risk of infection.
5. Researchers from the University of Minnesota found that the infectious dose of SARS-CoV-2is just 300 virions (virus particles), whereas a single minute of normal speaking may generate more than 750,000 virions, making face masks unlikely to prevent infection.
6. Contrary to common belief, studies in hospitalsfound that the wearing of a medical mask by surgeons during operations didn’t reduce post-operative bacterial wound infections in patients.
7. Many health authorities argued that face masks suppressed influenza; in reality, influenza was temporarily displacedby the more infectious coronavirus. Indeed, influenza disappeared even in states without masks, lockdowns and school closures (e.g. Sweden and Florida).
8. The initially low coronavirus infection rate in some Asian countrieswas not due to masks, but due to very rapid border controls. For instance, Japan, despite its widespread use of face masks, had experienced its most recent influenza epidemic just one year prior to the covid pandemic.
9. Early in the pandemic, the advocacy group “Mask for All” argued thatCzechia had few infections thanks to the early use of masks. In reality, the pandemic simply hadn’t reached Eastern Europe yet; a few months later, Czechia had one of the highest infection rates in the world.

• During the notorious 1918 influenza pandemic, the use of face masks among the general population was widespread and in some places mandatory, but they made no difference.

F) The facemask aerosol issue

In the following video, Dr. Theodore Noel explains the facemask aerosol issue.

G) Studies claiming face masks are effective

Some recent studies argued that face masks are indeed effective against the new coronavirus and could at least prevent the infection of other people. However, most of these studies suffer from poor methodology and sometimes show the opposite of what they claim to show.

Typically, these studies ignore the effect of other measures, the natural development of infection rates, changes in test activity, or they compare places with different epidemiological conditions. Studies performed in a lab or as a computer simulation often aren’t applicable to the real world.

An overview:

1. A meta-study in the journal Lancet, commissioned by the WHO, claimed thatmasks could reduce the risk of infection by 80%, but the studies considered mainly N95 respirators in a hospital setting, not cloth masks in a community setting, the strength of the evidence was reported as “low”, and experts found numerous flaws in the study. Professor Peter Jueni, epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, called the WHO study “essentially useless”.
2. A study in the journal PNAS claimed thatmasks had led to a decrease in infections in three global hotspots (including New York City), but the study did not take into account the natural decrease in infections and other simultaneous measures. The study was so flawed that over 40 scientists recommended that the study be withdrawn.
3. A US studyclaimed that US counties with mask mandates had lower Covid infection and hospitalization rates, but the authors had to withdraw their study as infections and hospitalizations increased in many of these counties shortly after the study was published.
4. A large study run in Bangladeshclaimed that surgical masks, but not cloth masks, reduced “symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections” by 0.08% (ARR), and only in people over 50. But a subsequent re-analysis of the study by statisticians found that there was in fact no benefit at all. According to one reviewer, the Bangladesh study was designed so poorly that it “ended before it even began”.
5. A German studyclaimed that the introduction of mandatory face masks in German cities had led to a significant decrease in infections. But the data did not support this claim: in some cities there was no change, in others a decrease, in others an increase in infections (see graph below). The city of Jena was an ‘exception’ only because it simultaneously introduced the strictest quarantine rules in Germany, but the study did not mention this.
6. A review by the University of Oxfordclaimed that face masks are effective, but it was based on studies about SARS-1 and in health care settings, not in community settings.
7. A review by members of the lobby group ‘Masks for All’, published in the journal PNAS, claimed thatmasks are effective as a source control against aerosol transmission in the community, but the review provided no real-world evidence supporting this proposition.
8. A study published inNature Communications in June 2021 claimed that masks reduced the risk of infection by 62%, but the study relied on self-reported online survey results and various modelling assumptions, not on actual measurements.
9. A meta-study published in the BMJ claimedface masks reduced infections by 53%, but the meta-study was based on seven low-quality observational studies. In response, the BMJ published an editorial acknowledging the “lack of good research” and the implausibility of the result.

• A German study, published in PNAS, claimed thatN95/FFP2masks are highly effective against coronavirus infections, but the study consisted only of a mathematical model without any real-world or lab data (see section D above).

The annex of the German Jena study showed that face masks weren’t effective:

Wearing masks for a prolonged period of time may not be harmless, as the following evidence shows:

1. The WHOwarns of various “side effects” such as difficulty breathing and skin rashes.
2. An Israeli-Canadian study, published in Cognitive Researchin February 2022, found that “face masks disrupt holistic processing and face perception in school-age children”.
3. Tests conducted by the University Hospital of Leipzigin Germany have shown that face masks significantly reduce the resilience and performance of healthy adults.
4. A German psychological studywith about 1000 participants found “severe psychosocial consequences” due to the introduction of mandatory face masks in Germany.
5. The Hamburg Environmental Institutewarned of the inhalation of chlorine compounds in polyester masks as well as problems in connection with face mask disposal.
6. The European rapid alert system RAPEXhas already recalled over 100 mask models because they did not meet EU quality standards and could lead to “serious risks”.
7. A study by the University of Muensterin Germany found that on N95 (FFP2) masks, Sars-CoV-2 may remain infectious for several days, thus increasing the risk of self-contamination.
8. In China, several childrenwho had to wear a mask during gym classes fainted and died; autopsies found a sudden cardiac arrest as the probable cause of death. In the US, a car driver wearing an N95 (FFP2) mask fainted and crashed due to CO2 intoxication.

Video: A mask-wearing, 19-year-old US athlete collapsed during an 800-meter run (April 2021):

Conclusion

Face masks in the general population might be effective, at least in some circumstances, but there is currently little to no evidence supporting this proposition. If the coronavirus is primarily transmitted via indoor aerosols, face masks are unlikely to be protective. Thus, health authorities should not assume or suggest that face masks will reduce the rate or risk of infection.

England vs. Scotland: Mask mandate without benefit

A long-term analysis shows that infections have been driven primarily by seasonal and endemic factors, whereas mask mandates and lockdowns have had no discernible impact.”

 

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/mask-illinois-has-no-science-behind-its-school-masking-mandate

“Last week an Illinois reporter finally asked what scientific support the state has for mandating masks on school children. At the Wednesday press conference, Gov. JB Pritzker had Dr. Emily Landon, one of his top COVID policy advisors, give the answer.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has a whole web page on it, Landon answered, and she vaguely referenced some Minnesota study (which we cannot find and Landon did not identify).

That’s it. That’s all we have ever gotten from the Pritzker Administration on its science behind masks on kids, so that is what we will look at in this column.

There was no follow up question and, as always, no reporter confronted Pritzker or his advisors with the vast evidence and expert opinion now published showing that masks on school kids have little if any value, which in any event is outweighed by harm being done to our children.

Since Illinois has blindly followed all CDC guidance on COVID, we will also look beyond the web page Landon referred to and consider other claims the CDC and Landon have made on the subject.

The CDC page Landon apparently was referring to is linked here. It’s what the Illinois Department of Public Health sent me when I asked for it and any other science they cared to offer. They also referred me to Landon directly, whom I emailed for the same, though she never responded.

Look through that CDC page yourself if you want. Go to the “Mask use” section. That’s the only portion relevant to whether masking school kids is worth it. Among the problems that should be immediately apparent:

• The studies cited on the CDC page lump masking in with a variety of other mitigation measures, rendering them useless as a measure of the efficacy of masks on children.
• All the supposed science was written before the December arrival of the omicron variant, rendering it meaningless. Omicron defeats masks far more easily because it is far more contagiousthan earlier variants and accounts for almost all current COVID infections.
• Most importantly, none of the material cited by the CDC attempts to weigh any supposed benefit of masks on school children against the vast harm done to them and their education.

Illinois has long followed CDC guidance reflexively and without scrutiny, yet it’s difficult to imagine how anybody following the subject affords any credibility to the CDC.

It still has never bothered to run a randomized, controlled test on masking, which is the standard scientists look for. Instead, it squelched its own study showing masks are ineffective on school kids. In November, we collected more of its suppressed evidence, distortions, fabricated studies and outright falsehoods here. They include the ridiculous earlier claim by the CDC director that masks can reduce your chances of getting a COVID-19 infection by 80%. Harvard medical school’s Martin Kuldorff retweeted a note saying “Not a single paper supports this made-up 80% figure.” The claim was “preposterous,” wrote Stanford epidemiology Professor Jay Battacharya.

Since then, the CDC has only gotten worse. To support its policy on school masking, the CDC this month released a study done in California purportedly showing mask effectiveness. It has been savaged by leading scientists. “The paper is entirely, irredeemably flawed. Its flaws are so evident that it should not have been published nor promoted,” wrote Vinay Prasad of the University of California.

“When it comes to masks, the CDC is its own worst enemy,” says a recent column in Newsweek.

“The CDC spread what amounts to misinformation in its promotion of cloth masks, which countless medical experts have said are useless against Omicron, the dominant COVID-19 variant in the United States.”

 

“In this case and others, the [CDC] has proven that it cannot be trusted to act as an honest broker of scientific information,” as columns in Reason have documented.

The biggest and most cited study on masking in general was conducted in Bangladesh. It was randomized and controlled. It found zero indication that cloth masks work.

Cloth masks are overwhelmingly what school kids use – by necessity because higher quality masks don’t typically fit children and are far less comfortable to wear through a school day.

Landon, however, has long been an extreme zealot on cloth masks.

“Cloth masks are our lifeline," she aggressively claimed in an earlier speech extolling cloth masks, specifically.

“So please," she said, “never leave the house without your face covering. And always put it on when you go inside another building or if you’re near other people outside. Soon, I promise, it will be as natural as wearing pants, which most of us are pretty good about.” In truth the science behind masks was questionable even before COVID, as discussed here.

Another study frequently cited by the CDC supposedly justifying masking kids was conducted in Arizona. It, too, has been ridiculed. It “turns out to have been profoundly misleading,” wrote the Atlantic. “You can’t learn anything about the effects of school mask mandates from this study” says the column, quoting a public-health economist at Arizona State University,

For a more thorough review of the why CDC mask studies prove nothing, see The Case Against Masks at School in The Atlantic. The overall takeaway from their studies, it says, is the claim that schools with mask mandates have lower COVID-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates “is not justified by the data that have been gathered.”

Landon earlier emphasized that the sacrifice is not just for one’s self but for others. “It’s because we have the grit and the compassion to make sacrifices for the good of our community, for people we don’t even know,” she has said.

In truth, the opposite is true regarding masking school kids. The mandate on kids is adult selfishness. Kids face no material risk from COVID, which has been long known. The only rationale for masking them would be protecting adults – if only masks worked.

Landon recently tweeted this:

” I really find it funny that people think we can just decide to be done with #covid…. We have to actually do stuff to make covid have less impact.”

That’s “funny”?

Is it funny that so many nations are “done” with COVID mandates of any kind and have dropped all COVID measures, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway?

Is it funny that states like Florida and Wisconsin, which have imposed no masking or other mandates of any kind, have had fewer COVID deaths than Illinois, age-adjusted and per capita?

Is it funny that 39 states have no mask mandates?

Is it funny that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control recommends against the use of masks for any children in primary school.

It would be funny that she thinks it’s funny, except the risks and consequences for school kids forced to wear masks are so severe. We are only beginning to understand the harm being done to children, but the evidence so far is frightening. The American Institute for Economic Research has a particularly comprehensive report on masks, and lists the following harms:

(i) difficulty with breathing

(ii) inhalation of toxic substancessuch as microplastics and chlorine compounds located in the masks (these are potentially serious risks)

(iii) CO2 intoxication 

(iv) arrest seen in children

(v) a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an elevation in blood CO2 (hypercapnia)

(vi) psychological damage

(vii) (N95 masks) a reduction in the PaO2 level, increases in respiratory rate, and increases the occurrence of chest discomfort and respiratory distress with prolonged use 

(viii) dizziness and light-headedness, headaches especially among healthcare workers

(ix) bacterial and mould buildupin children’s masks that can then be inhaled 

(x) anxiety and sleep problems, behavioral disorders and fear of contaminationin children

(xi) deoxygenation during surgery

(xii) potentially life-threatening damage to the lungs (e.g. Stanford engineers report that masks can make it much more difficult to breathe, estimating that N95 masks as an example, reduce oxygen intake from 5% to 20% and if worn for a prolonged period)

(xiii) as reported by Koops, facial skin infections, nose/throat and sinus infections, a change in breathing patterns.

You won’t hear any of that from the CDC, Landon or any other Illinois public health officials. They simply have never bothered to make a case comparing even alleged benefits of school masking to the harm being done.

If there’s any good to come out of this pandemic it may be the lesson our young people are learning about skepticism that must be shown toward dogmatic rule by government and supposed experts. Aside from the dead and their loved ones, it is they who have been treated most cruelly during the pandemic. And that cruelty has been deliberate, with children being been used as pawns in a mindless attempt to protect adults. May they never forget.”