One of the Largest Studies on Masks Ever Finds They Were Indeed Completely Useless

According to a study done by a world-renowned medical database, masks don’t make any difference.

One of the most thorough and extensive studies of the effectiveness of masks revealed that they have almost no effect on spreading respiratory viruses.

The Study reviewed 78 randomized control trials—experiments that have long been considered “the gold standard” for medicine—which assessed the effectiveness of face masks against flu, COVID-19, and similar illnesses. It concluded that masks are effective against flu and COVID-19. “probably makes little or no difference” For the general public, regardless of what type of mask is used. N95 masks, which are the most effective at filtering particles from the air, did not provide any clear benefits for health care workers.

The Cochrane Library, an internationally renowned medical database and known for its high quality evidence reviews, published the study on January 30. This study is a blow to the U.S. public-health establishment’s recommendations, which advised children as young as 2 years old to wear masks during the pandemic.

“This amounts to the scientific nail in the coffin for mask mandates,” Kristen Walsh, a pediatrician and clinical professor in Morristown New Jersey, said, “I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that some schools are still actively forcing children to wear masks, much less children who need to see faces to learn.”

Although most Western countries are based in the West, We opted against masking kids—in part due to concerns about speech and social development—many blue school districts mandated face coverings for toddlers, citing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Both organizations maintain that the masks work well to curb COVID-19 in schools. However, the guidance was based on a lot of assumptions. weak studies With few controls and small sample sizes, critics argued that the results were biased. Many studies compared mask-wearing people with mandates to masks to places without them. This made it difficult to determine whether masks were responsible for reducing COVID or other factors.

The sorts of experiments Cochrane canvassed—in which subjects were chosen at random to receive masks—were designed to avoid that problem. They allowed researchers to distinguish the effects of masks from the safety levels of those wearing them, which gave them a better idea of how effective they are.

The Cochrane review is based solely on randomised trials. It is therefore far more rigorous than studies commonly cited in defense to masks.

“Not all evidence is the same,” Vinay Prasad is an epidemiologist at University of California, San Francisco. He wrote in a Substack post About the review. Randomized control trials “are imperative for recommendations that span years, or longer.”

Some schools require masks even though it has been more than two decades since the pandemic. School districts in Massachusetts and New Jersey. Mask mandates reimposed The January epidemic was marked by an increase in respiratory illness. These mandates were created after the CDC. Beware Of a “tridemic” Despite cases of RSV, flu, COVID and flu being the most common, there have been some instances of each of these illnesses. Significantly decreased.

The Cochrane review has not been covered by major media outlets as of the writing of this article. It is a stark contrast to other, pro-mask studies which received glowing coverage in the New York TimesThe Atlantic, and Washington Post.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to comment on the request.