With research showing not only that masks don’t protect you but may actually make you sick, the rationale behind their widespread mandated usage must be questioned.
Using CDC data, no significant differences were found in Covid-19 case growth between states with or without mask mandates, during periods of low or high transmission.
The widespread use of masks did not reduce Covid-19 transmission in Europe, and a moderate positive correlation was found between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe.
An update to a CDC study on school mask mandates, using nearly six times more data, found no significant relationship between mask mandates in US schools and Covid-19 case rates.
In Kansas, counties with a mask mandate had significantly higher Covid-19 case fatality rates than counties without a mask mandate.
One way masks cause harm may be the “Foegen effect” — the idea that deep re-inhalation of droplets and virions caught on facemasks might make Covid-19 infection more likely or more severe.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, 80% of US states mandated masks to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but accumulating research shows mask mandates and use do not lower the spread of the virus.1 While rules requiring masks did increase compliance, they didn’t translate to lower transmission growth rates, whether community spread of SARS-CoV-2 was low or high.
Even before Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, mask mandates were put in place without ever properly evaluating the efficacy, but that didn’t stop them from dividing communities and being used as a form of virtue signalling and a visible reminder of compliance with the “new normal.”
Now, with research showing not only that masks don’t protect you but may actually make you sick, the rationale behind their widespread mandated usage must be questioned.
Using CDC data, researchers with the University of Louisville calculated total Covid-19 case growth and mask use for the US. No significant differences were found in case growth between mandate and non-mandate states during periods of low or high transmission.
“Surges were equivocal,” they noted, concluding, “Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level Covid-19 spread during Covid-19 growth surges.”2 While stating that their findings “do not support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates decrease with greater public mask use,” they did note that “masks may promote social cohesion as rallying symbols during a pandemic.”3
Similarly dismal results from mask mandates were demonstrated in Europe. A study published in Cureus analysed data from 35 European countries, including morbidity, mortality and mask usage, over a six-month period. The researchers noted:4
“Mask mandates were implemented in almost all world countries and in most places where masks were not obligatory, their use in public spaces was recommended … These mandates and recommendations took place despite the fact that most randomised controlled trials carried out before and during the Covid-19 pandemic concluded that the role of masks in preventing respiratory viral transmission was small, null, or inconclusive.”
When the data were analysed, the study also revealed that the widespread use of masks did not reduce Covid-19 transmission. Worse, a moderate positive correlation was found between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe, which “suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences.”5
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