Case Closed: Masks STILL Don't Work

(This is an updated repost of an article from February 2023, as we thought the reader might need a reminder now in light of current events involving mask zealots, so far only in select pockets.  The calendar says 2024, but these zealots make us feel like we are in a 2020-2021 time warp or something!)

We will say it louder, for the people in the back.

A major new gold standard Cochrane review study (in January 2023) has come to a conclusion that only the utterly brainwashed would consider at all shocking at this point:  Masks don't really work to stop the spread of respiratory viruses.  Never did, and never will.  Not even the vaunted N95.  Handwashing is likely modestly effective, but masks are basically a joke overall, and not a very funny one either.

This concurs with over a century of research that came out overwhelmingly in support of the anti-mask side of the debate.  In fact, by 1919 it was practically settled science that these devices aren't anywhere near what they were cracked up to be, a consensus which prevailed until March 2020.  Then the pandemic narrative took over and turned the science upside down for nearly three years straight, while any studies were to the contrary were systematically file-drawered for far longer than those supporting the narrative.  In fact, the original version of the 2023 Cochrane review was actually written in the spring of 2020, and came to the same conclusion, but was ignored.  And now the entire pandemic narrative has collapsed faster than formerly healthy young athletes on the field after being jabbed.

We recently noted how the ever-insightful Ian Miller has so thoroughly debunked, deboned, sliced, diced, and julienned the pro-mask arguments, and laid waste to their utterly scorched remains for good.  And be sure check out the excellent Fargo study from Josh Stevenson et al. about masks for kids as well, likely the very best one yet, with the very least biases or confounding.  Spoiler alert:  masks STILL don't work.  Not for kids, not for adults, not for no one.

Oh, and let's not forget the dreaded Foegen Effect as well.  And other harms as well, see here.  That literally makes masks WORSE than useless.  Jettison them!

To the anti-mask side:  you are now hereby overwhelmingly vindicated, and really always have been in fact.  You have literally passed the biggest functional IQ test in all of modern history.  To the pro-mask side:  we are still waiting for you to apologize.  Yesterday.  And to those who switched jerseys anytime after February 2022 (that is, only when it became socially acceptable to do so), you are fooling no one.

QED

UPDATE:  Some may pedantically point out that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", therefore "no one can really say" that masks don't work.  True, you cannot (definitively) prove a negative.  But given the totality of the research and real-world evidence, it would be slothful induction (if not magical thinking as well) to still believe that masks have any sort of net benefit at all. If they did have a net benefit, it would have been self-evident long ago.  We need to see the forest for the trees.

"But...but...they worked in Japan!" See here for a good debunking of that myth as well.

And in case the pro-masker zealots pathetically trot out the fatally flawed Boston school mask study in desperation, rest assured that Ian Miller has successfully laid waste to that one as well.  And so has the ever-insightful Emily Burns, as well as Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, one of the authors of the Fargo study. 

Oh, and another study found that masks in HOSPITALS make no difference to infection rates.  Thus, if they don't even work in hospitals with all of their universal multilayered precautionary measures, they simply don't work at all, period.

In any case, regardless of whatever utilitarian arguments one likes to use, it was never actually ethical to force masks on anyone against their will, period, even if there had turned out to be some sort of a modest but significant collective benefit (which there wasn't).  Only a full-blown Machiavellian or a public health technocrat (same difference) could argue otherwise. 

UPDATE 2:  A re-analysis of the infamous Boston mask study has now thoroughly debunked it.

UPDATE 3:  For more on the harms of masks, see here.

UPDATE 4:  And another school masking study can be found here as well, co-authored by the aforementioned Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg.  Again, surprise surprise, masks STILL don't work.  Period. 

UPDATE 5:  And that's before we get into the toxins that can be emitted from some types of masks, including the vaunted N95.

UPDATE 6:  Pushback works.  Contrary to Carl Jung's famous saying, what you resist does NOT persist, as long as you resist enough.  DO NOT COMPLY!

UPDATE 7:  Looks like masks are even more harmful than we thought, especially for children. 

UPDATE 8:  Looks like masks most likely INCREASE the risk of infection.  Oops!  Maybe the "public health" establishment should have actually thought that one through before forcing them on We the People. 

UPDATE 9:  Looks like St. Louis reversed their mask mandate for city employees within a matter of HOURS.  Again, pushback works.  What you resist does NOT persist.  (Apologies to Carl Jung.)

UPDATE 10:  Again, even more evidence that masks are worse than useless.  Especially for children. 

And finally, see here about the ultimate success of one of the most anti-mask (and anti-lockdown) countries in the world, Sweden.  As a result, we think "Stockholm Syndrome" should really be called "Melbourne Syndrome", because #SwedenGotItRight.

(Mic drop)