by Arjun Walia December 26, 2021
In Brief
- The Facts:
- Dr. Paul Elias Alexander has put together a list of more than 150 scholarly studies and articles calling into question the safety and efficacy of masks.
- This list includes all types of masks, including N95 masks.
- Reflect On:Why has the mainstream failed to have an appropriate discussion about evidence calling into question mask safety and efficacy? Why has only the evidence suggesting masking can be beneficial been shared by mainstream media?
Pause – set your Pulse…
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A number of renowned doctors and scientists have been sharing evidence calling into question the measures that health authorities have taken to combat COVID. Whether it be catastrophic harms of lockdown measures, vaccine mandates or science that calls into question the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines, both evidence and opinion have been shut down, censored and ridiculed.
Many experts in the field have been subjected to ridicule campaigns as well. The Great Barrington Declaration scientists are a recent example. Another recent example comes from the Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Fiona Godlee, who criticized Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook “Fact Checkers” for censoring and ridiculing a legitimate story about a whistleblower from the Pfizer clinical trials. Facebook alone has censored or put warning labels on nearly 200 million pieces of content pertaining to COVID.
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One of these many experts is Dr. Paul Elias Alexander. He is a former assistant professor at McMaster University in evidence-based medicine and research methods. He’s also a former COVID Pandemic evidence-synthesis consultant advisor to WHO-PAHO Washington, DC (2020) and former senior advisor to COVID Pandemic policy in Health and Human Services (HHS) Washington, DC.
He recently published an article for the Brownstone Institute with a list of more than 150 comparative studies and articles on mask ineffectiveness and harms. Many of these studies also examine the use of N95 masks. You can access the list he put together below.
It’s important to share given the fact that all of this has been ignored, while evidence that supports the mass masking of the population has been beamed out by mainstream media. There are two sides to this coin.
Mask Ineffectiveness
| 1) Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers, Bundgaard, 2021 | “Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%). The between-group difference was −0.3 percentage point (95% CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33). Multiple imputation accounting for loss to follow-up yielded similar results…the recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use.” |
| 2) SARS-CoV-2 Transmission among Marine Recruits during Quarantine, Letizia, 2020 | “Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine. Multiple, independent virus strain transmission clusters were identified…all recruits wore double-layered cloth masks at all times indoors and outdoors.” |
| 3) Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses, Jefferson, 2020 | “There is low certainty evidence from nine trials (3507 participants) that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI) compared to not wearing a mask (risk ratio (RR) 0.99, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82 to 1.18. There is moderate certainty evidence that wearing a mask probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza compared to not wearing a mask (RR 0.91, 95% CI 0.66 to 1.26; 6 trials; 3005 participants)…the pooled results of randomised trials did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks during seasonal influenza.” |
| 4) The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh, Abaluck, 2021 Heneghan et al. | A cluster-randomized trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh from November 2020 to April 2021 (N=600 villages, N=342,126 adults. Heneghan writes: “In a Bangladesh study, surgical masks reduced symptomatic COVID infections by between 0 and 22 percent, while the efficacy of cloth masks led to somewhere between an 11 percent increase to a 21 percent decrease. Hence, based on these randomized studies, adult masks appear to have either no or limited efficacy.” |
| 5) Evidence for Community Cloth Face Masking to Limit the Spread of SARS-CoV-2: A Critical Review, Liu/CATO, 2021 | “The available clinical evidence of face mask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative meta-analyses, eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle.” |
| 6) Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures, CDC/Xiao, 2020 | “Evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza…none of the household studies reported a significant reduction in secondary laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the face mask group…the overall reduction in ILI or laboratory-confirmed influenza cases in the face mask group was not significant in either studies.” |
| 7) CIDRAP: Masks-for-all for COVID-19 not based on sound data, Brosseau, 2020 | “We agree that the data supporting the effectiveness of a cloth mask or face covering are very limited. We do, however, have data from laboratory studies that indicate cloth masks or face coverings offer very low filter collection efficiency for the smaller inhalable particles we believe are largely responsible for transmission, particularly from pre- or asymptomatic individuals who are not coughing or sneezing…though we support mask wearing by the general public, we continue to conclude that cloth masks and face coverings are likely to have limited impact on lowering COVID-19 transmission, because they have minimal ability to prevent the emission of small particles, offer limited personal protection with respect to small particle inhalation, and should not be recommended as a replacement for physical distancing or reducing time in enclosed spaces with many potentially infectious people.” |
| 8) Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era, Klompas/NEJM, 2020 | “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic…The calculus may be different, however, in health care settings. First and foremost, a mask is a core component of the personal protective equipment (PPE) clinicians need when caring for symptomatic patients with respiratory viral infections, in conjunction with gown, gloves, and eye protection…universal masking alone is not a panacea. A mask will not protect providers caring for a patient with active Covid-19 if it’s not accompanied by meticulous hand hygiene, eye protection, gloves, and a gown. A mask alone will not prevent health care workers with early Covid-19 from contaminating their hands and spreading the virus to patients and colleagues. Focusing on universal masking alone may, paradoxically, lead to more transmission of Covid-19 if it diverts attention from implementing more fundamental infection-control measures.” |
| 9) Masks for prevention of viral respiratory infections among health care workers and the public: PEER umbrella systematic review, Dugré, 2020 | “This systematic review found limited evidence that the use of masks might reduce the risk of viral respiratory infections. In the community setting, a possible reduced risk of influenza-like illness was found among mask users. In health care workers, the results show no difference between N95 masks and surgical masks on the risk of confirmed influenza or other confirmed viral respiratory infections, although possible benefits from N95 masks were found for preventing influenza-like illness or other clinical respiratory infections. Surgical masks might be superior to cloth masks but data are limited to 1 trial.” |
| 10) Effectiveness of personal protective measures in reducing pandemic influenza transmission: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Saunders-Hastings, 2017 | “Facemask use provided a non-significant protective effect (OR = 0.53; 95% CI 0.16–1.71; I2 = 48%) against 2009 pandemic influenza infection.” |
