Stick A Fork In It: Masks
Stick A Fork In It: Masks
TL;DR - Their utility is limited, they never stopped covid, and they're intoxicating
With covid being aerosolized and asymptomatic spread being negligible, the argument for mask mandates rests on thin ice. To be clear, masks can be useful for sick individuals to contain droplets emitted from coughs, but that’s a one-way street preventing the sick from infecting the healthy, and the sick can still protect others by taking personal responsibility – as they have always done – by coughing into their arm, staying home, washing their hands, and treating their symptoms. High-quality, properly fitted masks have their uses in specific settings for short intervals, but their long-term use at the population level is highly problematic.
The hygiene hypothesis reminds us that extended withdrawal from the microbial world and natural environment can be harmful. Fresh air is crucial to our immune system development, and fresh faces are crucial to the human experience. On December 15, 2022, Dr. Moore re-discovered this formerly common knowledge, stating, “we are obviously seeing that there are some negative consequences to not being exposed to the normal respiratory pathogens over time.” This, it would seem, was an understatement.
“The bottom line is there is no solid scientific evidence to support cloth face masks. Unless they’re medical-grade, they will do no more than catch large expectorated secretions from people who should be staying home if they’re hacking and coughing.”
– Dr. David Colby, Former Medical Officer of Health for Chatham-Kent. August 6, 2020.
At present, there are hundreds of studies documenting the ineffectiveness and harms of widespread mask use. Socially, masks plainly prohibit facial expression, which as the still-face experiment of 1978 long ago proved, facial cues are crucial for emotional development. Drawing attention to the potential disadvantages of masks, SickKids Hospital acknowledged in July 2020 that, “facial expression is a critical part of communication,” and that masks may “adversely impact education and interaction, particularly non-verbal communication skills.” As it relates to healthcare, the 2006 Ontario’s SARS Commission report explained that N95 respirator masks “restricted human interaction (an important part of patient care).” In that same report, the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) and Ontario Public Service Employee Union (OPSEU) described some of the physical drawbacks of N95 respirators. They told the Commission that health workers experienced a slew of issues from prolonged usage, such as throat irritation, headaches, upper chest tightness, dizziness, oxygen deprivation, and increased carbon dioxide intake. As for regular surgical masks, the Commission itself wrote, “studies have shown that surgical masks, because of their inability to create a tight seal, are less effective against smaller droplets and droplet nuclei than N95 respirators. Even wearing as many as five surgical masks does not raise their ability to filter out smaller airborne particles.”
Making matters worse, masks themselves are not assured to be sanitary. For example, in December 2020, 31.1 million masks distributed to 15,000 daycares in Quebec failed their safety checks, but only after they had been worn for months. Shortly thereafter, in March 2021, the province recalled another set of masks, this time because they were coated in graphene oxide – a toxic substance linked to lung disease and cancer. Those masks were also distributed to millions by the government and worn by unsuspecting adults and children. And even if masks were sanitary to begin with, proper hygiene practices must be used to avoid contamination. As it is, the inside of a mask is a warm, moist environment conducive to bacterial growth. It can get saturated in as little as 15 to 20 minutes. Just imagine the damage that can be done over 15 to 20 months of persistent, improper use.
This drawback has long been understood by trained professionals as a legitimate health risk, but if further confirmation were necessary, in June 2021, a lab analysis of children’s masks after a day of school discovered that they were contaminated with bacteria, parasites, and fungi, including some with dangerous pathogenic and pneumonia-causing bacteria. Regrettably, health officials wholly ignored these well-known costs during covid, discounting the value of fresh air and smiling faces to zero.
“The trouble with ordinary surgical masks are you lick them and you stick your nose in them and they have big holes in the outside part and so forth. Let’s face it, they’re a joke.”
– Testimony to SARS Commission by unnamed Toronto physician that treated SARS patients. December 2006.
In preventing the transmission of covid, the real-world benefits of universal masking have proven trivial. The two most cited randomized control trials (RCT) – the highest quality form of scientific evidence – indicated that masking had a marginal impact at best. First, the DANMASK trial from March 2021 showed masks had virtually zero effect in preventing individuals from catching covid when worn in public. The trial was criticized because it evaluated masking at a personal level, not community level. However, another RCT, the Bangladesh mask study from December 2021, showed that, with very few exceptions, masks had little to no effect on the community spread of covid. More recently, in January 2023, a massive study by the Cochrane Review consolidated data from multiple RCT’s and, once again, the results “did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.” To quote the study’s authors, “wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like or COVID‐19-like illness transmission.” Poetically, they also added, “We failed to follow an evidence-based approach during the pandemic. We are now left with the human, social and economic aftermath of evidence-free policies.”
None of this should come as a surprise to the ONA, which has long known that the utility of masking is limited. In 2015, the ONA actively fought against mandatory masking when roughly 30 hospitals in Ontario attempted to implement a ‘mask or vaccinate’ policy for the seasonal flu. They decried the hospitals for “coercing and shaming nurses into getting the influenza vaccine if they individually chose not to take it.” The ONA also fought the policy on the grounds that “they are outing you, because your personal health information – whether you get vaccinated or not – is now public knowledge.” Their case relied on experts who testified on the logical inconsistency of having healthy nurses wear masks, and the arbitrator agreed, concluding that masks were not protecting patients or nurses, and that the policy was unreasonable because it was coercive. The ONA president at the time said the policy was “symbolic rather than scientifically based,” and amounted to a “draconian shaking of finger at nurses.” Similarly, in December 2019, the British Columbia Nurses Union (BCNU) celebrated a new agreement with the province’s Health Employers Association, which the BCNU president said ensured “the professional judgment of nurses is respected,” by ending the “punitive nature” of their ‘mask or vaccinate’ policy. Reading these statements, irony abounds, as yesterday’s defenders of workers’ rights sound an awful lot like today’s so-called “misinformation spreaders.”
Considering that the ‘experts’ did an about-face on face coverings and that industry associations across the country failed to fight for members’ rights to bodily autonomy and medical privacy, is it really any wonder why mask mandates were vociferously challenged over the last few years? In the right place, for the right reason, for a limited time, and worn by the right person, a mask might make sense. As a blanket measure for the public – they are suffocating. The futility of universal masking should have been acknowledged long ago, if only logically inconsistent ‘experts’ hadn’t duped themselves into believing their own masquerade, becoming unironically intoxicated by it.
“Little evidence exists as to how effectively the wearing of a mask by well individuals will prevent them from becoming infected… If not used properly, masks may lead to a greater risk of pandemic influenza transmission because of contamination… wearing them for prolonged periods may be impractical and ineffective. It is important to present the limitations of mask use to the public.”
This post is part of an article called Stick A Fork In It: The Barbecue Rebellion & The Rude Awakening, which is available in its entirety on my Substack:
