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Opinion

Wear a mask if you want – but understand it’s about fear and control, NOT health… the clamour for their return is a triumph of unreason and a blow to science – Peter Hitchens, The Daily Mail

Let’s begin with the evidence, and the mighty and revered World Health Organization (WHO). As the great Covid fear was getting into its stride, on March 31, 2020, the executive director of the WHO health emergencies programme, Mike Ryan, spoke on the issue.

He said at a briefing in Geneva: ‘There is no specific evidence to suggest the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there’s evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly.’

https://archive.today/2023.01.05-005514/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11599987/PETER-HITCHENS-Wear-mask-want-understand-fear-control-NOT-health.html

Categories
Opinion

Landmark Danish study finds no significant effect for facemask wearers – Prof Carl Heneghan & Dr Tom Jefferson, The Spectator

In the end, there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19. 1.8 per cent of those wearing masks caught Covid, compared to 2.1 per cent of the control group. As a result, it seems that any effect masks have on preventing the spread of the disease in the community is small.

…there is a troubling lack of robust evidence on face masks and Covid-19…The only studies which have shown masks to be effective at stopping airborne diseases have been ‘observational’…But observational studies are prone to recall bias: in the heat of a pandemic, not very many people will recall if and when they used masks and at what distance they kept from others.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201119080242/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/do-masks-stop-the-spread-of-covid-19-