Unreported Truths About Covid-19 and Lockdowns: Part 3: Masks

by Alex Berenson

As protection, masks are largely useless, and mask mandates even more so. But as a symbol that the coronavirus is a serious danger requiring us to give up our rights, they are incredibly effective.

More of us are wearing masks more often than ever before. Yet the virus is spreading faster. How can that be, if masks work?

They concluded with a warning: “The wide variation in penetration levels for room air particles, which included particles in the same size range of viruses, confirms that surgical masks should not be used for respiratory protection [emphasis added].”

The scientists found the surgical masks barely worked. Masks with ties filtered about 70 percent of small particles. Those with ear loops filtered less than 40 percent and often had “visible gaps between the face mask and the wearer.”

The overall evidence is clear: Standard cloth and surgical masks offer next to no protection against virus-sized particles or small aerosols.

And clinical trials consistently find that masks don’t protect people from respiratory viruses.

We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility. [Emphasis added]

The researchers found healthcare workers who wore cloth masks were more likely to develop infections than those who wore surgical masks as well as a third control group who were not required to wear masks at all. The trial did not include N95 respirators,

But the researchers did put both masks and N95s through lab tests to see how easily particles penetrated them. They found that cloth masks stopped only 3 percent of particles, and medical masks stopped just over half. The N95s stopped 99.9 to 99.99 percent of particles.

In basic terms, masks have almost no chance of catching most of the particles we exhale.

Everyone agrees people who are symptomatic with a fever or cough should stay home or wear a mask if they must go out. If only sick people are wearing masks, face coverings may function as a public signal: I don’t feel well, stay away.

The most stunning example of this came from a city-wide screening for Sars-Cov-2 in May in Wuhan, China, where the virus apparently originated. Researchers tried to test everyone in Wuhan. They nearly succeeded, carrying out almost 10 million tests. They found 303 people who tested positive for the virus. All 303 cases were asymptomatic. The scientists then traced 1174 close contacts of those people – and found not one had been infected. “There was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons,” they wrote.

But the worst reason of all is that mask mandates appear to be an effort by governments to find out what restrictions on their civil liberties people will accept on the thinnest possible evidence.