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Kindle Notes & Highlights
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.
Mask wearing “did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of Sars-Cov-2 infection,”
The vast majority of particles in exhaled breath are tiny, smaller than a micron.
In basic terms, masks have almost no chance of catching most of the particles we exhale.
In July, the WHO noted that four studies had showed that “between 0% and 2.2% of people with asymptomatic infection infected anyone else.”
At the present time, the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence and there are potential benefits and harms to consider. [emphasis added]
“there is limited evidence on the significant point of the utility of masks in reducing transmission risk.”
contact tracing studies show many people with Covid do not infect other people, while a small number of people appear to be so-called “super-spreaders.”
Many, many other observational datapoints suggest that mask mandates have made no difference to the spread of Sars-Cov-2. Florida ended statewide mask mandates in late September, for example. But in the two months since, the state has had significantly slower growth in positive tests than the United States as a whole.
In the case of the source control theory for masks, the real-world evidence is somewhere between weak and nonexistent.
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.
