http://web.archive.org/web/20200625094522/https://www.oralhe...
The article is called "Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review", published October 18, 2016.
This is the webpage as of early July 2020: https://www.oralhealthgroup.com/features/face-masks-dont-wor...
"If you are looking for “Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review” by John Hardie, BDS, MSc, PhD, FRCDC, it has been removed. The content was published in 2016 and is no longer relevant in our current climate."
"No longer relevant in our current climate."
This is an entirely separate question from: Do masks provide enough protection against disease transmission to be worth wearing/recommending in public places during a global pandemic, despite their imperfections? The answer to that, from many other studies, seems to be clearly yes. I can imagine that anti-mask folks started using this article as ammunition, due to the catchy headline ("see, this article says face masks don't work!"), and the publishers felt it was doing more harm than good and took it down for that reason.
A randomized trial with surgical masks during Covid-19 will be published soon. Here are some quotes and commentary:
> “All these countries recommending face masks haven’t made their decisions based on new studies,” Bundgaard said in an interview in Copenhagen.
> He says there’s evidence to suggest that the only effective face covering might be a visor, because the virus can spread through all mucous membranes, including via the eyes. He worries a cloth covering that only protects the nose and mouth provides a “false sense of security.”
> Bundgaard says the simple rules that currently exist in Denmark -- hand-washing, social distancing, self-isolating if you’re sick -- are effective because they’re easy to remember. He worries that using face masks might lead people to be “sloppy” in following the other guidelines.
> Bundgaard’s study on masks is due to be published next month. In the meantime, he says he hopes they don’t become mandatory in Denmark.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/face-mask-photo-op-adds...
The intro says "This trial investigates whether the use of face masks in the community will reduce wearers' risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection." (emph. mine) ie. if everyone wears masks, does my risk go down? This seems like the correct question to ask. But then the conclusion says "We will study whether a face mask protects the wearer of the mask against SARS-CoV-2 infection" which is a different question entirely!
If what we have been hearing over the past months is true (masks provide marginal protection for the wearer, but catch a significant portion of aerosol droplets & therefore protect society against the wearer) - I would expect the answer to the first question to be "yes" and the second to be "no"!
After-all there is probably a way to cherry-pick an argument that surgeon without a mask is more accurate therefore safer.
Wearing mask is not a big inconvenience, same as not dropping trash on the street. You just need a person that is not consumed by their self importance.
I swear there will soon be people claiming that not only sun revolves around the earth but it revolves around that single person.
Seems like an easy problem to deal with.
Unless you're being sarcastic (apologies if so, and no mean to offend if not), I take the opposite conclusion though, which seems borne out by reality. Public messaging and for social cohesion in service of the greater good is the hardest problem affecting any large-scale coordinated response, especially with propaganda, doublethink, and flat-out unwillingness to learn being so common. I gather that the article the previous commenter mentioned was removed so that such propagandists couldn't willingly misinterpret it to pass on to their sycophants.
Then the publishers should come out and say so by putting a tagline or disclaimer at the top of the article. Pulling the whole article to "supervise[] conduct and morals" [1] is textbook censorship.
This is also a good article on the subject. The revisionists claim that WHO and the CDC changed their mask recommendations based on new evidence but they never actually cite the studies which presumably were published just before the policy changes. I think that may have something to do with the fact that the recommendations were not evidence based.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577
> Conclusions This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
Cloth masks aren't designed to protect the wearer, rather protect everyone else around them by catching droplets / reducing nasal spray / etc. It only works if everyone 95% of people are wearing one, especially indoors.
That is actually the headline from the article: "Cloth masks do protect the wearer – breathing in less coronavirus means you get less sick"
If this is the only RCT for cloth masks what kind of evidence is behind your claim? Do you have a source?
No one should be wearing cloth masks if surgical masks are available and no one should be wearing surgical masks when N95 or equiv masks are available. This cannot be repeated enough.
Masks clearly work, but not perfectly. Better masks work better. Wear one if you want to reduce your risk and risk to those around you.
We knew this prior to this pandemic.
Governments and doctors should stop being so paternalistic and just tell the truth.
We especially do not know whether cloth masks reduce personal risk.
None of the links given in this overly assertive article show that cloth masks work or that they reduce viral load.
All of these are plausible hypotheses and beliefs, but they are still not backed by high quality data.
However, it is important to note that seat belts from ropes, seat belts from cotton strings, and seat belts from elastic bands offer very little protection when compared to a properly tested and fitted seat belt, and wearing these seat belts may produce a false sense of protection (resulting in no avoidance of speeding or driving too closely to the person in front of you, the best general public guidance we currently have to avoid corporal damage from car crashes).
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/153567601001500...
"The protective efficiencies were 33.3%, 11.3%, and 6.1% for the surgical, bandana, and dust masks, respectively. The N95 mask protective efficiency was 89.6%. In conclusion, the surgical mask protected the best of the three face masks tested. However, it is important to note that all three masks offer very little protection when compared to the N95, and wearing these face masks may produce a false sense of protection."