There’s also no reason that hearing there is “no evidence” for something requires you to adopt the silliest possible assumption for whether it’s actually true, but doctors seem to like doing this anyway.
(The actual answer for whether masks are “effective against covid” is “which covid?” - cause it’s different for 2020 covid and Omicron.)
Studies show that surgical masks are only marginally effective at their goal of reducing transmission, and then only if they are worn properly. Of course, one can rely upon medical staff for that. Not so much the general population.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...
It's just one source, but I'm genuinely curious.
Trillions of dollars were pumped into propaganda and research in 2020. It takes years to go through, receive grants, construct experiments, get approvals, analyze and validate. We are only now starting to see initial results for new masking studies. They still need to be replicated, etc.
Here’s an example of a large scale study from 2015 where cloth masks increase risk of illness (over nothing):
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/
Here’s a 2021 study showing masks aren’t really good as well (a randomized control trial) https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
My general point isn’t the specifics, it’s that the jury is out.
All studies done at scale, in peer reviewed journals before and since the pandemic have shown that not to be the case. N95s work, if used properly, that’s it.
If you work / have worked with people in biosafety labs they’ll tell you. What we did during the pandemic was effectively role play. Cloth masks, surgical masks, kN95s, all do approximately nothing. Only thing you could maybe argue is people avoided each other a bit more and spit didn’t travel… but the virus was airborne and that was considered highly likely even in Jan 2020.
Fauci’s FOIA requested private emails cover a lot of this; as does many many of the top epidemiologist (who were censored).
*Addendum*: It’s the same with the companies, CDC and FDA who suppressed ivermectin research
https://twitter.com/rwmalonemd/status/1607710183022628864
IMO the real reason they claimed “masks didn’t work”, “alternative drugs don’t work”, etc is because they needed the EUA. The companies producing the vaccines lobbied to get everything else suppressed so they could role out mRNA tech. That tech will allow them to offer pretty much any genetic therapy. Government had every incentive as well, more centralization and no liability. Pushing alternatives would pose more risks, with no upside.
Imo this was inevitable. It was only preventable with an open market of ideas, which Twitter, Facebook and others suppressed.