The Pointless Drive To Make Masks Great Again, by Brian McGlinchey

Nobody has been able to document that masks stop or slow the spread of Covid-19, and why would they? The meshes on mask range from 100 to 1000 times larger than the virus, thus the well known line that they’re like a chain link fence stopping a mosquito. From Brian McGlinchey at starkrealities.substack.com:

Governments keep forcing masks despite indications they’ve done little to slow Covid’s spread

Just when the forces of rationality had seemingly established a beachhead in the public health domain, they’re back on defense again, as the CDC declares vaccinated and unvaccinated people should wear masks indoors in areas of the country experiencing high transmission, and every schoolchild should be condemned to wear a mask all day long.

The moves, which come in response to surging case counts, seem to demonstrate an impulse that animates many questionable government policies: “We have to do something,” regardless of whether that something can be reasonably expected to have a material impact on the problem at hand.

Ample Reason to Doubt Masks’ Value

Most public and media discussion of mask policy reflects a foundational assumption that may well be false—namely, that widespread, all-purpose mask-wearing has had any meaningful impact on slowing the spread.

Intuition tells us covering our faces must be worthwhile. After all, if the virus is emitted from our noses and mouths, covering those openings has to make a big difference, right?

That gut feeling misleads us, though, because we tend to only think of the virus in terms of visible, tangible droplets masks can absorb. Indeed, the initial scientific consensus held that Covid-19 was exclusively transmitted by droplets, prompting the emphasis on distancing six feet from each other—room enough for gravity to pull those droplets out of the air.

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