Will Any Lessons Be Learned?
So it's finally happened.
From the heart of the mainstream liberal media - NY Times, and the heart of the academic community - Oxford University - comes an article and a study that concludes unambiguously -
There is zero evidence that wearing masks in public or the mask mandates had any effect in preventing transmission of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19.
The article in the times was written by Bret Stephens - a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
It is based on a study conducted by 12 scientists, led by Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist from oxford.
Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered reliable and accepted as a high standard for its reviews of healthcare data.
Based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.
From the article:
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?
“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?
“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”
What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration?
“There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.”
It is also very critical of Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who keeps insisting on the false guidelines, especially the ones in schools.
Also from the article:
“But the costs go deeper. When people say they “trust the science,” what they presumably mean is that science is rational, empirical, rigorous, receptive to new information, sensitive to competing concerns and risks. Also: humble, transparent, open to criticism, honest about what it doesn’t know, willing to admit error”.
“...But when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right.”
“…The C.D.C.’s increasingly mindless adherence to its masking guidance is none of those things. It isn’t merely undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution. It is turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science…”
the people who had the courage to say as much deserved to be listened to, not treated with contempt. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.”
This very important article concludes:
“There’s a final lesson. The last justification for masks is that, even if they proved to be ineffective, they seemed like a relatively low-cost, intuitively effective way of doing something against the virus in the early days of the pandemic. But “do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy, And the people who had the courage to say as much deserved to be listened to, not treated with contempt. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.”
—
This adds up to countless evidence on these unnecessary and harmful masks, causing nothing but damage.
In late 2021, a lawyer in Israel, part of the “Pecc” - 'Gadi Shilo' petitioned to the Israeli Ministry of health on the necessity of masks in the public in preventing transmission of respiratory illnesses.
The answer he got from the Ministry of health was that there was no evidence that they prevent transmission, no study that indicates that, and that they are mostly for “educational and psychological: purposes”:
Israeli ministry of health's official answer
Take a look at this hell for children (A sick pilot program for kids in Israel):
A pilot called "a child capsule" - in Israel during Covid19
Israeli politicians exempting themselves while first graders sit with masks during school hours
This is how the world looked
and of course - the pollution it created
It was never ever about science.
Only control!