Masks Don't Work
Curves of the corona virus spread in different countries and states, before and after mask mandates and other measures. The mask mandate has no effect on any curve.
The Philippines, corona curve after mask mandate
The Philippines have the highest mask compliance in the world, according to the NYT, at 94% on June 1st, 2020. Cases have gone up 612% since then.
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| Chile, corona curve after mask mandate, a country so strict that the president was fined $3,500 for not wearing a mask in a beach photo |
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| South Korea, corona curve after mask mandate, 99% mask compliance reported by authorities |
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| India, corona curve after mask mandate, punishable by up to six months in prison, corona "consuming" India until people started wearing masks, according to the WSJ |
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| Turkey, corona curve after mask mandate, enforced by cameras |
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| Canada, corona curve after mask mandate |
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| Ontario, Canada, corona curve after mask mandate |
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| Germany, corona curve after mask mandate, and after medical mask mandate |
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| France, corona curve after mask mandate |
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| Japan, corona curve after mask mandate, with 98% compliance |
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| Denmark, corona curve after mask mandate |
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| Czechia, corona curve after mask mandate, 80 percent mask use, vs Sweden, 2 percent mask use |
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| Czechia, corona curve after mask mandate, 80 percent mask use, vs Norway, 5 percent mask use |
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| Czechia, corona curve after mask mandate, 80 percent mask use, vs Finland, 42 percent mask use |
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| Arizona, corona curve after mask mandate |
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| Arizona, corona curve after stay-at-home order, mask mandate and other measures |
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| Kansas, corona curve after mask mandate, and after mandate lifted |
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| California and Florida (orange), corona curves after mask mandate and other measures in California, but not in Florida |
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| Los Angeles, corona curve after mask mandate |
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| Pennsylvania and Delaware, corona curves after mask mandate |
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| Maine, corona curve after mask mandate, 96% mask compliance |
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| Michigan, corona curve after mask mandate |
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| Montana, corona curve after mask mandate, and after mandate lifted |
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| New Jersey, corona curve after mask mandate, compared to Texas with mandate lifted
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| Corona curves in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin |
Dr. Ted Noel's Mask Experiment
Dr. Ted Noel, MD, trying different kinds of masks while using a vapor, which releases aerosol particles the same size or bigger than those that spread the COVID-19 virus.
The particles easily go through each mask. The only droplets that will be stopped are the big ones that otherwise easily fall to the ground. A mask will instead break them up into finer drops, which spread easier through the air.
Denmark's Record-Large Study of Mask Use
In a Danish study with 6,000 participants, half were asked to wear masks outside the home. Roughly 4,860 participants completed the study. Of those in the mask group, 42 participants, or 1.8%, contracted COVID-19. In the unmasked group the number was 53 people, or 2.1%. A statistically insignificant difference.
The results of the Danish study undermine the assertion from public health officials that wearing a surgical mask can protect individuals from COVID-19 infection, but that’s unlikely to end the mask debate, which has become one of the most vitriolic issues in America today.
The Danish study, the largest of its kind, was refused by three leading science journals because its findings were "controversial". In other words, the result didn't align with the media agenda.
This brings to mind a study the Center for Disease Control used to cite, before they reversed their position on masks. A meta study of fourteen randomized trials showed that wearing a mask had no substantial effect on the transmission of influenza.
Wearing a used mask can be worse than not wearing one at all, according to another study from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and California Baptist University.
Masks can stop droplets larger than five micromillimeters, but corona spreads not just through droplets but through fine aerosolized particles, as small as 70-90 nanomillimeters.
Medical masks are used by surgeons to prevent spit from ending up in a patient's wounds. If a mask gets wet from the breathed air, the surgeon will change the mask immediately. These masks were not meant for ordinary people walking around for hours, with the masks wet from saliva. Wearers touch them with their fingers, and pull them down against the skin under the chin, then put them back on.
A typical scene: A woman on a train wears a mask when no one else does. The kind of person who will proudly tell people at work how she is doing her part. When she sits down she pulls down the mask to her chin, and starts eating a salad bowl she bought at the station. Apparently masks are important, but not so important that she could stop eating for ninety minutes.
Face Screens - The Plastic a Virus Likes to Stick to
When masks are debated, the defenders of compulsory mask use always leave out plastic face screens. To defend the use of these would be to go a step too far, and they know it.
Yes, a screen reduces the spread of a cough or a sneeze. That's it. A person's breath spreads like a cloud, not like a beam.
A new study
published in Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, used visualizations
to examine and illustrate how effective plastic face shields are at
reducing the spread of COVID-19.
They found that while face
shields did block the initial forward motion of a simulated cough or a
sneeze, the expelled droplets were still able to move around the visor
and spread out over a large area in an environment.
Henningsen also pointed to another study that was done following an outbreak of COVID-19 in Switzerland. In this study, none of the people wearing masks tested positive for the virus. Several of the people wearing only face shields, however, did test positive.
But contradicting those in power is risky, so researchers always add that "it is best to wear face shields in combination with face masks". This is a cover, so they can't be said to have opposed face screens.
Face screens are a typical "do something" action. Hand them out to the old who won't wear masks since it's dangerous for their health to reduce oxygen supply. And hand them out to home services, who want to work without being out of breath. Then the bureaucrats can at least show that they did something. A woman cutting hair will not want to wear a face mask all day, reducing oxygen and making her work less accurate. But putting a screen in front of her face shows that she does something.
Would a screen stop cigarette smoke from entering her lungs? Of course not. It doesn't stop the breath of people around her, whether the breath smells of tobacco or not.
A study from a team led by Dr. Ecthernach, head of phoniatrics and paedatric audiology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Hospital in Hamburg, along with Stefan Kniesburges, a fluid mechanics expert at the University Hospital in Erlangen, also notes how easily the aerosols move around a face screen:
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In some countries, including the UK, governments have issued official advice that visors be worn by staff who work in close contact with members of the public, such as hairdressers, barbers, beauticians, tattoo artists and studio photographers. People who are testifying in court, giving lectures or performing in public are also recommended to wear face shields by some US states. Similar advice is offered by the government in Singapore while some states in Australia say face shields can be worn instead of face masks in public.
“Nearly all of the aerosols were coming around the side of the face shield and reached nearly the same distances as without wearing anything,” says Echternach. These results are still to be published, but Echternach says they should serve as a warning for anyone relying on face shields alone to keep them safe as pandemic lockdowns are eased.
“They are certainly not effective when you are in close contact with someone,” he says.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears to agree with him – it does not recommend face shields for normal everyday activities or as a substitute for masks. The Swiss health authorities have also warned against using face visors instead of masks after an investigation into an outbreak of Covid-19 at a hotel in the canton of Graubünden revealed all those who were infected had been wearing plastic face shields, while those who avoided infection were in masks.
Inconveniencing people, fogging their view, making them tired, these factors are never included in tests. But these are factors that affect people in everyday life, ruining people's mood and causing mistakes.
But there is another complication. As Echternach’s tests with the
singers showed, the fine mist that is released as we talk, sing or cough
doesn’t just disappear once it reaches a metre or so away. While the
larger droplets will fall quickly to the ground or other surfaces, the
microdroplets we produce can remain suspended in the air for several minutes, and in some cases hours in very still conditions. In well-ventilated rooms, or those with disturbed air, the time they remain airborne is thought to be much lower.
"While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs."There are even some reports that droplets contaminated with coronavirus can spread through the ventilation systems of buildings – swabs of air exhaust outlets at a hospital in Singapore treating Covid-19 patients tested positive for the virus.
With virus-laden aerosol drifting around a room, these can then
easily creep in the large openings at the side of plastic visors. The
tests by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
showed the aerosols dispersed throughout the room in the 30 minutes
after a cough. In this situation the face shield reduced inhalation of the virus-filled aerosol by just 23%.
From Dr. Esper at Cleveland Clinic:
As mentioned earlier, masks absorb droplets when we sneeze or cough. Face shields don’t. Dr. Esper stresses that should you decide to wear a face shield, you’ll need to sanitize it frequently.
“We know this virus likes to live on plastic a lot better than it likes to live on porous materials like cloth, paper or cardboard,” he says. “So again, clean your face shield once you take it off. You can sterilize it with an antibacterial wipe, alcohol pad or soap and water.”
Lockdowns Don't Work Either
This sounds counter-intuitive - shouldn't isolation work? Now we have the results. Seven peer-reviewed studies say no. While more severe isolation than ordinary caution may have some benefits, they aren't significant. Here some quotes from the studies, from nations across the world.
"Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality."
"Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate."
"Previous studies have claimed that shelter-in-place orders saved thousands of lives, but we reassess these analyses and show that they are not reliable. We find that shelter-in-place orders had no detectable health benefits, only modest effects on behaviour, and small but adverse effects on the economy."
"We were not able to explain the variation of deaths per million in different regions in the world by social isolation, herein analysed as differences in staying at home, compared to baseline. In the restrictive and global comparisons, only 3% and 1.6% of the comparisons were significantly different, respectively."
"Full lockdowns and wide-spread COVID-19 testing were not associated with reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality."
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