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The Lockean Project

Masks don’t work

“Masks don’t work”, Carmel Pine Cone – Sept. 3, 2021

I note with concern the Monterey County Board of Supervisors’ recent proposal to reinstitute an indoor mask mandate despite no such recommendation from the county health officer.

I am a Monterey County physician board-certified in laboratory medicine, which includes the sub-specialties of microbiology and immunology, and in the early days of the Covid pandemic, I pointed out the ample peer-reviewed scientific studies documenting the ineffectiveness of masks at preventing the spread of respiratory illnesses. Despite this, state, county and municipal orders were implemented.

In 2017 and 2019 respectively, CDC and WHO reviewed the world’s scientific data on non-pharmaceutical interventions for pandemic respiratory viruses and concluded masks are ineffective at preventing the spread of respiratory illness among healthy people. Mask proponents pointed out that those studies examined principally influenza, not SARS Cov-2, so those data were not relevant, conveniently ignoring that both viruses are spread as passengers on the exact same droplets and aerosols.  Multiple subsequent studies though have thoroughly documented the ineffectiveness of masks for preventing the spread of Covid as well.

In a personal communication just this week, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine at Stanford, told me “there are no randomized studies demonstrating the efficacy of masks in protecting either the mask wearer or others.” Last October, Dr. Bhattacharya also co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration calling for an end to both mask man-dates and lockdowns. Imperial College London professor David Nabarro, World Health Organization special envoy on Covid-19, has done the same.

I find our supervisors’ intentions puzzling. What information or knowledge do they have that so many esteemed medical researchers from so many prestigious universities do not?

Masks have no documented benefit but ample documented personal and economic adverse outcomes. There is no scientific justification for implementing another mask order, and the idea should be shelved.

Hugh Wilson, M.D., Monterey