Mask Research & Pandemic Planning were Clear: Masks do not Work, Impose No Mask Mandates
Yet, public health officials lied, ignored their own planning documents, and censored those who told the truth.
#WearAFuckingMask
At the outset of covid while Sarah Saves Receipts (SSR) was busy making extra runs to Costco to amass a secret stash of toilet paper before the shelves were bare, my spouse was hard at work sewing masks for people in our neighborhood who did not have any. She was covering our faces. I was covering our butts.
However, after only brief observation of those homemade masks in action -- as well as the surgical masks we were all soon wearing – SSR began to suspect that the toilet paper was far more efficacious at its job, then any mask ever was at its.
Yet, our public health firmament -- right up the chain to Dr. Fauci -- argued with unflinching certainty that masks worked and as such they enacted and enforced mask mandates with admonitions to “follow the science”. Along with mainstream media, these officials worked to censor, cancel and whip the public into a mob-like mentality against anyone who dared question this orthodoxy.
Given how strident officials were about the efficacy of masks and mandates, SSR assumed there must be plentiful research backing up their claims.
To our surprise, after about an afternoon of search, we discovered that the scientific research on masks clearly stated the exact opposite: masks do not work. Moreover, because masks do not work, our pandemic planning documents recommended against mask mandates.
Receipts are forthcoming.
When SSR refers to our “public health firmament”, we are referring to public health officials at all levels and academics in related fields whose purpose is to guide us through events such as pandemics. We are referring to professionals who collectively spent untold millions in public funds, if not billions, creating plans of best practices to respond to events such as covid, and who then ignored them.
However, SSR is not referring to hard working doctors, nurses, paramedics, or anyone involved in the delivery of medicine and health care. SSR believes they were deceived along with the rest of us. It’s not their job to dig up the research. They have a day job.
However, SSR did go digging.
For the record, SSR is not arguing you should not wear a mask if you choose to voluntarily. In fact, please mask. Heck, double mask. And you know what, cover both those suckers with a face shield! You could even put a surgical mask on top of an N95! You do you! Trust us, the last thing SSR would ever think of doing is telling someone what to wear.
However, we are arguing the public would have liked our public health officials to have shared the information we show below and have been honest about the science.
Let’s go to the receipts.
What did Government Planning Documents Say about Masks and Masking?
Our first receipts come from historical government pandemic planning documents.
SSR directs you to this 2006 United States Homeland Security Council, National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation. This pandemic preparedness document states in plain English that no research exists indicating that masks work. Why were we not told this? Even more critical, the document says mask use in public should not be required. It’s quite straight forward.
From the document:
“The benefit of wearing disposable surgical or procedure masks at school or in the workplace has not been established… Routine mask use in public should be permitted, but not required.”
This and related plans are available here:
Center for Disease Control & Prevention: National Pandemic Influenza Plans
Next, the United Kingdom echoes our country’s recommendations in their own 2011 U.K. pandemic preparedness document. Our far more tactful British cousins let the public down gently regarding the erroneous perception, that as much as one might hope, no evidence exists that masks do work.
From the document:
“Although there is a perception that wearing facemasks by the public in the community and household setting may be beneficial, there is in fact very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use in this setting.”
These United Kingdom documents can be found here:
GOV.UK: Responding to a UK flu pandemic
These above U.S. and U.K. planning documents also seem to reflect live discussion in the public health community. Consider this YouTube video from a 2009 conference of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. This panel is entitled The Role of Disease Containment in Control of Epidemics. See the speaker, a well-known infectious disease scientist, D.A. Henderson, at time 1:25:40, though hopefully the link brings you directly to the correct spot.
“In Asia it is very common to put on face masks… which is something we could do. But we chose not to recommend face masks… the feeling is they wouldn’t make much difference.”
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: Role of Disease Containment in…Epidemics
The above YouTube video comes from the following X (twitter) thread that more broadly dissects that panel:
X thread by @snorman1776: Role of Disease Containment in Control of Epidemics
Note: shortly after SSR posted this Substack, The Free Press printed this piece on the scientist who appears in the YouTube video above. Also written by Joe Nocera, it provides more color on D.A. Henderson and his warnings against extreme measures during a pandemic.
What about Academic Research?
This 2006 meta study from the journal of Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, (my bible, by the way), co-written by four scientists, including D.A. Henderson, advises that patients wear masks in clinical settings (a recommendation SSR sees often), but as regards for community use:
“But studies have shown that the ordinary surgical mask does little to prevent inhalation of small droplets bearing influenza virus. The pores in the mask become blocked by moisture from breathing, and the air stream simply diverts around the mask.”
These examples thus far are all pre-pandemic. However, more recently, in 2023, an updated “Cochrane Review” of mask research reviewed 78 historical mask studies and concluded:
“…wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness…”
A Cochrane Review is considered to be about the best available in terms of meta studies. A snippet of the study is posted below. A link to the study can be found here:
Cochrane Library: Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses
Justin Hart of the Substack Rational Ground posted on this Cochrane meta study and helpfully created this more readable graphic that pulls key findings from a range of the studies included in the review (yellow highlights by SSR). I have posted the graphic below, but you can read what Mr. Hart says in more detail and view a better image of this graphic:
Justin Hart, Rational Ground: 78 Studies Show: Very Little Evidence that Masking Works
SSR will return to the case of the Cochrane Review in follow up posts because it did create uproar among mask believers. These are the same people that insist on all of us following the science. Why don’t they?
Next, on to the case of Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Osterholm was appointed by Joe Biden to the president’s COVID Advisory Board. After Dr. Fauci, he is arguably one of the most cited and credentialed in the U.S. infectious disease policy community.
Before citing Dr. Osterholm’s views on masks, SSR wants to establish his bona fides as being “all in” on non-pharmaceutical interventions. To that end, in November of 2020, he recommended the country begin a new and much stricter lockdown, far stricter than anything implemented at that time. This new proposed lockdown would be on par with those implemented in China early in pandemic.
CNBC: Biden Covid advisor says U.S. lockdown of 4 to 6 weeks could control pandemic and revive economy
SSR believes strongly that Dr. Osterholm’s post-community spread lockdown proposal was incompatible with anything recommended in U.S. pre-pandemic planning and would have inflicted harms far worse than those already imposed by the unscientific lockdowns already in place. (Please see SSR’s post on lockdowns for details.)
Yet, even for Dr. Osterholm it was too much for the government to mislead regarding mask effectiveness, for which SSR gives him credit. Below, he and eight other researchers penned a letter to the CDC arguing that the CDC website overstates the evidence for the efficacy of masks and that masks do not prevent severe disease.
We strongly urge IDSA to remove the suggestion that masking prevents severe disease from its webpage… We do not agree that the evidence for their efficacy has strengthened throughout the pandemic… In fact, contrary to the conclusion on this website, the November 2020 Cochrane review cited states this: "Compared with wearing no mask, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness.”
A snippet of that letter can be found below:
A link to a story about the letter and in it a further link to the letter can be found below.
Epoch Times: Secret Letter to CDC: Top Epidemiologist Suggests Agency Misrepresented Scientific Data to Support Mask Narrative
Even as Dr. Osterholm and his peers sought to push the CDC to adopt a science-based position on the use of masks, the CDC was itself ignoring the advice of mask research on its own website that echoed the position of Dr. Osterholm.
Specifically, in May 2020, in the CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, a study concluded:
“In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.”
The study can be found here:
CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases: Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings
Eventually, many in the public, certainly not all, but many began to see that the lockdowns, school closures and facemasks didn’t achieve what we were told they would and at the very least they went on for too long.
Even the New York Times, after two or so years of characterizing as misinformation any views on masks that were consistent with the advice of our own pre-pandemic planning, finally began to let opposing voices speak:
New York Times: The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?
Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs. Don’t count on it.”
N95, The Holy Grail of Masks? (Spoiler, it is not.)
Not willing to give up easily, mask believers gravitated to, “Ok, you know what, forget surgical masks. Instead, wear a N95.”
SSR hates to be the bearer of more bad news, but N95s are also not the promised land of face diapers. The Cochrane Review cited above found N95s added no value relative to no face mask at all.
“We are very uncertain on the effects of N95/P2 respirators compared with medical/surgical masks on the outcome of clinical respiratory illness… The use of a N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza infection…”
This 2019 study from a publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association found the same:
“…N95 respirators vs medical masks as worn by participants in this trial resulted in no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”
Or more recently, in a 2023 meta study from the CDC’s own website. (It’s their own website, people!)
“The current review found no difference in laboratory-confirmed seasonal viral respiratory infection (VRI) among healthcare personnel using N95 respirators compared with those using surgical/ medical masks during routine care of patients.”
This 2019 SF Gate article is useful because it highlights the impracticalities of trying to effectively fit and wear an N95 mask. It turns out one needs training in how to use them, then one needs to maintain a strict fit, and then if one figures out how to use it properly, it can be dangerous for many to wear as if worn correctly it restricts your ability to breath.
SF Gate: Health officials say N95 masks to filter wildfire smoke may do more harm than good
From the SF Gate article:
The advice (to wear a N95 mask) comes with one major caveat: if you choose to wear the mask, the likelihood of it doing more harm than good is high.
The masks were designed for worker safety, and workers go through a certification process that takes up to an hour to complete and determine whether a mask can properly seal on their face.
"There's a checklist, and if you hit any of those conditions where a mask isn't recommended, you shouldn't wear it," says Zamora. "For example, if you have facial hair, that's not going to work for you because the particulates the respirators are blocking are smaller than your facial hair. If there's a gap, those particulates are going to get through there."
When a mask is properly sealed, it's hot and uncomfortable to wear and breathing is strenuous. "They make the heart and lungs work harder and can cause respiratory distress for people with breathing conditions," says Fasano. "They may be dangerous for individuals with lung or heart conditions and may lead to increased heart and respiratory rate, or labored breathing."
If one is interested in a much more detailed review of why N95s fail to stop the spread, this Brownstone Institute piece is helpful.
Brownstone Institute: Why N95s Fail to Stop the Spread
What if the Roles Were Reversed? The Trump Test!
At this point, SSR does not expect the government to acknowledge that their own research and recommendations on mask use were the exact opposite of what they told us. They fed us disinformation and claimed that the people trying to tell the truth were the liars.
Which brings us to “The Trump Test. !!! TRUMP !!!”
The Trump Test. !!! TRUMP !!!
In the Trump Test, one reverses the roles of the partisan actors. Now, instead of public health officials ignoring decades of research and pre-pandemic planning as they actually did, let’s have the public health officials tell the truth. In this alternative world, they advise to wear a mask if one chooses, but no mandates; stay calm and follow the science.
But then Donald Trump fires Fauci and demotes everyone he can’t fire. A hot mic catches Trump bidding them good riddance, referring to them as “a bunch of pansies”. Trump then hires “MAGA sycophants” in their place. These “deplorables” tell us to ignore all the pre-pandemic research in favor of mask mandates.
In fact, these Trump’s appointees even recommend masking toddlers, masking outside in fresh air, and masking the mentally disabled. Laughably, they argue we’re safe in a restaurant without a mask as long as it is worn to the table.
Under those conditions, how would the left respond? They would argue scientific research and planning cannot be ignored. They’d claim only a Trump appointee can’t understand the difference between the mechanistic plausibility that a mask works and actual research that proves it doesn’t. Their collective voices would rise up in unified course, “FOLLOW THE SCIENCE”.
Why doesn’t the CDC “Follow the Science”? It’s their Science for Heaven’s Sake.
#WearAFuckingMask. That was the public’s rallying cry in response to governmental mask mandates. Not only did our public health officials fail to speak up when these unscientific measures were enacted, they even stood by as the country descended into mob-like vigilantism over masks. The encounter below ended in a murder.
Why didn’t and why still won’t the CDC follow its own science? Why won’t mainstream media report the truth?
There was plenty of disinformation about masks during covid. The source of that disinformation was the government.