By Joe Allen
The mask is a religious symbol as much as a health precaution. Like saffron robes or a suffocating burka, it marks a true believer — or at least those willing to submit — and protects the wearer from divine wrath. To defy heaven’s mandate is to imperil yourself, your family, your community, and your social credit score. If you’re dumb enough to die with a naked face, the media will mock you as a science-denier for all eternity.
When you consider the terrifying warnings pumped into our heads since springtime, often from trusted figures, can anyone be blamed for clinging to their masks and the new civil religion? Still, it’s ironic that the current wave of mask enthusiasm came the same week that a major scientific study called the policy’s effectiveness into question. Last Wednesday, the Annals of Internal Medicine published the long-awaited results of the first large-scale randomized clinical trial to determine whether these goofy muzzles actually work.
The landmark experiment, led by Henning and Johan Skov Bundgaard, was conducted on a sizeable population of Danes. A group of 3,030 mask-wearers was compared to a naked-face control group of 2,994, and of the total, 4,862 made it to the finish line.
After a month of sharing air with germy strangers, both groups were given coronavirus blood antigen tests. Additionally, anyone who fell ill during the trial was given a PCR test via nasal swab. The results will disappoint those who say those who don’t wear masks are would-be murderers: “Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8 %) and 53 control participants (2.1%).”
Despite all we’ve been led to believe, the masks did next to nothing to protect the wearers. Other evidence indicates that even when nearly everybody wears a mask, COVID infection rates rise and fall in similar patterns. While Facebook and other organizations insist the mask science is settled in its favor, the truth is that at the very least the scientific record is mixed. While neurotic co-workers and draconian baristas command you to obey the state and trust the science, real scientific evidence suggests shaking magic bone-rattles at the sky would provide the same protection.
‘The Science’ Doesn’t Exist. Real Science Changes
The credulous “trust the science” crowd is annoying for many reasons, but nothing’s worse than their blind faith in authority. When did science nuts decide to stop being skeptical? Don’t these armchair experts remember when “the science” assured us Prozac was a miracle drug and Oxycontin was barely addictive?
At its best, the scientific method provides approximate models of reality. In physics, these models are accurate enough to shoot a missile between an insurgent’s eyes, even if physicists remain baffled by the quantum behavior underpinning its trajectory. As we progress up the great chain of being, however, from basic mechanics to complex biological processes — such as epidemiological patterns and innate immune responses — you can’t “trust the science” much farther than you can throw it.
When dealing with complex phenomena, every rule has too many exceptions for scientists to get cocky. Even the best practices based on science have unexpected trade-offs and pitfalls. Remember when doctors realized that overuse of sanitizers and antibiotics was suppressing our immune systems and creating unstoppable super-bugs? Or when vaccine-derived polio ravaged the Indian population, possibly crippling some half a million children?
Rest assured, it wasn’t Purell or the Gates Foundation that called foul on these unforeseen consequences. That duty falls on the skeptic.
The best arguments in favor of universal masking cite the dramatic plunge in case numbers when New York City and Italy mandated masks, but as anyone who trusts the science knows, correlation does not imply causation. Huge surges are happening in areas that have been masked up for months, such as Michigan, California, and Massachusetts. It’s almost as if outbreaks are inevitable in populations with little to no immunity.
The Western world’s sole COVID-19 control group, Sweden, continues to confound the now-conventional wisdom around masking. The Swedes barely wore them, yet for reasons you can’t explain to herd immunity-deniers, the country’s second wave appears to be waning, with very few deaths.
Swatting Mosquitoes with a Tennis Racket
Every scientific conclusion is provisional and open to question. Even the large-scale Danish mask study has some potential problems.
