Flowing the science on masks to prevent covid infections

Oakland CA

Description

The question on whether to wear a face mask or not during the Covid-19 pandemic remains emotional and contentious. Why? This question about the utility of face coverings (which has taken on a talisman-like life) is now overwrought with steep politicization regardless of political affiliation (e.g. republican or liberal/democrat). Importantly, the evidence just is and was not there to support mask use for asymptomatic people to stop viral spread during a pandemic. While the evidence may seem conflicted, the evidence (including the peer-reviewed evidence) actually does not support its use and leans heavily toward masks having no significant impact in stopping spread of the Covid virus. In fact, it is not unreasonable at this time to conclude that surgical and cloth masks, used as they currently are, have absolutely no impact on controlling the transmission of Covid-19 virus, and current evidence implies that face masks can be actually harmful. All this to say and as so comprehensively documented by Dr. Roger W. Koops in a recent American Institute of Economic Research (AIER) publication, there is no clear scientific evidence that masks (surgical or cloth) work to mitigate risk to the wearer or to those coming into contact with the wearer, as they are currently worn in everyday life and specifically as we refer to Covid-19. We present the evidence in full below. We also state that should adequate evidence emerge that supports the effectiveness of surgical and cloth masks in this Covid pandemic (or any similar type masks), then we will change our position and conclude otherwise. Our focus is on face masks for Covid but we will touch gently on the issue of school closures and lockdowns, as these three issues remain the key public health policy catastrophes we have faced as global societies. Back in August 2020, a survey by Pew indicated that 85% of Americans wore masks when in public all or most of the time. So, the public has been using masks extensively. We thus set the table in this review on the effectiveness of masking for Covid by asking, if these surgical and cloth masks are effective, why did incidence of the virus (or actual disease; and they’re not the same thing) escalate so rapidly despite widespread use? Why is there no evidence across US States and global nations showing that when use is mandated (or not mandated given the general uptake of masking by the public), this contributes to reduced viral transmission? Is there any such evidence? Orofecal transmission? Understanding the transmission of this respiratory SARS-CoV-2 pathogen is also evolving given evidence of orofecal spread as having a potentially larger contributor role in non-respiratory transmission of Covid. As an example, a recent open-evidence review brief by Oxford researchers (Jefferson, Brassey, Heneghan) and its publication in CEBM, reveals the growing recognition that SARS-CoV-2 can infect and be shed from the gastrointestinal (GI) tract of humans. Orofecal spread demands urgent study and if orofecal spread is shown to be definitive and more consequential in Covid transmission, then this could impact mitigation strategies beyond those for respiratory transmission. Where do we begin on masks? How about infection fatality rate/IFR? Moreover, we are addressing here highly irrational, punitive, capricious, and groundless societal restrictions for a virus with an infection fatality rate (IFR), based on Stanford University John Ioannidis’s calculations, of 0.05% in persons under 70 years old (across different global nations). Ioannidis’s research was followed up recently by a reported non-institutionalized IFR in the state of Indiana (persons aged > 12 years) of 0.12% (95% CI 0.09 to 0.19) when age 40-59/60 years (reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine), and an IFR when < 40 years old of 0.01% (95% CI 0.01 to 0.02). Persons 60 or older had an IFR of 1.71% (overall IFR was 0.26%). So why would we continue this way with these unsound and very punitive restrictive policies and for so long once the factual characteristics of this virus became evident and as alluded to above, we finally realized that its infection fatality rate (IFR) which is a more accurate and realistic reflection of mortality than CFR, was really no worse than annual influenza?