22 Jul Masks Don’t Control the Spread of Virus – How do we know?
(Image credit:Photo by Alice Mîndru on Unsplash)
An intelligent twitter thread in three parts.
(download a PDF of this thread at the bottom of the article)
Part one: Masks don’t control the spread, widely studied and accepted prior to 2020
Pre-covid, the fact that masks are not effective for controlling the spread of respiratory viruses had been well-studied for decades and the near-unanimous and completely uncontroversial conclusion was that they don’t help.
— Charles Brewer (@charlesbrew) July 21, 2021
Fauci knew masks didn’t work back in early 2020, as did the CDC and WHO.https://t.co/LB7qzVWUgy
— Charles Brewer (@charlesbrew) July 21, 2021
Here is a more comprehensive list of studies of mask effectiveness, much but not all of it from the pre-covid period.https://t.co/61Ho4dddZs
— Charles Brewer (@charlesbrew) July 21, 2021
Part two: Studies in favor of masking are shockingly weak
In this tweet I review one that was promoted vigorously last summer as “proof” that masks work. It is such obvious garbage – case rates going up and down in parallel with general population – how does something like this even get printed?https://t.co/rZPYNNBEFR
— Charles Brewer (@charlesbrew) July 21, 2021
More examples of studies in favor of face masks here. Again, this is all just shockingly weak. Cherry picking dates. Ignoring background trends and other confounding factors. Weak, weak … pathetic.https://t.co/dZUETdA1mM
— Charles Brewer (@charlesbrew) July 21, 2021
Part three: Oceans of data from past 18 months – if masks worked we would see it. But we don’t.
This, to me, is the most powerful evidence of all that masks make no difference. If they made a difference, WE WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE IT by now.
— Charles Brewer (@charlesbrew) July 21, 2021
Next the amazingly consitent pattern through the great plains states despite radically different mask policies:https://t.co/qVDPruHfcB
— Charles Brewer (@charlesbrew) July 21, 2021
@ianmSC has a nearly unlimited collection of comparisons like this:https://t.co/ZwnTC2ymdm
— Charles Brewer (@charlesbrew) July 21, 2021
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Masks don’t work. It would be nice if they did, but they don’t. It sort of seems intuitively like maybe they should … but they don’t. Everyone knew it pre-2020. The evidence is even more conclusive now. It is time to stop pretending.
— Charles Brewer (@charlesbrew) July 21, 2021