Mask fetishists are pushing higher-quality respirators and surgical masks to stop or slow COVID, but they don’t have a scientific leg to stand on.
Now that cloths masks have been shown to be useless at stopping the spread of viral respiratory infections, mask fetishists are pushing respirators and surgical masks (N95s and KN95s) to stop COVID. Are they right to do so?
Evidence. Let’s look at the empirical and scientific evidence.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claims that masks “are effective at reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, when worn consistently and correctly…
“Properly fitted respirators, [including N95s], provide the highest level of protection.” However, it is important, says the CDC, “to check that [your mask] fits snugly over your nose, mouth, and chin,” and therein lies the rub.
Can people—especially young school-age children—reasonably be expected to wear a tightly fitted mask all day when interacting with others?
The undesirability of being masked, especially with a tightly fitted respirator or surgical mask, is obvious. Masks are irritating and they can cause health problems, especially when worn incorrectly and for prolonged periods of time. Masks also inhibit social interaction and communication.
For these reasons, no one enjoys being masked. Which is why there is good reason to doubt that these higher-quality masks would do much to stop or slow the spread of COVID in the general population (as opposed to a tightly contained surgical room).
Michael Osterholm and his team of researchers at the University of Minnesota, for instance, found that, since the beginning of the pandemic roughly a fourth of the population has consistently worn their masks loosely and incorrectly, under their nose, with plenty of room for viral leakage.
Is there any reason to think that people would be more fastidious about how they wear respirators and surgical masks?
Mask Study. The media has trumpeted the one and only randomized controlled trial involving respirators and N95 masks; but, in fact, this study showed only a very modest reduction in the spread of COVID. And it occurred in a poor country, Bangladesh, that bears little resemblance to the United States.
“The study did not find a significant impact of masks on coronavirus spread,” writes U.C. Berkeley Professor Benjamin Recht.
My takeaway is that a complex intervention including an educational program, free masks, encouraged mask wearing, and surveillance in a poor country with low population immunity and no vaccination showed at best a modest reduction in infection
Needless to say, and as this pandemic has shown, the American people are fiercely independent and not easily led or corralled into compliance. We are a vast, diverse, and unruly continental nation.
For many of us, “live free or die” is a way of life. Good luck, then, achieving the same results here as the researchers allegedly achieved in Bangladesh with surgical masks.
And even if universal masking here were as effective as the researchers claim it was in Bangladesh, is it worth the costs and tradeoffs involved?
Unimpressive Results. As Professor Recht observes, “community masking improved an individual’s risk of infection by a factor of only 1.1x… That’s not a lot of risk reduction.” In the MRNA vaccine trials, by contrast, the risk of symptomatic infection was reduced by a factor of 20x.
Moreover, the effect size in the study is “too small to inform policymaking.” Ostensibly because of masking, only 20 fewer people out of more than 340,000 participants were found to be seronegative or free of COVID.
“The corresponding efficacy is 11%, still woefully low.” The study thus lacks “statistical significance,” Recht writes.
The bottom line: there is little reason to believe that even higher-quality respirators and surgical masks (N95s and KN95s) would do much to stop or slow the spread of COVID in the general population.
Real-world settings and everyday social interactions simply are not analogous to a surgical room. And the one randomized controlled trial involving respirators and N95 masks yielded unimpressive results that are unlikely to be replicated in the United States and other freedom-loving countries.
Instead of wasting time on masks, public health authorities should focus on what works: vaccines, social distancing, and therapeutics. Masks are a mass diversion.
Feature photo credit: a registered nurse wears an N95 mask in the acute care unit of Harborview Medical Center, Friday, Jan. 14, 2022, in Seattle, Washington (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson), courtesy of KTLA Los Angeles.
