REALLY, it was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?
Representatives of the Monster Raving Mask Wearing Party are back at it. Fanatics at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) are urging the public to wear face masks again in view of the forthcoming flu season which, like all the ones that have gone before it, is going to be the worst ever. Some hospitals are already conforming and instructing their staff and patients to wear masks.
Somebody somewhere must be rubbing their hands with glee. Masks make money. Prior to covid, global sales of face masks were worth $1.4billion. In 2020 they rose by over two orders of magnitude to $224billion. Thereafter, they have declined steadily but remained at $4.2billion in 2024, which shows that, to some extent, face mask addiction has persisted. This is four times the level of sales pre-covid.
Presumably, when covid came on the scene, the mask manufacturers saw their opportunity and went for it. The manufactured panic led to the UK government purchasing £150million worth of face masks which turned out to be unusable. The mask manufacturers prioritised profits over the purported safety of the public.
I say ‘purported’ because, even at the start of the covid event, there was no evidence that face masks prevent the spread of respiratory infections. Their modern use arose in the Far East and gained prominence during the outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong in 2003. Even then there was little evidence to support their use but became more like a habit ‘more akin to putting on a jacket for cold weather’ in the region.
For those of us who have always been doubtful about the value of face masks, covid at least provided a golden opportunity to see if any beneficial effect could be demonstrated. As we suspected, there was no demonstrable benefit to wearing face masks. They were nothing short of an expensive and inconvenient con. Moreover, their prolonged use was associated with demonstrable harms such as decreased cognition and increased reaction time. Their enforced wearing by young children, in whom they affected language and emotional development, was nothing short of child abuse.
Yet the mask maniacs persist and try every trick to convince us that face masks have some benefit. At the forefront of this campaign of misinformation has been Professor Trish Greenhalgh of Oxford University, who criticised the key Cochrane study demolishing the evidence in favour of face masks as being ‘controversial’ in its use of gold standard evidence in the form of randomised controlled trials (RCTs).
Once at the forefront of the evidence-based movement herself and no stranger to the pages of the Cochrane Library, Greenhalgh and colleagues published a study incorporating lower and less reliable evidence to arrive at the predestined conclusion that face masks were effective. However, the study by Greenhalgh and colleagues is easily demolished.
Others at the forefront of mask mania, rather like Greenhalgh, maintain that RCTs are not the best way to test whether face masks work. Furthermore, RCTs that do not demonstrate face mask effectiveness should simply be ignored. Mask maniacs set out, unscientifically, to prove that face masks are effective and, in assessing the evidence, they see only what they want to see.
Other covid virtue signallers are incorrigible. They are unconcerned about the evidence in favour of face mask effectiveness and reckon, as does Professor Debra Jackson, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, that wearing a face mask ‘is symbolic of a collective concern for others who are more vulnerable’. The train of thought that leads to that conclusion is almost beyond comprehension.
I recently reported that I had come across a concept called Hudson’s Razor, the brainchild of Trevor E Hudson. His razor posits that anything is a confidence trick which is:
(1) presented as a global crisis;
(2) permits only global solutions; and requires
(3) suppression of dissent.
The above summed up the covid years perfectly. Regarding face masks, we are close to having this presented as a global crisis, and global solutions (i.e. vaccinations and face masks) are being pushed once more. Look out for the suppression of dissent: it is almost inevitable.
