(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) The New York Times published an opinion piece by Bret Stephens, a 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner, on Tuesday about COVID-19 masks being useless that was titled “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?”
“The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous,” Stephens wrote.
“‘There is just no evidence that they’ — masks — ‘make any difference. Full stop,’” Jefferson told the journalist Maryanne Demasi.
Jefferson then added that even specific masks make “no difference.”
“But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks? ‘Makes no difference — none of it.’”
He also said that all of the studies in the early days of the pandemic that claimed that masks worked, which prompted lawmakers at every level of government to enact tyrannical mask mandates, were “non-randomized” and “flawed observational studies.” Unlike these scientists, Jefferson and his 11 colleagues conducted 78 randomized controlled trials, with a total of 610,872 participants in numerous countries.
“Mask mandates were a fool’s errand from the start,” Stephens wrote. “They may have created a false sense of safety — and thus permission to resume semi-normal life. They did almost nothing to advance safety itself. The Cochrane report ought to be the final nail in this particular coffin.”
Other researchers also examined the efficacy of local COVID vaccine mandates that were implemented across the United States in 2021 and found they didn’t work.
“These mandates imposed severe restrictions on the lives of many citizens and business owners,” the researchers said in a study conducted by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “Yet, we find no evidence that the mandates were effective in their intended goals of reducing COVID-19 cases and deaths.”
The researchers evaluated New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. — all Democrat-led cities that acted like tyrants since 2020.
“We find no evidence that the announcement or implementation of indoor vaccine mandates in the cities listed had any significant effect on vaccine uptake, COVID-19 cases, or COVID-19 deaths, and this is largely consistent for all US cities that implemented the mandate,” the researchers wrote.
