CDC Mask Rules Were Never Based On Science

If there was any doubt, a recent gold standard evidence review on masks has confirmed that there is overwhelming likelihood that they do not work to stop the spread of COVID.

READ: NEW STUDY CONFIRMS THAT MASKS LIKELY DON’T WORK TO STOP COVID

While that's not necessarily news to anyone who's paid attention to available data, it does highlight a disturbing, inarguable truth. The CDC recommended masks based on nothing.

The CDC's about face on masks started in April 2020, when, with no new information, they decided they should be universally recommended.

That led to mandates proliferating rapidly throughout society, both domestically and internationally.

Children as young as 2 were, and in some cases still are, subjected to masking policies. All based on poor quality, limited information.

How can we definitively say that's the case? Because of where the evidence review came from.

The Cochrane Library has repeatedly helped settle debates on medical issues. It's an impartial, unbiased source of information, which doesn't conform to political necessity or wishful thinking.

And when comparing the use of medical or surgical masks to wearing no face coverings at all, they found that "wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (nine studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (six studies; 13,919 people)."

If the CDC were committed to following the science, as they so often claim to be, their masking recommendations would have ended long ago. But especially after the gold standard evidence review confirmed they were wrong.

Instead, they're doubling down.

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 11: Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. The committee will hear testimony about the federal response to COVID-19 and new, emerging variants. (Photo by Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

CDC Says They'll Never Change Mask Recommendations

Despite the additional confirmation on the paucity of evidence on masks, the CDC once again recently confirmed they will not be changing their recommendations.

Children in far left parts of the country like Philadelphia could not be subjected to indefinite, rolling mask mandates because the CDC pointedly will not admit they were wrong.

Many have defended the organization's recommendations by saying that there aren't many randomized controlled trials on masks, or that they weren't properly conducted if individuals weren't forced to wear them correctly.

But of course, those criticisms miss the point. Randomized trials on masks, while imperfect, are far more informative than the "evidence" used by the CDC.

They still, to this day, rely on an utterly embarrassing "study" on two hairdressers in Missouri. That examination claimed to show that two employees did not spread COVID to their patients because they wore masks.

Beyond the absurdity of relying on "data" from two people, just half of the hairdressers clients even consented to testing. Meaning that there were at least 60 other individuals who may have gotten COVID but weren't covered by the study.

Yet, the CDC still refers to this review as supposed proof that masks work.

They also purposefully referenced data from another poorly conducted "study" in California claiming that cloth masks were associated with a reduced likelihood of getting COVID. Except, the results were not statistically significant, and relied on survey data, among the lowest quality methods of review.

Claiming an not-significant result is important is essentially a form of scientific malpractice. But the CDC did it anyway, out of a desire to promote their political goals.

Masks don't work, and they never have. The CDC could have avoided countless harms, re-established a modicum of trust, and removed the last bits of pandemic theater by altering course, nearly three years after their evidence-free 2020 shift.

Instead, they've shown that their political bias, ego and desperation far outweighs the importance of dispassionate scientific reasoning.

And it reaffirms that one of humanity's biggest mistakes was listening to their recommendations in the first place.