UC Berkeley Will Force Unvaccinated Students to Mask During Flu Season

Pro-mask zealots have caused incalculable damage to society over the past two and a half years. It spans from their denial of evidence that masking does not work to forcing toddlers to mask in many parts of the country.

But many have assumed that masking would be a temporary intervention, endlessly asking the inevitable question, "Why is it so hard to wear a mask?"

Recent news out of UC Berkeley shows exactly why so many people have pointed out how ineffective universal masking has been.

Because "experts" have lied to the public about the effectiveness of masks for so long, decision makers now believe they have the authority and scientific backing to impose restrictions on normal life, permanently.

So it should come as no surprise that administrators at UC Berkeley have announced that any student who chooses to remain unvaccinated against the flu will be required to mask during flu season.

This is literally on their website. You can't make it up.

Masks Do Not Work Against The Flu

This absurd for any number of reasons, but perhaps the most obvious is that masks do not work against the flu.

One of the common excuses we've heard to explain away the failure of masks to stop COVID is that it's more transmissible than the flu.

Except all of the high quality randomized studies that were conducted on masking pre-COVID were conducted against the flu. And nearly all of them said the same thing: masks do not stop flu transmission.

The Cochrane Library, which collects and collates scientific research, summed up the evidence thusly:

"Seven studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers. Compared with wearing no mask, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness (9 studies; 3,507 people); and probably makes no difference in how many people have flu confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 3,005 people)."

The emphasis was added, but it's abundantly clear that in high quality trials, masking "probably makes no difference" in how many people have laboratory confirmed flu.

Beyond the nonsensical decision to mandate a useless masking policy on campus, the flu vaccine doesn't even work particularly well.

Behind The Flu Numbers

The CDC's own vaccine effectiveness estimates show that it hasn't crossed the 50% effective threshold against laboratory confirmed flu since 2013-2014, and even then it was only 52%:

The average effectiveness over the past 5 years with available data is 36%.

And this is what decision makers have decided to punish people for not getting.

Even if the flu shots worked incredibly well, it wouldn't be justifiable to mandate masks for the flu given that the vast majority of society has lived with the risks of contracting it every year without giving it a second thought.

Not to mention that according to these same "experts" and administrators, people supposedly have the ability to protect themselves against it by getting vaccinated, meaning that the behavior of others should be irrelevant.

But not only do masks not work, but the flu vaccine doesn't work particularly well. They're wrong on both sides.

Honestly, that's the least surprising thing about this decision. College administrators, "experts" and political activists conspiring to force people into permanent masking, based on nothing but a desperation to fit in with the crowd of pseudo-intellectuals that they respect.

Permanent masking is the goal. And enforcement of absurdist rules at intellectually bankrupt institutions like Berkeley is how it starts.