For about two years, face masks became a part of life in much of the world.

Health “officials” assured the public that they are effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and politicians enforced laws requiring them in public places, even outdoors. Most people accepted their new life. The lucky ones had a few N-95s to wear and others bought customized masks with their favorite sports team, for example. 

TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal never bought it, and, based on scientific fact and not conjecture, criticized these mandates as nothing more than a power grab by politicians who know nothing about disease pathogens. (See “PEER REVIEWED COVID STUDIES ON BENEFITS OF IVERMECTIN, LACK OF BENEFITS OF MASK MANDATES? HERE’S THE LATEST” 7 Feb 2023, “DYING TO WEAR A MASK? WEAR ONE GET COVID AND DIE” 7 Jun 2022, and “COVID WAR ENDING AS FORECAST: CDC EASES MASK-PHOBIA” 1 Mar 2022.)

As we have repeatedly detailed with hard facts and scientific data when the COVID War broke out, those dying from the virus were mostly elderly and 94 percent of the victims had 2.6 preexisting comorbidities. And rather than locking down nations and robbing citizens of their freedoms, we had long recommended taking measures to protect those at the most high risk.

The Study

The Cochrane Library, a collection of medical databases, analyzed 18 random control groups and tried to determine how effective the N95 respirators were in preventing transmission. The N95 was touted as the best level of protection by health officials from the CDC during the outbreak. The study found that these masks likely made little to no difference for the wearer.

Reason magazine wrote that the study showed the CDC which “repeatedly exaggerated the evidence in favor of masks, cannot be trusted as a source of public-health information.”

“Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community,” the meta-analysis said. “Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu‐like illness (5 studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people). Unwanted effects were not well‐reported; discomfort was mentioned.”

The magazine said the CDC was likely basing its information off lab experiments that do not take “full account for variables that affect virus transmission.” These randomized control groups provide a clearer picture of transmission risks. The Cochrane study found “essentially no relationship between mask-wearing and disease rates.” The researchers found the same trend with influenza prevention.

The CDC conceded that the common cloth masks supposedly only prevent 56 percent of infections.

The U.S. is set to drop its emergency health declaration in May while the country still experiences hundreds of thousands of cases each week and a few thousand deaths. New York just announced the end of its mask mandate inside health care centers. The city’s vaccine requirement for workers also came to an end last week. The 2,000 city workers who lost their jobs are now allowed to reapply. 

TRENDPOST: We reported in January 2021 that Danish researchers studied the effectiveness of masks among health care workers and found half of the volunteers wore masks regularly, while the other half didn’t.

After one month, the difference in infection rates between those regularly wearing masks (1.8 percent) was only 0.3 percent less than those who never put on a mask (2.1 percent). 

According to the authors of the study, conducted by the Copenhagen University Hospital, “The study does not confirm the expected halving of the risk of infection for people wearing face masks.” (See “DANISH STUDY: MASKS OFFER VERY LIMITED PROTECTION.”)

At about the same time, research conducted by Kazunari Onishi, associate professor at St. Luke’s International University in Tokyo, showed that with the typical cloth mask worn by the majority of the Japanese public there was “a 100-percent rate in terms of airborne particles penetrating the fabric and through the gap between masks and faces, substantially raising the risk of infection.”