ArcaMax

The world's most trusted evaluator of medical studies, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, has just released as close to a conclusive report on the effectiveness of masks against respiratory viruses such as COVID-19 as we are likely to have for the foreseeable future. The report assessed data from 78 different studies, including 11 new randomized controlled trials involving 610,872 participants.

Cochrane concluded, in the words of one of the authors, Dr. Tom Jefferson of Oxford University, "There is just no evidence that they (masks) make any difference. Full stop."

Among the reasons for that assessment was Cochrane's conclusion that states and countries with mask mandates fared no better than states and countries without.

Moreover, Dr. Jefferson's conclusions were not limited to cloth and surgical masks. Regarding N95 masks, Jefferson said the same thing: "Makes no difference -- none of it."

As for the early COVID-19 studies that policymakers cited to justify mandates for mask wearing, Jefferson said: "They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies."

For example, PolitiFact, one of the so-called "fact-checkers" whose primary function is to declare whatever differs from the Left as "false," declared in 2021 that studies "have consistently found that mask mandates cause sharp declines in coronavirus case rates."

Bret Stephens, one of the two or three non-Left columnists at the New York Times, wrote this about the Cochrane study: "Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as 'misinformers' for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs."

Stephens' description of those who differed with the Left and the "experts" on universal mask-wearing as having been "furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as 'misinformers'" is, of course, entirely accurate.

We were right, but the Left controlled all the tech giants -- and except for Twitter, they still do. They, not we, were the ones who spread misinformation about masks -- and about lockdowns, the origins of COVID-19, the claim that there was no early treatment for COVID-19 (just wait for the vaccines and hope you don't die in the meantime), Trump campaign collusion with Russia, the Hunter Biden laptop and every other issue that divides Left from Right.

Even now, after the Cochrane report, the Left continues to push for mask-wearing.

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Copyright 2023 Creators Syndicate Inc.