Were There Justifiable Reasons to Require Face Masks for COVID-19?

Five Key Questions

In thinking about COVID-19, a rational mind considers five key questions:

1. Was the public ever threatened so greatly by a new coronavirus that health authorities were justified in declaring a state of emergency because of this virus?

2. Was asymptomatic transmission of a coronavirus a valid justification for promoting universal face masking to control its spread?

3. Has real-world use of face masks demonstrated that universal face masking has any effect on controlling the spread of a coronavirus?

4. Has the weight of evidence on face-mask effectiveness ever been great enough for health authorities to legally require wearing such masks to combat a coronavirus?

5. Do basic physical laws of air flow support the belief that a simple barrier over the face can control the spread of a coronavirus that is transmitted by air?

Let's consider each of these questions:

Question 1: Did a Coronavirus Health-Emergency Really Exist in 2019?

A true public health emergency exists, when a virus threatens to cause widespread illness and death out of the ordinary. Consequently, if a coronavirus health emergency existed in 2019, then statistics should have documented out-of-the-ordinary, widespread illness and death. But this has not been the case.

 In 2021, two lawsuits filed against United States government health agencies revealed critical facts. The two lawsuits were as follows:

1. America's Frontline Doctors, et al. vs. Xavier Becerra, U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, et al.,           Plaintiffs Motion for Preliminary Injunction (filed 07/19/2021). Case 2:21-cv-00702-CLM Document 15. 

2. Ohio Stands Up and Kristen Beckman vs. The United States Department of Health & Human Services, Center for Disease Control (CDC), Secretary Norris Cochran, Director Rochelle Walensky, The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Director Brian C. Moyer, and John and/or Jane Doe[s] 1-20 (2021). Amended Complaint, Case No.:3:20-cv-02814-JRK.

The facts highlighted in these lawsuits were these:

• Real-world data showed that the overall survival rate of people falling ill with COVID-19 from the SARS-CoV-2 virus was 98.8%. For people under age 70, the survival rate increased to 99.97%.

• The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reformulated Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for producing death certificates in favor of COVID-19. This forced coroners and other examiners to declare COVID-19 the official underlying cause of death "more often than not."

• HHS authorized emergency use of a polymerase-chain-reaction process (PCR) as a diagnostic test for COVID-19. HHS did this fully knowing that the Noble-Prize-winning inventor of the process specifically disqualified it as a test for diagnosing diseases. Even when HHS statistics showed that 95% of deaths classified as COVID-19 deaths involved an average of four other underlying serious health conditions, the PCR "test" for COVID-19 still ruled. This so called test and preferential death determination, thus, artificially inflated death rates attributed to COVID-19.

• HHS and its counterparts in state governments fully embraced the belief that people showing no symptoms of illness could transmit illness to others. Policy makers invoked this idea of "asymptomatic transmission" to strengthen their claim that a serious life-threatening condition justified the declaration of a public health emergency. 

To summarize, an illness with a 98.8% to 99.7% survival rate, supposedly confirmed by an unfit diagnostic tool, supposedly transmitted by symptom-free people, thus, was declared a serious life-threatening condition. 

If COVID-19 had been a serious life-threatening condition, then it should have caused a sharp increase in the number of deaths from all causes, compared to previous years. This was not the case, however, as the following chart shows:

This chart illustrates a 120-year history of deaths from all causes in the United States. It shows the number of monthly deaths per million people (vertical axis) each year, from 1900 to 2020 (horizontal axis). A red, horizontal, dotted line has been added to compare the level of overall deaths in 2020 to the level of overall deaths for each of the previous 119 years. Two red, vertical arrows have also been added to mark the years, 2004 and 2020. Year 2004 had roughly the same death rate as year 2020, at the height of the supposed COVID-19 pandemic.  Was a public health emergency declared in 2004? No. From about 1980 until 2004, the death rate was near or above the death rate of 2020, at the height of the supposed COVID-19 pandemic. Was a public health emergency declared during any of those 24 years? No. 

Look again: From about 1980 until about 2004, the death rate was at or above the death rate for 2020, but health authorities never declared a public health emergency during any of those 24 years. During the span of years from about 2004 to about 2019, the death rate declined. Consequently, the 2020 death rate appeared to increase, only because it was higher than the previous sixteen years, but it was not higher than the 24 years before 2004, nor was it higher than at any other time in U. S. history. Nonetheless, health authorities declared a public health emergency during 2020, when the death rate was not out of the ordinary. 

Year 2020 merely marked a departure from a previous fifteen-year decrease in the death rate, but it did not mark a sharp increase from what had been considered ordinary for many prior years.

If 98.8% to 99.7% of people who contracted COVID-19 survived in 2020, and if the 2020 death rate from all causes was not out of the ordinary, then the answer to Question 1 is No — a coronavirus health emergency did not exist in 2019.

The emergency existed only as an information-media fabrication that depicted a rather ordinary illness as an extraordinary event. There is a name for this sort of fabrication - disease mongering - first extensively described in 1992 by medical journalist, Lynn Payer, in her book, Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies and Insurers are Making You Feel Sick, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 

The open-access journal of science and medicine, PLOS (Public Library of Science), also published a series of articles on this topic in 2018.

Suffice to say, the COVID-19 fabrication involved many people and organizations cooperating and coordinating on a scale never seen before, all with something to gain because of it. Profits, livelihoods, careers, reputations, and political objectives were furthered in some way by this fabrication. On the other hand, society as a whole has suffered a tremendous setback because of it.

Question 2: Has Asymptomatic Transmission Ever Posed a Real Threat?

Up until the year 2020, the word, infected, applied to a person who was overcome by an invasive agent that destroyed tissues or disabled daily activities. An infected person showed clinical symptoms of an illness. With the advent of the COVID-19 crisis, leaders in all areas of life stretched the concept of infected to seemingly irrational, anti-social extremes.

Thus arose the widespread belief in asymptomatic transmission of the COVID-19 illness, where all people were now threatening transmitters of a dangerous viral illness. Unproven carriers of this illness were forced to cover their faces with masks. Face masks became required devices to prevent transmission of what was not even diagnosed to exist in any one person. In essence, everybody was presumed to be a disease threat without any proof.

No such attitude has ever operated in modern, United-States society. Society could not exist, if such an attitude were allowed to take firm control of human affairs. Removing individual judgment about one’s state of health and denying individual judgment about one’s physical suitability to operate in human affairs destroys the very integrity of society. Placing such intimate bodily judgments in the hands of government agencies or corporate executives sacrifices individual autonomy to an unacceptable degree.

Our senses inform us that a person who appears healthy, functions normally, and performs in a healthy manner is, in fact, healthy and fit to engage in the interpersonal relationships of daily living. Grave concern about the possibility of someone’s being a threat for unknowable or unverified reasons borders on paranoia. 

We do not move through life with grave concerns that everybody we see might be a thief, a murderer, or a child molester. Thieves, murderers, and child molesters certainly do not advertise themselves in stores, when they shop for groceries or seek out services in the marketplace – their tendencies are hidden, and we do not know who they are, until their criminal behavior manifests in reality.

We do not conduct ourselves in the world on the standard assumption that every person we meet in public is infected with behavioral characteristics that would eventually turn them into a killer or a thief or something worse. Instead, we live by trusting our instincts, accepting a certain amount of risk, and relying on good judgment, based on knowledge and experience. We do not speak of asymptomatic thieves or asymptomatic killers.

Why, then, did we suddenly start speaking so forcefully about asymptomatic carriers of a viral disease? This idea is itself a symptom of disturbed minds - minds captured and manipulated into an unhealthy state by a massive information campaign that has distorted our perception of reality. 

Whether or not asymptomatic transmission exists is not the main concern. The main concern is that we cannot know whether an asymptomatic person is contagious or not, any more than we can know whether a person has a gun ready to shoot us. The standard of conducting ourselves with others has never been guilty of being a threat, until proven innocent. Asymptomatic transmission, therefore, should never have been a factor in determining mass masking, for

 this reason alone. A society based on fear of everyone around us simply does not function well, especially when that fear arises from being around people who show zero symptoms of illness.

But it turns out that this line of reasoning gains even greater footing in actual facts about asymptomatic transmission. Several experts have done extensive reviews of the evidence for asymptomatic transmission, arriving at similar conclusions.  Two such experts are Dr Clare Craig FRCPath and Jonathan Engler MBChB LLB, who discuss this evidence in their article, Has the Evidence of Asymptomatic Spread of COVID-19 Been Significantly Overstated?, in which they conclude:

... after examination of the most frequently cited papers in this area available to date, we are struck by the paucity of persuasive evidence of anything but the most minor of symptoms resulting from supposed asymptomatic spread; most or all of which could be misdiagnoses and in any event are at no more than anecdotal level. There is no evidence, outside of China, that anyone has developed even moderate COVID-19 based on true asymptomatic spread, as opposed to pre-symptomatic spread.

The answer to Question 2, then, is No — asymptomatic transmission has never posed a real threat.

Question 3: Has the Actual Practice of Wearing Masks Demonstrated the Effect of Controlling COVID-19?

Look at the following chart — it shows the point in time (August 10, 2020) where about 80% of people in three major countries reported wearing face masks, compared to only 8% of people in Sweden: 

The curves show numbers of daily new COVID-19 cases per million people in each country (vertical axis). Notice how the case-growth curves of three countries go higher, well after a majority of the populations were wearing masks. 

With ten times more mask-use than Sweden, these three other countries peaked just as high as Sweden. This illustrates that the number of COVID-19 cases increased dramatically, even when people wore face masks. The infection rate peaked and declined, seemingly irrespective of 80% mask use. At least, this indicates that COVID-19 progressively infected more people, despite the use of face masks. 

Look at the next chart below — it compares the progressive use of face masks in Sweden, India, and the United States:

Notice the highest peak of the curves on January 9, 2021. At this point in time, 78% of people in the United States (USA) and 80% of people in India (IND) reported wearing masks, while only 28% of people in Sweden (SWD) reported wearing masks. Look at the vast difference, though. At nearly 80% mask use for both the USA and IND, the USA's case numbers skyrocketed above IND's case numbers. Meanwhile, SWD's case numbers, with only 28% mask use, were nearly equal to those of the USA. At best, this seems to indicate that something else besides mask-use determines the number of people infected, and the effect of mask use alone cannot be separated from other factors.

It is this very difficulty of separating the effect of face-mask use from other factors that renders popularly cited studies in favor of masks inconclusive and unfit for guiding policy makers.

For a more exhaustive comparison of mask use in other countries and the United States, refer to the book by independent researcher, Ian Miller, Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates, Post Hill Press (2022). Miller's many charts confirm the patterns of the two charts shown above. More importantly, he demonstrates that merely mandating the use of face masks had no effect on controlling COVID-19.

The answer to Question 3, therefore, is No — the actual practice of wearing face masks has not demonstrated any effect on controlling COVID-19.

Question 4: Have Formal Studies Ever Provided Reliable Evidence to Justify Requiring Face Masks?

One of the strangest aspects about COVID-19 has been the self-contradictory conclusions arrived at by researchers and organizations studying face-mask effectiveness.

In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a 125-page report with a section that reviewed the evidence on face-mask effectiveness in controlling a viral respiratory infection. All of the studies concluded that there was no significant reduction in infections between masked and unmasked study participants. The WHO report is titled, Non-Pharmaceutical Public Health Measures for Mitigating the Risk and Impact of Epidemic and Pandemic Influenza. The section on face masks begins at page 21. On page 25, the following chart appears that summarizes WHO's review of the evidence:

Again, all of the studies failed to provide any rational foundation for promoting mass masking. Nonetheless, WHO seemingly ignored its own findings and became a leading promoter of face masks. Political pressure, not science, caused this contradictory behavior.

Another, equally blatant self-contradictory conclusion appeared in a 2023 review of evidence published by The Royal Society, Great Britain's leading national organization for the promotion of scientific research. Entitled Effectiveness of Face Masks for Reducing Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: A Rapid Systematic Review, this article appeared in the journal, Philosophical Transactions A (Royal Society), 381: 20230133.

In the following quotes, notice the clear statements about serious study limitations, which the researchers seemingly ignore, to conclude in favor of masks anyway:

Due to a paucity of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), observational studies were included in the analysis.

Ninety-one per cent of observational studies were at ‘critical’ risk of bias (ROB) in at least one domain, often failing to separate the effects of masks from concurrent interventions.

Despite the ROB [Risk Of Bias], and allowing for uncertain and variable efficacy, we conclude that wearing masks, wearing higher quality masks (respirators), and mask mandates generally reduced SARS-CoV-2 transmission in these study populations.

ROB [Risk Of Bias] was consistently high across all included study designs.

Critical ROB [Risk Of Bias] in observational studies was often related to study authors' inability to definitively relate outcomes to masks or mask mandates alone...or due to a failure to adjust for other COVID-19 protective interventions either before or during the study period ....

Because it is difficult to monitor mask-wearing in practice during a health emergency, the observational studies included in this review have relied on self-reported mask-wearing as a measure of mask use.

Conclusion

Most of the studies included in this rapid systematic review were observational rather than experimental. Study designs commonly suffered from a critical ROB [Risk Of Bias]. The effects measured in each study were variable in magnitude and generally of low precision. 

Nevertheless, taking together the evidence from all studies, we conclude that wearing masks, wearing higher quality masks (respirators), and mask mandates generally reduced the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Here individuals trained as scientists unambiguously describe how:

• their body of evidence is at critical risk of bias, 

• the effect of mask use is often difficult to separate from other possible factors,

• determination of actual mask use in their studies was based on self-reporting,

yet they still conclude that face masks are effective. Policy makers accept such a contradictory fabrication as legitimate support for making rules that require people to wear masks in order to participate in society. Face-mask advocates treat the review as if it meets a standard of evidence sufficient to enforce measures that hinder and disrupt normal functioning. The Royal Society's conclusion, however, is itself biased in favor of the very bias that it clearly points out multiple times. The conclusion simply fails to follow from the facts.

Possibly the most compelling, honest review of evidence has been carried out by the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), the leading resource for systematic reviews in health care. Enitled Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses, the full-length review spans over three hundred pages.

Key findings of the Cochrane review were as follows:

• Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness (ILI)/COVID-19 like illness compared to not wearing masks... .

• Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza/SARS-CoV-2 compared to not wearing masks... .

• The use of a N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza infection... .

• The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions.

The Cochrane review claims very infrequent reporting of adverse effects from wearing masks. Another review by German doctors, however, focused specifically on adverse effects, and these doctors found statistically significant instances of such adverse effects in the collection of literature that they studied. 

The 42-page German review by Dr. Kai Kisielinskiis and others is titled, Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free From Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards?, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021, 18, 4344. 

A particularly informative part of this review states the following:

From a microbiological and epidemiological point of view, masks in everyday use pose a risk of contamination. This can occur as foreign contamination but also as self-contamination. On the one hand, germs are sucked in or attach themselves to the masks through convection currents. On the other hand, potential infectious agents from the nasopharynx accumulate excessively on both the outside and inside of the mask during breathing. This is compounded by contact with contaminated hands.

Since masks are constantly penetrated by germ-containing breath and the pathogen reproduction rate is higher outside mucous membranes, potential infectious pathogens accumulate excessively on the outside and inside of masks. On and in the masks, there are quite serious, potentially disease-causing bacteria and fungi... . From this aspect, it is also problematic that moisture distributes these potential pathogens in the form of tiny droplets via capillary action on and in the mask, whereby further proliferation in the sense of self- and foreign contamination by the aerosols can then occur internally and externally with every breath. In this regard, it is also known from the literature that masks are responsible for a proportionally disproportionate production of fine particles in the environment and, surprisingly, much more so than in people without masks.

It was shown that all mask-wearing subjects released significantly smaller particles of size 0.3–0.5 µm into the air than maskless people, both when breathing, speaking and coughing... 

The correct answer to Question 4, therefore, is No — formal studies have never provided reliable evidence to justify requiring face masks.

Question 5: Do the Known Properties of Air Flow Justify Requiring Face Masks? 

A person does not need to be an engineer or a physicist to understand that air flows through the path of least resistance. If there is a path of no resistance, then air certainly will flow through that path. If coronavirus particles exist in small enough droplets within air flow, then infected air also flows through the path of least or no resistance.

It is now well accepted that the virus that causes COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) is airborne, which means that it flows, as part of the air (in tiny aerosols), through the path of least or no resistance. Face masks and N95 respirators have tiny gaps around the edges, which allow air exchange between the atmosphere and the person breathing. These are paths of no resistance. These are why breathing is still possible when wearing a surgical mask or N95 respirator. 

Air that carries SARS-CoV-2 particles in tiny aerosols readily flows through the gaps around the edges of face masks. These gaps focus normal breath-flow into concentrated air jets and clouds, and these jets or clouds now transport the virus in and out of the mask. In other words, a mask merely redirects how air and airborne viruses flow - it does not block the airborne virus in either direction (in or out).

Airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, via aerosols, is significant. Consequently, a simple barrier over the face can never offer a true defense against infectious agents that use the very air we breathe as a transportation medium. Believing otherwise ignores the most basic understanding of how air moves. The laws of physics positively cannot accommodate desperate, wishful thinking that blots out understanding of this reality.

An engineer and modeling expert, John Paul Beaudoin, is one of a number of people who has stressed the importance of understanding the dynamics of air flow in and out of masks. In his article, Masks: A Reminder to be Afraid, he points out:

Masks do not stop COVID-19 aerosols from exiting en masse in plumes from regular breathing.

Masks do not stop COVID-19 aerosols from coughs or sneezes exiting en masse. They merely direct the aerosol plume in every direction except forward.  The plume of 1µm to 10µm virus aerosols remains suspended in air at a height of around 4 to 7 feet for several minutes. 

People don’t walk into a store and stand there for 20 minutes. Six foot distancing means nothing in these situations as we all walk through each other’s breath within seconds of passing a location where someone just was.

Masks collect a massive amount of virus concentration. Whether you wear gloves or not, touching your mask simply puts a large amount of virus on your hands or gloves that then touch things like door handles and shopping carts.

After 30 minutes or less, your mask becomes moist and is then capable of spreading virus aerosols due to capillary action that carries the virus from the inside of your mask to the outside of the mask. 

There have been no experiments applicable to real world conditions.

Beaudoin's comment on six-foot distancing is relevant, because it highlights the fact that a masked person walking inside any enclosed space constantly emits plumes of breath. Other masked people walk through these plumes, breathing them in and then adding to them with their own plumes of breath. Even if masked, a group of people share the air of a collective cloud of breath that they all create, as they exhale their individual plumes from behind their masks. 

If SARS-CoV-2 aerosols are in this collective cloud of breath, then people are breathing aerosols through the same gaps around masks that allow the aerosols to be there in the first place. Furthermore, the masks now act as virus traps, catching virus aerosols and accumulating the viral particles they contain in far greater concentrations near the face than if masks were not there.

Megan Mansell explains all this in detail, in her book, Accommodating Chaos: Correcting Course on a Plague of Misinformation (2022)[free copy not available]. Some quotes from the book are as follows:

Of course, the core issue with masks, and even respirators, is the seal — small gap areas effectively render these devices ineffective.

... a contagious individual should not wear a mask or respirator that creates a concentrated plume of aerosols, thinking they are protecting others from their respiratory emissions.

Masks can exacerbate the spread of airborne pathogens by creating focused plumes of fine particulates, in turn increasing emission trajectory, with the added concern of aerosolization of droplets through the mask membrane.

... one exhale [is] capable of containing enough viral load to infect 5 or more people.

Wearing a mask that causes side plumes is a terrible idea if trying to keep the person sitting next to you from inhaling something you’re contagious with.

... if enough matter still gets through to get someone sick or exposed to a given harmful substance, it isn’t a  mitigating apparatus.

Even unvalved N95s do not filter exhale. Respiratory matter is emitted in a plume from the bridge of the nose ...

When compared with the dissipating emissions of an unbound face, creating pressurized plumes of aerosols that travel in a greater trajectory is not helpful when attempting to block or capture airborne matter.

Over time, the masks themselves become a living medium in a warm, moist, porous environment, ideal for amplification of mold and bacteria.

A critical question that many people have failed to consider, then, is:

Exactly what happens to virus particles themselves, once a mask or respirator captures them? 

The mask does not magically make virus particles disappear. Once the fluid that contains them evaporates or absorbs into mask material, what happens to the virus particles next? A constant, two-way stream of air from breathing passes over them, presumably with the force to dislodge or relocate them. A continually increasing moist environment exists around them, presumably with the force to re-assimilate them into new aerosols to be propelled outward from the mask in the focused jets discussed earlier. 

Face-mask material retains both virus particles in aerosols from the environment when we inhale and virus particles in aerosols exiting when we exhale. Infectious particles, thus, can build up in a far greater concentration near the face than if the mask material was not there. More of these infectious particles are now positioned to be re-inhaled from a very short distance, where they can easily pass deep into the lungs to cause pneumonia. 

An N95, with its higher filtering capacity, can capture even more infectious particles. It increases the quantity of virus particles remaining near the face in the same way that it decreases the quantity of breath dissipating outward. Viruses that should have been removed from the respiratory tract via freely dissipating breath are, instead, returned by re-breathing, which increases the overall viral load. Reproduction of virus particles inside the mask is exponential, compared to mere capture of droplets by the mask.

Zacharias Fögen, MD has proposed the real possibility that such a process has increased the number of COVID-19 deaths, rather than decreasing the number of deaths. In 2022, he published a paper entitled, The Foegen Effect: A Mechanism by Which Facemasks Contribute to the COVID-19 Case Fatality Rate, Medicine 101:7 (e28924), in which he states:

The most important finding from this study is that contrary to the accepted thought that fewer people are dying because infection rates are reduced by masks, this was not the case. Results from this study strongly suggest that mask mandates actually caused about 1.5 times the number of deaths or ~50% more deaths compared to no mask mandates. 

A tunnel-visioned focus on respiratory droplets, as opposed to viral particles themselves, has blinded researchers and policy makers to the deeper, fluid-dynamic processes occurring with the use of face masks. To repeat the words of John Paul Beaudoin,

There have been no experiments applicable to real world conditions.

Consequently, the known properties of air flow have never been fully applied in the deeper study of face-mask effectiveness.

The answer to Question 5, then, is No —  the known properties of air flow do not justify requiring face masks.

Five Critical Questions Whose Answers are All No!

Five questions have been asked and answered. The answers should guide rational individuals in deciding whether required face masks are justified. To repeat, those answers are:

1. A true coronavirus health emergency did not exist in 2019.

2. Asymptomatic transmission has never posed a real threat.

3. The actual practice of wearing face masks has not demonstrated any effect on controlling COVID-19.

4. Formal studies have never provided reliable evidence to justify requiring face masks.

5. The known properties of air flow do not justify requiring face masks.

Any one of these answers alone would suffice to disqualify face masks as reasonable devices to force onto entire groups or populations. All five together reduce the belief in face mask effectiveness to mythology.

In light of the information presented here, any further decisions to require face masks are not reasonable and, therefore, are not justified.  Even more, promoting mass face-mask use to prevent airborne transmission of viruses amounts to fraud — scientific fraud, medical fraud, and health-consumer fraud.

END

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