Discerning Truth: COVID-19 Part 2

Hey folks, welcome to Discerning Truth, the podcast of the Biblical Science Institute. I'm Dr. Lyle. We've been looking at coronavirus and some of the issues surrounding that, and I'd like to continue with that topic.

And so let's just get right into it. What about face masks? People have their opinions on masks, strong opinions, and you'll even see experts disagreeing on whether masks should be worn, whether they have any value or not.

And that may lead you to think that the question is unanswerable. But in reality, the effectiveness of face masks is scientifically testable.

Of course, not everyone cares about the facts. Some people, they've got their opinion, and that's the end of the matter.

In fact, whenever I sense that someone is becoming very emotional and defensive, I always ask this question.

I ask, is there any evidence I could present to you that would change your mind? And if they say no, then

I know I'm dealing with someone who is irrational, at least on that issue, and there isn't any point in further conversation.

Rational people don't just believe what they want. They examine the evidence and are willing to change their mind in light of facts.

But if people don't care about the facts, then there's really no point in having the conversation. That's fine. That's fine.

In reality, either masks provide some benefit or they don't. That might depend on the type of mask and so on, but it's a question.

The question, do masks significantly reduce risk of viral infection? That is a science question, isn't it?

Because it's directly testable by experiment in the present. That's exactly the kind of question that the scientific method was developed to answer.

Now previously, I've talked about science and how it is not well -suited for reconstructing past events.

It has a role to play, but the conclusion is never directly testable when you talk about the past.

And so people tend to draw very different conclusions about the evidence. They draw different interpretations of the same evidence because they have different worldviews.

They have a different view of history. And so when reconstructing past events, they come up with different interpretations of the same evidence.

Worldview makes a huge difference. But when it comes to things that are directly testable in the present, worldview issues are not as critical as long as your worldview at least minimally accepts the scientific method.

And the reason is because you can test the claim. You say, I think this will result if you do this, and you test it, and it doesn't happen.

You're wrong. I mean, that's just all there is to it. So the question, do masks effectively filter out viruses and aerosols containing those viruses?

That's a science question. It's actually a physics question, isn't it? Because we're asking, given the size of the particles and the pressure involved in the flow velocity and the grid spacing of the mask, how do such particles move?

That's a fluid dynamics question, which is an aspect of physics. I've had graduate -level training in fluid dynamics.

Now common sense would suggest that a mask is not going to protect you from a virus that is a thousand times smaller than the holes in your mask.

Now I've heard all the counter -arguments, but, you know, well, it will protect people from the larger water droplets when they cough or sneeze.

Two problems with that counter -argument. First of all, what's the alternative? You get better protection than what?

Then sneezing directly into somebody's face? Yeah, I would say a mask would be better.

If you're going to sneeze directly into my face, I'd rather you have a mask on than not. But that's not the normal alternative.

Polite people don't come up and sneeze and cough right in your face. You're supposed to cough or sneeze into your arm, like that, or your elbow.

And that ought to block those particles pretty well, I would think. I haven't seen any study that says that sneezing or coughing through a mask is better than coughing or sneezing into your arm.

I haven't seen any study on that. Second, these large particles that the masks might potentially trap, that's not the problem.

It's the millions of small ones. The large particles, by the way, those tend to, the large droplets tend to eventually settle to the ground due to gravity.

The small ones don't, because the force of gravity on them is negligible. They're carried away by the current. It's the tiny ones that are the issue.

And they're far smaller than the holes in your mask, especially if you have one of these cloth masks, like this one.

Some people say, oh, but I use an N95 mask. Well, you probably don't, because those are not real common, but in any case.

And they block 95 % of the particles. They block 95 % of particles that are larger than 0 .3 microns.

Viruses are smaller than that. Coronavirus is particularly small. And so aerosols, and even aerosols that carry the viruses, they can go through that.

So common sense would suggest that masks are no more effective than a screen door on a submarine. But common sense, intuition, is not always right.

There's some things in this world that are true, and yet contrary to our intuitive expectations. Some people say, well,

I'm just going to live by my intuition. This is my opinion, and I'm going to stick with it. Well, you're going to be wrong a lot, because you see, a rational person doesn't just believe what he wants to believe.

Rather, he has good reasons for his belief. He looks at the evidence and adjusts his beliefs accordingly. And when it comes to questions of how the universe operates today, the scientific method is a very powerful tool that the

Lord has given to us to answer those kinds of questions. We ought to rely on that rather than just our intuitive expectations.

So do you want to know if masks filter out aerosols? Well, I got news for you. That's been tested.

That's been tested. And we find that aerosols go right through and around masks. Dr.

Ted Noel demonstrates this using water vapor. Let's have a look. And take a look at an ordinary surgical mask, and I'm using a vape.

As you can see, that vape, which has aerosols the same size as COVID -19 or larger, goes through and around a surgical mask.

Now, if we take a cup mask and have a good look at it, here we go, notice it goes right through the mask easily and goes in every direction.

The aerosol is not affected by the mask in any material. Now we look at a surgical mask with a foam strip to protect above and keep my glasses from fogging.

Lo and behold, the aerosols go all around it. Has no effect on me spreading aerosols to you.

Now a cloth mask I borrowed from my wife. Once again, here we go, boom, straight through and around.

It has no effect on the spread of aerosols. They go everywhere. And then

I went and bought a guard mask with a high -efficiency filter material. That one, here we go.

Watch for it, through and around.

It had no effect on the vape aerosol, which, remember, is the same size or larger.

So keep that in mind when you think about, you know, where are these viruses going? Well, now you can visually see kind of where they just build up around you.

They're carried away by the air currents and so on. And of course, in that experiment, actually the water droplets are quite a bit larger than the aerosols you normally exhale because you can see those.

And the ones that you exhale are normally invisible. So do masks trap any viruses at all?

Because mathematically, you'd think, well, they would almost have to trap some. So the question really is whether it has any real -world impact.

And so now I think there is value in just looking at the raw numbers, and that's been tested.

So there was a recent experiment that measured the actual number of viruses that pass through a mask.

When a person, when an infected person's wearing the mask and another person is the receiver and you have masks on both or masks on one or the other and different types of mask, it's a wonderful study.

And let's take a look at this study. Effectiveness of face masks in preventing airborne transmission of SARS -CoV -2.

And you can see the setup of the experiment here. It's a very clever setup. You have a machine over here that's pumping small samples of the virus contained in water droplets about five microns in size through our test dummy head here at a constant rate.

So that's not quite realistic, but that's okay. At least it's something. So he's constantly exhaling, and he's potentially wearing a mask.

The other person then at a certain distance away, and they actually tried several different distances, and he's got a mask on too potentially or not.

They tested it both ways. And yeah, pretty clever. And then they measured the amount of viruses that are absorbed by the receiver.

And the receiver, by the way, they have an air pump on him too. He's breathing normally. He's inhaling and exhaling.

And so that's pretty realistic. And so when we take a look at the results, what do we find?

First of all, here's the result for the spreader not wearing a mask, but the receiver is wearing a mask.

And they try it for different types of masks. And the number of viruses that are received or detected are indicated by the brown bar there you see.

So the first brown bar is without mask. So the spreader is not wearing a mask. The receiver is not wearing a mask.

That's the baseline. That's how many viruses you'd get without any intervention. Now, the receiver wears a cotton mask.

That's the second line. And you can see it's virtually identical to the first line.

Wearing a cloth mask as the receiver made no difference, statistically made no difference at all.

It's within the error bars of the original study. What if he wears a surgical mask?

There's just a minuscule drop, but it's not much. He's still getting the same virus load as if he weren't wearing a mask at all.

Now you go to N95, there's a little bit of a dip there. N95 seems to help a little bit. And this is

N95 without necessarily having it fitted. And then the final bar is N95 fitted, which seems to be the same as the unfitted.

Now, there is a small drop. So the N95 mask does seem to reduce the virus load, but it's not by very much.

Now, it's probably a little more than it looks because the graph is logarithmic, but probably our response to exposure is logarithmic as well.

So do masks provide much benefit from the receiver? The cloth mask, I would say really none at all.

Surgical mask, perhaps just a little bit. N95 masks do seem to have a little bit of a benefit.

Okay, what if the spreader is wearing a mask, but not the receiver? And here we do a little better.

So again, we start with the baseline where the spreader is not wearing a mask. And then we go to the second line where he's wearing a cloth mask.

There is a slight drop, but boy, is it slight. Boy, is it slight. And then if he's wearing a surgical mask, actually, that is almost the same as the cloth mask, interestingly.

And then when he gets to the N95 unfitted, there's a substantial drop. And if he wears

N95 fitted, that's a substantial drop. So if the spreader is wearing an

N95 fitted mask, one that does not have a valve on it, by the way, because there's some that have a valve that release everything into the air, that does nothing.

Yeah, there's a substantial drop. Pretty good. What if both of them wear masks?

Because keep in mind, most people don't have N95 masks. Most people have either a cotton one or maybe they get a little of a surgical one.

If both people are wearing masks, and let's say the spreader is wearing a cotton mask, well, first of all, the first bar is no masks at all.

The second bar is the spreader is wearing a cotton mask, but the receiver is not wearing a mask.

And the drop is just tiny. It's just there is a drop, but boy, is it small.

And then next, both of them are wearing cotton masks. That's the third bar. And it's slightly lower than the no masks at all, but not much.

Surgical mask, about the same as a cotton mask. N95, there's a little bit of a drop.

And N95 fitted, there's a little bit more of a drop, but not much. Okay, what if the spreader wears a surgical mask?

Well, again, the baseline is without either of them wearing masks. The first bar after that is the spreader is wearing a surgical mask.

The receiver is not wearing a mask. There's a slight drop, but it's not much. He's getting just about the same number of viruses, really.

If the receiver then wears a cotton mask, drops a little bit, but boy, is it tiny.

If he wears a surgical mask, it's about the same as the cotton mask. N95 drops a little more. N95 fitted drops a little bit more.

But notice how small this effect is, though. Even when both of them are wearing high -quality masks, even when the spreader is wearing a surgical mask and the receiver is wearing a

N95 fitted mask, look at the number of viruses he's getting. Again, that's 10 to the power of 6, so that's a million viral

RNAs that he's detected. So in that simulation, masks would not have prevented any of those people from getting sick.

But the highest -quality masks did reduce some of the viral load. But the more important question is, is there a real -world benefit?

Because, I mean, it's one thing to say, yeah, theoretically, this person will get fewer viruses, but does it really have a substantial effect on whether or not they'll get infected?

Right? That's the question we want to know. Does it reduce my chance of getting an infection? Does it reduce the severity of the infection, of the symptoms, because I'm getting fewer viruses?

Because some things that should work, theoretically, on paper, in the real world, don't work because there are other factors you didn't consider.

Let me give you an example of this. One of the studies we're going to look at here in a minute found that cloth masks like this have 97 % penetration.

97 % of the viruses go right through this thing. 3 % are blocked. So for every 100 virus particles, 97 pass.

And you say, well, that's not much, but, hey, I'll take that 3 % blockage. I mean, it's better than nothing, right?

But when you wear your mask, when I wear my mask, I have to breathe a little harder. Suppose I have to, for the sake of hypothesis, suppose

I have to breathe 4 % harder. So whereas previously, I would breathe in a unit of air with 100 viral particles, now

I breathe 4 % larger volume, which has 104 viral particles. 3 % of them are blocked by the mask, which means 101 particles go through.

So in that hypothetical scenario, the mask actually made things worse. And I'm not saying that that's, that those are the actual, the 97%, that's true.

The 4 % was hypothetical. But you can see how under certain conditions, a mask might actually make things worse.

So that's the question that we need to ask. Is there real -world application? Is there a real -world benefit to wearing masks?

Does it outweigh the risks of wearing masks? So just because masks may mathematically block some viral particles, that doesn't automatically translate to them being an effective deterrent to infection.

They might make things better. They might make things worse, or it might be a wash. So how do we test the real -world effectiveness of masks?

And this is where we get into the scientific method, or we're about to. Because first of all, some people think that they are being very scientific.

Because they've said to me, well, masks must work because, you know, in this particular state or in this particular county or in this particular nation, the leader introduced a mask mandate.

And sure enough, the number of cases dropped slightly. Okay? Well, of course, any student of logic would recognize that as an error in reasoning.

It's a post hoc ergo proctor hoc fallacy. Just because event B happened after event

A does not mean that event A caused event B. Now, that could be the case, but there are other possibilities as well.

It could be that event C caused event A, and then event B as well. And event B just took a little longer. It could be that event

A did not directly cause event B, but event A caused event C, which then caused event

B. That's a very plausible explanation in this instance. I mean, you can imagine your governor comes out and says, the number of COVID cases is getting pretty high.

So I'm going to have to insist all of you wear masks. And you're watching that on the evening news and you think, I had no idea there were that many

COVID cases, I think we should just stay home this week. And so you see the mask mandate did have a positive effect, but not because the masks themselves are doing anything, but because they induced behavior that genuinely does do something, isolation.

Maybe some people say, well, if I'm going to have to wear a mask, I'm just not going to go out, I hate wearing those things. And so, and not going out and not interacting with other people, that does reduce the number of cases.

And so, that's an example of where the masks in and of themselves did nothing. But the decree caused people to behave in a way that had a positive impact in reducing the number of cases.

Then again, event B happens after event A, it might just be coincidence, right?

I sneezed and then it rained. Now, did my sneeze cause the rain? No, it's just a coincidence.

So how do you distinguish a genuine causation relationship from a coincidence? And the answer is, you find many, many examples.

If event A truly is the cause of event B, then B must follow necessarily from event

A. That's the definition of causation, it's necessary succession. And so I would find that many times when

I sneeze, it doesn't rain. And many times when it rains, I haven't sneezed. And so I would discover as I accumulated more examples, that there really is no causal relationship between sneezing and raining.

And likewise, we can do the same thing with masks. When we look at many different examples of mask mandates and then coronavirus cases, do the mask mandates normally cause a drop?

Well, there was a study that was done on this. This, let's see here, this was done by Swiss Policy Research.

And they actually produced some charts showing when the mask mandates were in place and the effect that it had or lack of effect on COVID -19 cases.

So let's have a look at this. Okay, so we start with Austria and look at its COVID -19 cases.

Number of cases is on the vertical axis, the date is on the horizontal axis.

And you can see when masks were implemented, required masks were implemented.

And you can see that the number of cases do drop after that. But then again, they were already dropping before that.

It doesn't look like the mask mandates changed the slope of the line. It's almost as if they had no effect at all.

Belgium, you can see the number of cases there. Suddenly masks are required.

There was no drop. The number of cases actually went up a little bit. California, and then they start requiring masks.

And do the number of cases drop? No, they actually increase when masks are mandated.

France, and we have masks mandated. And did the number drop? Maybe a little bit, but then it just went right up.

Germany, masks mandated. Now there it looks like it might have dropped a little bit. But it's not a huge effect.

What about Hawaii? Masks are implemented, indoor masks, and it drops a little bit, but not much.

And it was already dropping. Outdoor masks are implemented, and that doesn't seem to have any positive effect at all. It seems like they just continue to go up.

There was a little bit of a downturn there, but then they went up again. Ireland, masks are implemented.

Did the numbers drop? No, they actually increased. Italy, masks required, and the number goes way up.

That's interesting. Spain, and so we have the masks required, and then it doesn't seem to have much of an effect at all.

And of course, the cases are going up now as we enter into the winter months. That's what we would expect. UK, masks required, it looks like it has no effect whatsoever.

So the idea that a mask mandate is implemented, then the cases drop, that's not generally true.

Generally, there's no effect on the number of COVID cases, none whatsoever, when mask mandates are implemented.

So that's interesting. And that might suggest that masks really aren't doing that much.

Of course, even that conclusion we can't draw definitively because we don't know if people are complying with the mask mandate.

You could say, well, you know, the mask mandate goes into effect, but nobody cares. They don't obey that mandate.

So how can we test if masks are effective? Well, that's where the scientific method comes in, doesn't it? In an ideal situation, how would we scientifically test whether or not masks have the effect of reducing the number of COVID -19 infections?

And the way you would do that scientifically, ideally, under perfect circumstances, is you would have two groups of people.

You'd have one group of people that wear masks, and you'd have the other group of people that don't wear masks, and that's the control group, okay?

And the control group is the baseline by which you can measure the effectiveness of masks in the other group, okay?

So you need to know what happens when masks aren't worn so that you can make the comparison. Then you expose both groups to the same environment in which there is some exposure to COVID -19, and you compare the number of people that became infected in the mask group versus those that became infected in the control group.

And assuming that all other conditions are identical, any difference between the two groups could only be due to masks because that's the only variable.

That's the way you do science. You reduce it to one variable, and you have a control group, and then you have the group that has that one variable difference, and you see if it makes any difference.

So that's why it's so important to keep all the conditions the same. If the other conditions weren't the same, then you wouldn't know anything, right?

If, for example, the control group wore gloves and the mask group didn't, and there's a difference in infection percentage, you wouldn't know if it's due to the masks or the gloves or some combination of the two.

So you try to keep all the conditions the same except for the one you want to test. Now, in practice, it's impossible to keep all the conditions exactly the same between the two groups because there are different people in different groups.

Some people in the mask group might have a natural immunity to the virus just by chance, and so their infection rate is lower, but not because of the masks, but because there's a few people that are naturally immune.

So how do you account for that? The only way to combat these unknown variables is to increase the number of people in each group.

If you have 1 ,000 people in the unmasked group and 1 ,000 people in the masked group, the differences tend to cancel out, right?

Because the probability that all 1 ,000 people in the masked group would be immune and all the ones in the other are not is statistically absurd.

It's negligible. So the more people you get, the better your statistics come out.

And in any of these studies, there are error bars. And so you say, here's the number of people who got infected, and there's a plus and minus because that plus and minus indicates some of these variables that you don't know about, the fact that some people might have a natural immunity or some people might be prone to being sick anyway.

And so that's what these error bars are for. And so the only way you could be sure that masks do make a difference is if the number of infections in the masked group versus the control group are outside the error bars of each other.

If the error bars overlap, then you don't really know anything. You can't say for certain if the masks had the effect or if these other random variables that we don't know about had the effect.

But keep in mind, those random variables, the larger the number of people you have, statistically, the smaller the number of random variables because randomness tends to cancel out in large numbers.

So that's what you want to do. Scientifically, ideally, is you randomly assign these people to each group and you keep all the other variables the same and you have as many people as possible.

And then there will be error bars in your study. So when you see these studies and they say, this is 95 % confidence interval, that's referring to those error bars.

You can say we're 95 % confident that the true value is within this range. And so if the true value is within this range and the true value is within that range, you don't know.

The true value could be the same between the two groups. So confidence intervals or this is our two sigma or two standard deviation value, that's what that means.

The people in each group should be chosen randomly because if you allow the people to choose which group they're gonna be in, that's a second variable because it might be that people in the mask group are more concerned with their health and therefore they're likely to take other precautions.

They wash their hands more often and so on. That introduces a new variable that you can't control. So you want the group to be randomized.

You want a randomized trial, a controlled randomized trial. Now in the real world, it's hard to do that.

It's rarely that neat, especially with experiments involving human beings because obviously it would be unethical to expose human beings intentionally to something that could kill them for no reason.

So more realistically, we have to take a look at some of these studies where people are already in a high risk environment, such as a hospital or the healthcare workers.

And you try to get as close to that ideal condition though as you can get. And so what I'm gonna look at is a number of studies that this has been tested, the effectiveness of masks using this kind of method, using a control group and a mask group.

And there've been a number of these studies that have been done. And I'm gonna look at studies primarily before 2020.

Why? Because once the government gets involved, politics begins to obscure science.

Think about it. Once the government says you have to wear masks, masks are effective. Suppose you're a researcher and you're funded by the government.

Are you going to come to the conclusion? No, that's not true. And lose your funding. And I'm not saying,

I'm not accusing anyone of being unethical. I'm just saying that people who suspect that masks maybe aren't so effective would not be as likely to do the experiment because they might lose their funding.

You can understand these things. These are real world issues. So we're gonna look at issues. We're gonna look at studies before 2020 when nobody had a dog in the fight.

And that's gonna reduce biases. You can't totally eliminate biases, but it'll reduce it.

So one of the ones that I looked at, it's called a cluster randomized trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers.

This was published in 2015. The experiment was actually done in 2011 and it was reported in 2015. Now, one of the things they found in the study is that penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97%.

So folks, these kind of cloth masks, the one I have, they don't block hardly anything.

Particles go right through those. Microscopic particles, the size of viruses and aerosols that carry this virus, they go right through.

They found medical masks, however, have a penetration of 44%.

Not bad. So they're blocking about half the particles that go through. Does that have an effect?

Is that better than not wearing a mask? Or is the fact that you have to breathe harder and some of these other variables, does that shift things the other way?

Well, here's their result. They said a post hoc analysis adjusted for compliance and other potential confounders showed that the rate of influenza -like illness,

ILI, was significantly higher in the cloth mask arm compared with the medical mask arm.

There was no significant difference between the medical mask arm and the control arm. Interesting.

And by the way, I have to point out that in this study, the control arm, ideally it should be no masks, but they decided that it would be unethical to ask people not to wear masks at all.

So the control group was masks optional. It was sort of the whatever you normally do. And many people in the control group did wear masks, either cloth or medical.

So it's the control groups, it's hard to know what to make of that in this instance. But I think it's interesting that nonetheless, the control group being as close as you can get to no masks actually had the same infection rate as those who were wearing the quality surgical masks, the medical masks.

And the cloth masks had a greater infection rate. You were more likely to get infected if you were wearing a cloth mask.

They also say hand -washing was significantly protective against laboratory -confirmed viral infections.

So wash your hands. Wash your hands, that does work. They go on to say cloth masks resulted in significantly higher rates of infection than medical masks and also performed worse than the control arm.

They go on to say the trend for all outcomes showed the lowest rates of infection in the medical mask group and the highest rate in the cloth mask arm.

So according to this study, the worst thing you could possibly do is put one of these things on, one of these cloth masks.

You're actually more likely to get infected according to that study. They say this study is the first randomized control trial of cloth masks and the results caution against the use of cloth masks.

This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Now, I do have to point out that the viruses in this study were influenza -like viruses, influenza and similar viruses.

Influenza viruses are actually larger than COVID -19 viruses. And so if masks don't keep you, protect you from influenza viruses, then they certainly aren't gonna protect you from COVID -19 viruses.

Obviously, they can't do an experiment on COVID -19 at this time, it hadn't been discovered yet. And so most of these studies are studying influenza -like viruses, which is a good proxy for COVID -19 because influenza viruses are just a little bit bigger than COVID -19.

Okay, here's another one. Face mask use and control of respiratory virus transmission in households.

We conducted a prospective cluster randomized trial comparing surgical masks, non -fit tested

P2 masks and no masks in prevention of influenza -like illness in households.

So they have three groups and they say during the 2006 and 2007 winter seasons, 286 exposed adults from 143 households who had been exposed to a child with clinical respiratory illness were recruited.

Intent to treat analysis showed no significant difference in the relative risks of ILI, influenza -like illness in the mask use groups compared with the control group.

You mean the surgical masks didn't improve your odds? Nope. The non -fitted

P2 masks didn't improve your odds of not getting infected? Nope. Now, of course, it's possible that there's some small effect but it's apparently outside the error bars and therefore it's not statistically significant.

There could be a small effect, but there can't be a large effect, not according to that study. Okay, here's another one that's published in 2009.

Use of surgical face masks to reduce the incidence of the common cold among healthcare workers in Japan.

A randomized control trial. Now, of course, the common cold is caused by a virus, rhinovirus, most of them, some of them coronaviruses, albeit not the

SARS -CoV -2 virus. So what did they find? Here's their conclusion.

Face mask use in healthcare workers has not been demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds.

So you wore the surgical mask, you were just as likely to get a cold and the symptoms were just as severe. It made no difference at all.

And these are surgical masks, these are the good ones, not the cloth masks. Okay, here's another study.

Face masks to prevent transmission of influenza. A systematic review that was done in 2010.

What did they conclude? There is little evidence to support the effectiveness of face masks to reduce the risk of infection.

Interesting. And of course, they're comparing a number of different studies there. Another one from 2011. The use of masks and respirators to prevent transmission of influenza.

A systematic review of the scientific evidence. And so they're looking at a bunch of different studies. What do they conclude?

None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between masks, respirator use, and protection against influenza infection.

Here's another study from December, this is 2017. Effectiveness of masks and respirators against respiratory infections in healthcare workers.

A systematic review and meta -analysis. Okay, what did they find? Compared to masks,

N95 respirators conferred superior protection against CRI and laboratory -confirmed bacterial, but not viral infections or influenza -like illnesses.

So these things help when you're, they can block bacteria because bacteria are much larger than viruses.

So masks do provide some benefit against bacteria, at least for some period of time until the bacteria build up to a certain point.

They go on to say, meta -analysis suggested a protective, but non -statistically significant effect against laboratory -confirmed viral infections.

So they did see just a little bit of a bump, but it was not outside the error bar. So you can't say that these masks convert any kind of positive benefit in reducing viral infections.

So here's another one. Preliminary findings of a randomized trial of non -pharmaceutical interventions to prevent influenza transmission in households.

And so they actually looked at a few things. They're looking at the influenza virus.

So after influenza was confirmed in an index case by, and they have a particular test they used for that, the household of the index subject was randomized to one, control, two, surgical face mask, or three, hand hygiene.

What conclusion did they find? The laboratory -based or clinical secondary attack ratios did not significantly differ across the intervention arms.

Isn't that interesting? Didn't seem to have much of an effect. What about, here's another one.

The role of face masks and hand hygiene in the prevention of influenza transmission in households results from a cluster randomized trial.

And this was done in Berlin, Germany. So now they start by saying previous control studies on the effect of non -pharmaceutical intervention,

NPI, namely the use of face masks and intensified hand hygiene in preventing household transmission of influenza have not produced definitive results.

So that confirms what we've been looking at so far. These other studies have not shown that it makes any difference, really.

Okay, study arms were wearing a face mask and practicing intensified hygiene.

That's the MH group. Wearing a face mask only, that's the M group. And none of the two, that's the control group.

Okay, so they're testing three things. Your control group, no precautions.

One group wears face masks. Another group wears face masks and practice some kind of hand hygiene, hand washing, frequent hand washing and the like.

Okay, what was the result? In intentions to treat analysis, there was no statistically significant effect of the

M, the mask, and MH, the mask and hand hygiene, interventions on secondary infections.

No statistically significant effect. They did nothing, folks. Now they did find that a small effect when analyzing only households where intervention was implemented within 36 hours after symptom onset of the index case, secondary infection in the pooled

M and MH groups was significantly lower compared to the control group. Now what does that mean?

That means that if they reduced the number of participants to only those within a certain bracket and they pulled the

M and MH groups together, they had to do that because otherwise there's not enough people. This study only had 84 households to begin with.

That's not a lot to eliminate the random variables. It doesn't give you good statistics. So they found that when you pulled the two groups, then there was some small effect if it was done within 36 hours.

So there might be a small positive effect, but boy, is it small. And that's not enough households to form a statistically significant conclusion.

Here's another one. Face masks and hand hygiene to prevent influenza transmission in households, a cluster randomized trial.

This was done in 2009. What did they find? Hand hygiene with or without face masks seemed to reduce influenza transmission, but the differences compared with the control group were not significant.

So hand hygiene might've helped a little bit, but it wasn't enough to be outside the error bars and so it's not statistically significant and face masks didn't seem to do anything at all.

Now let's come up to some more recent studies. In 2020, there was one done by the

Danish. And granted in 2020, there's a tendency to go along with government mandates.

So we need to be cautious about that, but that would tend to produce a bias in favor of masks.

So let's see what this study has to say. This is the effectiveness of adding a mask recommendation to other public health measures to prevent

SARS -CoV -2 infection in Danish mask wearers. This is one of the best studies on this topic for two reasons.

One, it's actually dealing with the SARS -CoV -2 virus.

It's not just using influenza as a proxy because you might think, well, maybe there's some difference. Maybe, yeah, masks don't protect, they don't protect against influenza, but for some reason they are able to affect

SARS -CoV -2. So that's the one advantage. And the other thing is this study involved an enormous number of people.

And let me read a little bit about their, the way they did it. The way they did it was superior too.

50 surgical masks and instructions for proper use were given to these workers.

And so these are surgical masks. These are the good ones. These are not the cloth masks that all the studies seem to indicate actually make things worse.

If they do, they either do nothing or they make things worse. These are the good surgical masks and they gave them instructions on how to use them.

So there's no people, you know, you're not supposed to touch your mask and things like that. You put it on and you go and you do.

And so they're following the proper instructions. A total of 3 ,030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear masks and 2 ,994 were assigned to the control.

Not all of them completed the study though. 4 ,862 completed the study. And so they're only gonna look at the results of those people who completed the study, obviously.

So here's what they found. Infection with SARS -CoV -2 occurred in 42 participants in the recommended masks group.

That'd be 1 .8%, around 2%. So, okay. So the folks that were wearing masks, only 2 % of them got infected.

Not bad. How about the control group? The folks who did not wear masks? 53 got infected, 2 .1%.

Wow. There's almost no difference at all. Now there is a slight difference. The mask group did 0 .3

% better. But the problem is that's well inside the error bars of the study. It's not statistically significant.

And so you can't conclude anything in terms of did masks produce a positive effect? We don't know.

It might be a slight one, but we don't have any statistical confidence that that is actually correct. So here's what they say.

They say, although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95 % confidence intervals are compatible with a 46 % reduction to a 23 % increase of infection.

So the surgical masks might've helped a little bit. They might've done nothing, and they might've made things worse. Our results suggest that the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home, among others, did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS -CoV -2 infection in mask wearers.

This is one of the best studies done. It was done with thousands of people. They had a proper control group. They were using the best masks available, and they found that there was not a statistical difference between the two groups.

That is pretty compelling evidence, folks. Pretty compelling. Now, here's an interesting study that was published by the

Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, CIDRAP, and it's a commentary on masks for all for COVID -19, not based on sound data.

And here's what they say. Quote, we do not recommend requiring the general public who do not have symptoms of COVID -19, like illness, to routinely wear cloth or surgical masks because, they get three reasons.

First of all, there's no scientific evidence that they are effective in reducing the risk of SARS -CoV -2 transmission. Their use may result in those wearing the masks to relax other distancing efforts because they have a sense of protection, and we need to preserve the supply of surgical masks for at -risk health workers.

They go on to say, sweeping mask recommendations, as many have proposed, will not reduce SARS -CoV -2 transmission as evidenced by the widespread practice of wearing masks, wearing such masks, and they give a particular example in China, before and during its mass

COVID -19 transmission experience early this year. Our review of the relevant studies indicates that cloth masks will be ineffective at preventing

SARS -CoV -2 transmissions, whether worn as source control or as PPE.

So again, we're just seeing study after study after study confirm that, I mean, these people, they wanna find some small benefit from masks, they just can't find it.

Any slight increase is overwhelmed by the other variables in the experiment, and often you get a decrease, especially with cloth masks.

Now, here's a particular study that was done by, published by the

CDC, the Center for Disease Control, the same organization that tells you you need to wear your mask to slow the spread. This is still on their website, it's hard to find, but it is there, and here's what it says, it's, the title is

Non -Pharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Non -Healthcare Settings, Personal Protective and Environmental Measures.

Here's what they say, in our systematic review, we identified 10 random control trials that reported estimates of the effectiveness of face masks in reducing laboratory -confirmed influenza virus infections in the community from literature published during 1946 through 2018.

In pooled analysis, we found, you ready for it? No significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.

No significant reduction, from the same organization that's telling us we need to wear these masks to slow the spread, interesting.

They go on to say, one study evaluated the use of masks among pilgrims from Australia during a particular pilgrimage and reported no major difference in the risk for laboratory -confirmed influenza virus infections in the control or mask group.

Wear masks, don't wear masks, same number of people get infected. Two studies in university settings assessed the effectiveness of face masks for primary protection by monitoring the incidence of laboratory -confirmed influenza among student hall residents for five months.

The overall reduction in influenza -like illness or laboratory -confirmed influenza cases in the face mask group was not significant in either studies.

They go on to say, disposable medical masks, also known as surgical masks, are loose -fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluid.

There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission, either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure.

Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory -confirmed influenza by the

CDC. And they never retracted it because it's not like they came up with new evidence that somehow overturned that.

Now, of course, we're beginning to see a rise in the number of COVID cases as we go into the winter.

That's to be expected. That happens with viruses. It happens with the flu as well. You get more flu cases in winter than you do in summer.

So we would expect that would drop off again in the spring and summer. But nonetheless, people are thinking, well, maybe people aren't really wearing their masks and that's what's causing these things.

Well, I wanna show you this study. This is, again, a report from the CDC, Center for Disease Control. Community and close contact exposures associated with COVID -19 among symptomatic adults 18 years or older in 11 outpost health care facilities.

This is what they find. According to the CDC, so they're examining all of these COVID -19 positive patients.

Was mask wearing a big factor? You're thinking, well, probably most of the people that were infected were not wearing masks and that's why they got infected.

Well, I got news for you. According to the CDC, 85 % of these COVID -19 positive patients reported either always or often wear a mask.

If you want the breakdown, 70 .6 % of these people who are

COVID positive always wore a mask. 14 .4 reported often wearing a mask.

How many never wore a mask? 3 .9%, never wore a mask. Now that doesn't necessarily mean you're more likely to get

COVID if you wear a mask because the report, we don't know the ratio in the general population and that's what you need to know in order to perform that calculation.

And we don't know what that is, the ratio of mask wearers to not. But it certainly suggests that masks are not very effective at preventing

COVID -19 if the vast majority of people who get it are mask wearers. 85 % of the people who got

COVID -19 were mask wearers. 3 .9 % were not mask wearers. And I submit that you will not find a scientific study published before 2020 that concludes that face masks are highly effective in reducing the spread of a virus.

We'd expect that, they go right through. We've seen that. Bacteria? Bacteria, they'll block for a while at least until they build up to a certain point.

And so my point is not that we've demonstrated that masks have no effect. My point is at the best, any benefit from face masks is minimal.

Any protection against viruses has been shown to be either non -existent or small enough to be statistically irrelevant.

And that's even using these medical or N95 masks. Cloth masks, they seem to make things worse actually in some of these studies.

So anyway, that just gives you something to chew on. Now, could medical masks or N95 respirators provide some small benefit?

Sure, but it would have to be small in order to be compatible with the evidence that we've seen.

And so folks, I submit to you, we are being played with all these mandates where you have to wear a mask.

I don't know why. I don't know the motivation behind it. But I do know that every study before 2020,

I said masks really don't do much at all, if anything. I mean, they might make things a little bit worse, but benefit for viruses, not there.

Bacteria, yes. Viruses, no. Now you can find medical experts paid by the government that will go along with the government's narrative.

Mask up, slow the spread. But you can't find scientific evidence to support that claim. At least I haven't found any.

I've gone through many, many studies. I haven't found any. If you do find an article or paper claiming that masks are highly effective at slowing the spread,

I can guarantee you two things. One, it'll be from the year 2020 or later after the government mandates kicked in. And two, it will not have followed proper scientific protocol.

I'll give you an example of this. I found one paper, and I'm sorry, I've lost the reference, but basically they claimed that, yeah, face masks, it was a 2020 paper, that yeah, face masks do provide some benefit when used along with other social distancing practices.

When used along with other social distancing practices. Well, that doesn't tell me anything about the face masks themselves, right?

Because they didn't have a proper control group. They had multiple variables in their mask group.

They weren't just masks. They were masks and other things that might genuinely be effective. So that doesn't tell you anything.

When you have multiple variables, you don't know which one of them is relevant. Yeah, face masks and other things might work.

The question is, do face masks in and of themselves provide any benefit? And that study doesn't tell us that. Face masks and other social distancing practices have a benefit.

Well, yeah, it'd be like saying, we found that putting peanut butter in your hair will protect you from deadly radiation when used along with a radiation suit.

Well, yeah, but you didn't really need the peanut butter at all. The radiation suit's the one that's doing all the work, right? You can take something that is effective and combine it with something that's not effective, and the result will be effective because one plus zero equals one.

I get that. But see, that's a misleading claim, isn't it? You can find other articles in 2020 that are that way, but I don't think you can find anybody who says that face masks really, they just protect you from the virus because the viruses go right through.

We've seen that. Now, a lot of researchers know this, but they kind of go along with the narrative, maybe because they don't wanna lose their funding.

I get that. I wanna show you an example here. This is interesting. This is not a technical journal paper, but it's an article by two medical doctors who, in my opinion, they understand what's going on, but they've worded their article in such a way that it doesn't overtly contradict the narrative.

And the article is Masks and Coronavirus Disease 2019, COVID -19. And here's what they say.

While social distancing and good hand hygiene are the most important methods to prevent virus transmission, it's certainly true, new guidelines state that healthy individuals can consider wearing masks in public settings.

That's so funny. They're not saying that masks might provide some benefit. They're just saying you can do it if you want to.

They're not saying that, you know, science has suggested, they're saying new guidelines state that healthy individuals can, if you want to, wear masks in public as well, right?

And what are the benefits of this? Well, they say, well, masks also remind others to continue practice social distancing.

Yeah, so see, that's the benefit of masks. It's not that they actually block anything, but they remind you to social distance.

Of course, there are other ways you could remind yourself. You could put a sticker on your face, and that would do that too. And then they say, however, non -medical masks may not be effective in preventing infection for the person wearing them.

And of course, that's true, and we've seen that. So it's interesting. They've worded it in a way that doesn't upset the narrative, but it's still true.

Okay, so medical masks might do nothing, but then again, they might have some small benefit. So why share this information?

Why not let people go around thinking that, you know, their mask is really doing something, give them some hope? Two reasons.

One, I'm concerned that people think that by putting on their mask, they are safe, that these masks just provide tremendous protection.

They don't. You're not safe. They might have a small benefit, but they're not safe.

Viruses go right through them. Every study I've seen shows that. So that's the problem.

I'm concerned that people might mask up thinking they're safe and then intentionally put themselves in a situation that's high risk, thinking that they're protected when they aren't.

That's significant. But secondly, we're assuming that masks have no downside. Could masks actually increase your chance of infection?

There is some evidence for that, especially with cloth masks. We've seen those studies. Why? I'm not sure.

I mean, is it they retain moisture and they allow bacteria to build up, and so you have other infections and that kind of lowers your immune system?

Is it, I don't know. All we can look at is the empirical result and know that there is some evidence that masks can make things worse.

So let's take a look at some of these studies. Let's see, here's the one that we looked at earlier.

A cluster randomized trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks and healthcare workers. What they say at the end is moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks, and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.

Here's the study on the use of surgical face masks to reduce the incidence of common cold among healthcare workers.

He says, of the eight symptoms recorded daily, subjects in the mask group were significantly more likely to experience headache during the study period.

And boy, you'll get an amen from me because when I wear masks, if I wear it for a long period of time,

I get headaches. I don't know why, I don't know what it's doing, but it certainly happens. So let's look at this study here that we looked at previously.

This is one published by the CDC on pharmaceutical measures for pandemic influenza, et cetera, et cetera.

Proper use of face masks is essential because improper use might increase the risk for transmission. So the

CDC admits that, that they can actually make it worse. And even if it doesn't make the infection worse, there are other negatives to wearing a mask that you need to be aware of.

Here's a study called adverse effects of prolonged mask use among healthcare professionals during COVID -19.

A total of 343 healthcare professionals on the COVID -19 front lines participated in the study.

314 respondents reported adverse effects from prolonged mask use with headaches being the most common complaint.

245 out of the 343 had headaches. Prolonged use of N95 and surgical masks by healthcare professionals during COVID -19 has caused adverse effects such as headaches, rash, acne, skin breakdown, and impaired cognition in the majority of those surveyed.

And I'm not even including the psychological effects of a society where you no longer see anyone's face.

Because your face, I mean, that's where you're at. That's where you express emotion. Used to be you could smile at somebody, brighten their day a little bit.

Those days are gone. Everybody walks around like they're already dead. Now, some of you think, okay, but those are relatively mild, whereas COVID can kill you, so I'm gonna wear a mask.

That's perfectly reasonable. Go for it. I have no objection to that. I just wanted to point out that some people are more sensitive to these masks and there are health problems.

Those people that are healthy, that are not likely to die from COVID -19, might look at that and say,

I'd rather not have a skin rash and headaches, and et cetera, et cetera. Dr.

Amesh Adalja, I think is his name. He's a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Maryland.

This is what he says about masks. He says, someone wearing an N95 mask for a prolonged period of time may have alterations in their blood chemistry that could lead to changes in level of consciousness of severe.

Wow. He goes on to say, there's absolutely no need for any member of the general public to be wearing an

N95 respirator, which is a type of personal protective equipment designed to protect healthcare workers and the patients they care for.

He says, it's uncomfortable to wear and it does restrict your breathing. He says, when I wear one to take care of patients,

I try to keep it on for only as long as I have to. Why is it that masks in some cases cause these problems?

I don't know. We know that contaminants can build up on the surface, bacteria and the like, fungus.

You have this nice moist environment, bacteria for them to feed on, fungus can grow on there.

There's a study called Microbial Contamination on Used Surgical Masks Among Hospital Personnel and Microbial Air Quality in their working wards, a hospital in Bangkok.

And here's what they say. Evidence shows that surgical mask might not be enough to protect the person from an airborne pathogens and might also be the source of airborne droplet infection.

The predominant isolated bacteria and fungi contaminated on inside and outside areas of the used masks and air samples were similar, staphylococcus, et cetera, et cetera.

So bacteria build up. So now again, for the vast majority of people, the experience, the detrimental effects of wearing a mask are relatively mild.

And so those people might choose to say, I'm gonna put up with the headaches because I think there might be some small effect of this mask in reducing my chances of getting

COVID -19. And I perfectly respect that. If you say, I know, as long as you understand that they don't, they're not giving a lot of protection.

We know that from the data, maybe none. But if you say, I know they don't have a large effect but they might have a small effect and I'm at risk and I don't care about the headaches that masks cause,

I'm gonna mask up, that's very reasonable. More power to you. God bless you. Go in peace. That's fine.

But some people demand that everyone else must wear a mask. And that's a problem.

That's a problem. Because to insist that someone else must wear a mask that has no proven scientific benefit, but which does have proven harmful effects to the wearer, at least temporary ones.

For a disease that the person probably doesn't even have and for which he has no symptoms and which is 99 .95

% survivable is absurd. Last month,

Dr. Roger Hodkinson, who is the medical director of Western Medical Assessments spoke at Edington City Council.

Now, Dr. Hodkinson is an expert on pathology, disease, including virology, the study of viruses.

And was certified as such in 1976 by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. He was trained at Cambridge University in the

UK and is the former president of the pathology section of the Medical Association.

So he knows something about infectious disease. And I want you to listen to what he has to say about COVID -19 and masks.

The bottom line is simply this. There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians.

It's outrageous. This is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.

There is absolutely nothing that can be done to contain this virus other than protecting older, more vulnerable people.

It should be thought of nothing more than a bad flu season. This is not Ebola. It's not

SARS. It's politics playing medicine. And that's a very dangerous game.

There is no action of any kind needed other than what happened last year when we felt unwell.

We stayed home. We took chicken noodle soup. We didn't visit granny. And we decided when we would return to work.

We didn't need anyone to tell us. Masks are utterly useless.

There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever. Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signaling.

They're not even worn effectively most of the time. It's utterly ridiculous seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people.

I'm not saying that in a perjurative sense. Seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face.

Social distancing is also useless because COVID is spread by aerosols which travel 30 meters or so before landing.

Enclosures have had such terrible unintended consequences. Everywhere should be open tomorrow as was stated in the great

Barrington Declaration that I circulated prior to this meeting. And a word on testing.

I do want to emphasize that I'm in the business of testing for COVID. I do want to emphasize that positive test results do not underlined in neon mean a clinical infection.

It's simply driving public hysteria and all testing should stop unless you're presenting to hospital with some respiratory problem.

All that should be done is to protect the vulnerable and to give them all in the nursing homes that are under your control.

Give them all three to 5 ,000 international units of vitamin D every day, which has been shown to radically reduce the likelihood of infection.

And I would remind you all that using the province's own statistics, the risk of death under 65 in this province is one in 300 ,000.

One in 300 ,000. You've got to get a grip on this.

The scale of the response that you're undertaking with no evidence for it is utterly ridiculous given the consequences of acting in a way that you're proposing.

All kinds of suicides, business closures, funerals, weddings, et cetera, et cetera.

It's simply outrageous. It's just another bad flu. And you've got to get your minds around that.