Thread by @HTchernobyl

The mask.
(Thread)

https://twitter.com/Max46023367/status/1381623569516494848

A year later - the first European country to impose it was Austria on April 6, 2020 - we finally have a look back on the real effect of this measure.

This is shown by the graphs which combine the evolution of the number of Covid infections and the introduction of mandatory mask. The data comes from the very serious "Our world in data" and can be consulted freely.

Here I will stick to France and its neighbors. but you can do the same for any other country.
ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/co…

In France, the mask became mandatory in May 2020. After a lull in infections in summer, they started to rise again in mid-August, with the outbreak we know in September-October.

In Spain, the mask became mandatory soon after, at the lowest of infections. The lull was shorter, and the surge quicker.

Belgium and Great Britain imposed the measure around the same time, during the second half of July. Their curves are similar:

We can see, in both cases, that the measure did not prevent a clear resumption of infections by the end of the summer.

Italy was last in terms of wearing a mask. Here is the result : the wearing of the mask was decreed in October, when the epidemic resumed, and in no way slowed it down.

Another British neighbor that has not done so well is the beautiful country of Ireland. Less than 2 months after making the masks mandatory, it returned to lockdown and has more than 1000% more cases.

What about US? For example. progressive California required masks in June but cases still went up by over 300%

Hawaii suffered one of the most economically devastating lockdowns of all the US states. It was also an early mover on mandating masks both indoors and outdoors, but cases still went up by almost 1000%.

All the curves are similar, except for Germany:

Germany was one of the first European countries to impose the wearing of masks. On this graph, one might think that the measure was initially effective: there is a decrease in infections ... started a month earlier.

But compare to the previous ones, and you will understand that this very early introduction did not "save" Germany from the fate of its neighbors: the curve is strictly the same from one country to another ... whatever the moment when the wearing of the mask was made compulsory.

One could try to object at this stage: "but after all, without the compulsory mask, the increase in contamination would have been much worse".

Well...

This last table proves it:

This graph compares the infection curves in European countries: the black curves represent the countries which have imposed the mask, the red those which have not (Sweden, Norway and Denmark).

There are a few more infections during the great lull of summer 2020 in one of the countries that have not imposed the mask.
But thereafter ... these countries did not experience the same dramatic spike in infections of the "masked" countries.

Wearing the compulsory mask does indeed seem to have been not only unnecessary, but counterproductive.

And yet we knew…

French followers will remember the GOV com about the mask, declaring first that it was unnecessary before decreeing it compulsory without any serious scientific study having changed the situation . In reality, serious studies find no "interest" in mask in the face of C0VID..

The most "famous" of these studies is the Danish randomized study carried out on 6000 people, and published in 11.2020 in Annals of Internal Medicine: the researchers had discovered that the risk of being infected was the same, whether you wear a mask or not.

acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M2…

Many studies have long since concluded that masks are ineffective as shown by large meta-analysis carried out by researchers at the University of Hong Kong, published in May 2020.
hub.hku.hk/bitstream/1072…

Another rencent randomized study, carried out on 8000 people, was published in the prestigious journal Plos One and delivers an unambiguous conclusion: "The study failed to provide definitive proof of the effectiveness of wearing a mask".
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

Is this new?

A large-scale study from the British Medical Journal published in 2015 already warned of the "low filtering powers" of masks but also of their dangers, concluding that their repeated use increased the risk of infection.
bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e0…

So ... why the hell does the requirement to wear a mask persist?
The response was given by WHO officials to British medical journalist Deborah Cohen (BBC).

They admitted that, in the absence of scientific evidence, wearing a mask is nothing more than "political lobbying".
newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/l…

Yep. A government is made to act. even if his action is useless, at least… he took action.

End of the thread..
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public.3.basecamp.com/p/SofHUtPu9Y77…

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