Thread by @A1an_M

A thread 🧵
Last week I posted the tweet below and promised to post up some evidence to back up these statements

https://twitter.com/A1an_M/status/1662208863418867714

1/

The first tweet with evidence, regarding the lack of deadliness of COVID for most people is here:

https://twitter.com/A1an_M/status/1662523596013486084

2/

In this thread I'm going to talk about masks.
"Masks aren't effective in preventing virus spread"
This will be a long thread so here is the TL; DR version:
✴️At a population level, masks have not been shown to be an effective intervention for respiratory viruses; 3/

✴️This was true before and during the COVID pandemic and will likely remain true afterwards
✴️Public health authorities began the pandemic giving the correct advice
✴️The advice changed in Jul 2020 - for POLITICAL reasons
✴️The media at best failed to provide a balanced view...4/

✴️and at worst was an active participant in making universal mask-wearing happen.
✴️Mask wearing, aside from playing a role in politics also has important psychological effects at an individual and group level.

OK, on with the detail 5/

At the very beginning of the pandemic, the advice was either that they were not necessary, would have little impact if used, or that they should not be used. For example Anthony Fauci when asked in Feb 2020 if they were needed :
"Absolutely not". 6/

https://twitter.com/SpectrumNewsDC/status/1228441052874407937

And in March 2020, UK Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty:
“In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that.” 7/
independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…

And if we look at the WHO's pandemic guidelines published in autumn 2019, mask wearing is only recommended during pandemics and epidemics for the symptomatic (note also some of the "not recommended in any circumstances" items which we also ended up doing): 8/

So during the period when the pandemic was at its first peak in April 2020, mask wearing was voluntary in shops and other indoor public spaces. I remember well visiting my local Tesco and Morrisons on a daily basis during this time, seeing the same unmasked staff, fit & well 9/

week after week. However in June, the government made face covering mandatory on public transport and in healthcare settings and on July 24th, with COVID cases and deaths at very low levels, they extended this to shops and supermarkets 10/
gov.uk/government/spe…

In the government's announcement, the Health Secretary says that effectively this was being done for political and psychological reasons (arguably in an attempt to compensate for the government's fear campaign on the population a few months earlier) 11/

Certainly the science about masks hadn't changed at this time. Indeed a study done in Denmark in Apr/May 2020 but whose publication was delayed for several months, found no statistical difference in COVID infection between masked & unmasked. 12/
acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m2…:

And even the Health Secretary's July 24th statement about introducing masks to shops and supermarkets makes no promise about them being effective in reducing virus spread (not that a Matt Hancock promise would be worth much anyway) 13/:

And finally, the BBC, the home of impartial journalism itself, broadcast on Newsnight that the WHO eventually backed mask mandates due to "political lobbying", not due any new science or change in its view of their effectiveness 14/

While there is some evidence to suggest public health authorities were initially reluctant to recommend masks at population level due to concerns that this might result in shortages for health care workers, it seems clear that the senior leadership knew that while masks... 15/

might help in the case of symptomatic individuals and reduce the risk of them spreading the virus, there was little evidence of any benefit of wider use at population level.
So in summary, mask mandates were a political decision, not a public health one.
16/

Mask mandates in England remained in force until January 2022 at which point they were withdrawn in most settings, although they remained in use in some situations, notably healthcare settings. The rules remained in Scotland and Wales for longer.
bmj.com/content/376/bm…
17/

As mentioned previously, the scientific literature pre COVID provided little support for mask wearing at a population level. During the COVID pandemic itself there were numerous new studies on the subject, for example this one 18/

https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1644099358088896512

which found that mask madates at a large London hospital had no discernible effect on hospital-acquired Covid cases.
There was also a lot of excitement about a study done in Bangladesh which supposedly found masks to be effective... 19/ poverty-action.org/sites/default/…

...but methodological criticisms suggested its findings were unreliable. 20/
dailysceptic.org/2021/09/03/the…

However then the widely-respected Cochrane Library published a review of all recent research into the effectiveness of mask wearing on respiratory virus control, including the large number of RCT studies done in the COVID era. 21/
cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.10…

In the words of the lead author Tom Jefferson, the study found that 22/:

This publication led to an explosion of "fact checking" stories supposedly debunking the idea that Cochrane had concluded that "masks don't work". Even Cochrane itself published a statement clarifying what had been found, much to the anger of the lead author. 23/

And if you look more widely at media coverage of the mask issue, there is very clear ongoing support for mask wearing. For example stories supporting mask wearing were given prominence, like this one 24/
bbc.co.uk/news/health-57…

And whenever "debunking" was done, it was always done on stories suggesting masks had no benefit or were harmful, like this one: 25/
bbc.co.uk/news/53108405

Or this one: 26/ theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

And when conflict occurred between the masked, and the unmasked, the media often portrayed the unmasked as extremists even though, as we have seen, there is plenty of evidence the "anti-maskers" have a scientific point 27/:
bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-…

So we have a situation where the science provides little support for mask wearing, the scientists themselves changed their advice only for political reasons but the media provides little nuance about the debate and instead pushes the government position du jour relentlessly 28/

I'm going to end this thread by talking a little about what, in my view, were the real reasons for the change in advice in mid 2020. Despite what Matt Hancock says, I don't think this was anything to do with trying to coax people back out to the shops 29/

In fact the University of North Carolina Professor, occasional New York Times contributor and key figure in influencing the US CDC into changing its mask advice in April 2020, summed the real reason up rather well: 30/

Masks were introduced at a time when cases and deaths were at a low (in the UK) or were about to peak and decline (in the US) in order to 1) remind people there was still a pandemic 2) create a sense of community amongst the rule-followers and... 31/

create a conducive environment for future control measures.
You might innocently say "well what's wrong with that? We were in a pandemic! We needed people to feel fear". But from my previous thread, we know that this virus was only a deadly threat to a tiny percentage... 32/

of people.
So the continuation of masks was done for political reasons, yes, but not benign political reasons. In my view it was done to maintain fear, ensure the "pandemic" lasted far longer than it needed to, and provide the backdrop for the rollout of universal vaccines. 33/

Masks also fulfilled a psychological need for many who had essentially been hypnotised as part of a "mass formation" by the pandemic propaganda spread by the mass media. As Prof Mattias Desmet describes here: 34/

I talk more about how the pandemic response looks very much like a classic "mass formation" in these threads 35/

https://twitter.com/A1an_M/status/1559139157657767936

Masks. In summary:
✴️Don't work at population level for respiratory epidemics. Science (not The Science) says so.
✴️Were introduced for political & psychological reasons
✴️Media didn't provide balanced coverage of the argument due to political pressure or their own activism.36/36