Whoops! Cloth masks don’t really work? Someone should tell the social media censors

The Cato Institute reports, “Since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, many public health officials, political and social leaders, and major news media have urged people to wear face masks to reduce the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In the United States, masking has become a flashpoint of controversy, with school boards and local governments facing fervent—and sometimes even threatening—demands either for or against mask mandates…

Whoops! Cloth masks don’t really work? Someone should inform the censors at YouTube. “The best available evidence [randomized controlled studies have] largely failed to demonstrate mask effectiveness, particularly of cloth masks...”https://t.co/OQf2GYqAJM

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 16, 2021

Yet, there is little consensus that masking—at least as commonly practiced in the United States, using cloth masks—is effective at suppressing various types of respiratory infection. In the surgical operating room context, a review by the Cochrane Collaboration—a widely respected nonprofit that provides comprehensive, evidence-based summaries on various medical topics—found 'no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials.' Another Cochrane review, of masking and influenza-like illness, found “that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness … compared to not wearing a mask.”

Read the entire report.