Two New Medical Studies Show How Mask Mandates Failed—and May Have Harmed Countless People

Massive study out of the UK.“Our study found no evidence that mandatory masking of staff impacts the rate of hospital SARS-CoV-2 infection with the Omicron variant,” said lead author Dr. Ben Patterson of St. George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London.

Source: Two New Medical Studies Show How Mask Mandates Failed—and May Have Harmed Countless People - Foundation for Economic Education

This comes as no surprise. It's been known for quite some time that mask mandates made no perceptible difference with regards to stopping the spread of COVID. None of the studies necessarily go into the specific reasons as to why but there are a couple of reasons I can think of that might apply.

1. Like the flu, I suspect that COVID, though it is airborne, is most commonly transmitted by touch. Common advice to avoid the flu (and the common cold) has long been to avoid touching your face and to wash your hands frequently. This probably helps far more than mask wearing for COVID as well. Mask wearing, even if it were effective, becomes irrelevant if you touch an infected surface and than rub you eyes, nose or touch your mouth before washing your hands.

2. While there have been numerous studies that suggest that common medical masks stop a significant percentage of particles, including the COVID virus, it doesn't mean that it is enough to matter. Just because you stop 80% of the virus from leaving our nose/mouth (or whatever the number may be for a given mask) it doesn't mean that the remaining 20% won't spread the virus just as effectively.

There are other reasons but the point is that the numbers don't lie. Places with mask mandates generally performed no better stopping the spread of COVID that places without mask mandates.