Op-Ed: When Will We Let Go of the Mask Superstition?

Let’s rewind the clock to just after our exalted health experts told us we didn’t need to wear masks around in public and long before the same geniuses said we should probably wear two masks before admitting there’s no data supporting it.

We know we have almost a year of data establishing no correlation between public compliance with mask mandates and any metric of viral spread – which to any rational scientist invalidates their supposed effectiveness – yet the cult-like devotion to masks remains in the public, the media, and the government-medical establishment. Government officials have even been caught cooking the data to make it look like mandates have helped. While books will be written on the sociological and psychological reasons why people so strongly cling to disprovable myths, we’ll focus on the supposed scientific justifications.

Let us again ask the question: what is the scientific justification for wearing an air-permeable face-covering in terms of physical control of a contagious virus? Ask anyone who thinks they know what they’re talking about, and the answer you’ll get is, “The virus is transmitted within relatively large respiratory droplets from an infected person to an uninfected person. While air escapes the mask with ease, these large droplets are restrained by the mask and thus the virus is prevented from reaching the uninfected person.” Worse, you might hear, “We don’t know how the virus is moving around, but this is better than nothing. At least it makes people feel better” (or some similar variation).

It is bad enough to hear this kind of thing from actual scientists (who are supposedly committed to rational reliance on observable data), but in many ways it is actually more offensive to hear from people in the general public. To hear these things from someone like Anthony Fauci makes sense – he is institutionally compromised as both his position and his organization rely on the appearance of expertise. He and his ilk have far too much political capital invested in the myth. It is better for him to appear to know what he is talking about and be laughably wrong than admit he doesn’t know. It is better for institutional bureaucrats to kick the ball the wrong direction than not kick it at all.

The average American citizen, on the other hand, is seemingly under no pressure to feign expertise. Instead, they should be concerned with their immediate circumstances and those of their loved ones. Of course, this is the crux of the dilemma and a convenient reality for government experts whose lack of real expertise can be easily shielded through public fear. Much of the public doesn’t accept that the ulterior institutional (and political) motives of so-called experts even exist, and (while they may not fully accept the fear narrative) they default to the more secure, security-minded position.

This is predictably risk-averse behavior – much like a driver who sees a 20 mile-per-hour sign and a 40-mile-per-hour sign in close proximity and accepts that the only way to comply with both is to default to driving 20.

But I digress. It would be simple enough to step back and look at the reams of data proving that mask mandates have had no effect on viral metrics, but what about the simple illogic of the physical rationale for mask use? Diseases spread from infectious people, and these people are infectious through symptoms of the disease they carry. They have both a high viral load (resulting in their exhalation contains high concentrations of the virus), and they have symptoms of the disease that makes spread physically more likely (coughing, sneezing). They end up exhaling much more out of their mouths because of their symptoms and send a high concentration of virus straight forward instead of down. Asymptomatic people, on the other hand, breathe much less forcefully and exhale downward (through their noses).

If we accept the theory that we are stopping some viral spread by stopping large respiratory droplets, would these droplets not similarly be controlled by gravity itself? Simply, if exhaled particles (possibly containing virus) are light enough to frustrate gravity, are they not also light enough to move easily around or through a mask? Are they not light enough to stay suspended in the air waiting for people to walk through them? If the mask works for the reason they claim, then it is not needed.

The simple reality that the respiratory virus is spread primarily through aerosol is why the data doesn’t match the large respiratory droplets theory. It is why masks don’t do anything and serve as no corollary to lower coronavirus risk. Even if a correlation existed, it would not prove masks were doing anything – we could not assume causation based on correlation. But worse (and most insulting to science), we are assuming causation without correlation.

Accepting causation without correlation is beyond bad science. It is beyond pseudoscience. It is superstition.

There are two – and only two – reliable predictors of coronavirus spread: Population density and time. There is only one predictor of COVID-19 severity: immune system strength. These predictors are made less reliable than they should be because our government has chosen to redefine terms in the coronavirus era. They’ve redefined basic epidemiological concepts like infection, case, and (perhaps most offensively) death. And they’ve employed a test that is largely useless for their stated purpose – a test that tells healthy people that they are sick.

Population density explains why New York and California are epicenters for spread. It also explains why masked New York faired no better than unmasked New York (in fact, it faired worse). Immune system strength declines with age, so we can expect older people to have a much harder time with any disease. Not to mention moving the definitional goalposts to include people who died primarily due to something else as coronavirus deaths mathematically guarantees that coronavirus-labeled deaths skew toward those who are more likely to die from everything.

What will it take for the general public to snap out of their superstitious mask delusion? This article doesn’t even address the physical and sociological damage of perpetually covering our identities and respiratory systems.

The worst possible scenario is one where the public lets go of their insufferable devotion to masks because the perpetually-wrong and politicized government experts tell them masks are no longer needed. While this will remove the masks, it will leave in place the embarrassingly misplaced trust the public has in government expertise and our newfound servile capitulation to the government. We should not continue the big lie that institutional elites have the ability or the right to make out decisions for us.