Leana Wen’s 180-Degree Reversal on Masks

A s of January 14, one of the Democratic/media complex’s favorite spokespeople, Dr. Leana Wen, was saying we needed to tighten our mask policy.

Now she is saying the exact opposite. What gives?

To go back a little further, as of December 20 — seven weeks ago! — Wen was telling people they needed to wear triple-ply masks even when outdoors if they were in a crowd. She said kids needed “at least” triple-layer masks “when indoors.” Which means in schools. All day. No matter what the emotional, social, and developmental cost. These did not register.

We needed to triple down on masking because there were “high levels of Covid-19 circulating.” What were those levels? A daily average of 168,553 cases, according to the New York Times tracker. Today we’re at 253,782, yet Wen now says she supports ending mask mandates and leaving masking up to individuals because “case counts are declining” (true, but still at record-high levels compared with cases any month before this winter), because “circumstances have changed” and because “the science has changed.” Really? What new scientific data have come in since December 20? Have any blockbuster new studies emerged since January 14, when Wen reiterated that N95/KN95 masks (not just cloth masks) should be “required”? Are any of her interviewers going to seek clarification of this seeming piece of disinformation?

December 20 was the day of Wen’s now-famous admission, after months of seeming to insist otherwise, that cloth masks are ineffective. “Don’t wear a cloth mask,” Wen said then. “Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations.”

If that was true on December 20, why did she say this, on July 27?

In a follow-up message, she clarified that she was not just passing along this CDC guidance, but enthusiastically backing it. Note that she does not point out that an exception should be made for cloth masks — the type of mask that 90-plus percent of Americans who wore masks were using in July — because they are ineffective. A reasonable reader would infer that Wen thought wearing cloth masks was very, very important as of July 27.

At the time, the daily case average was 63,392, according to the New York Times chart. Today, that average is: 253,782. So Wen is telling us to chill about masks at a point where we’ve got four times the transmission rate we had when she was worried. Deaths then were running at an average of 296 per day; now they’re at 2,598 per day.

True, as of July, the Bangladesh mask study had not yet emerged to tell us that cloth masks were ineffective. But as far as I can tell, Wen, like the rest of the media, shrugged at the study’s central finding, which is that, while surgical masks (which are unpopular and difficult to wear all day because they’re uncomfortable) reduce spread a bit, cloth masks do nothing. (The media presented this study as saying either, “Yay, masks work!” or, a bit more honestly, “Surgical masks are better than cloth masks.”)

If Leana Wen has some post-December 21 scientific evidence to cite that shows why we should now drop mask mandates, she should share that with us. If not, it looks like she’s a liar. Her contention that circumstances have (very recently) changed does not hold up.

Vaccine availability for younger children “since November” does not explain away the draconian masking stance she espoused on January 14. (And young children were never at much risk in the first place). Knowing that the vaccines protect against Omicron is a red herring; the vaccines have protected against each variant so far, but there are bound to be other variants, and we can’t yet know how well vaccines will protect against them. As for certain kinds of masks providing (some) protection to the wearer, the CDC has been saying that since 2020.

I suggest that Wen, and all other medical professionals who wish to maintain their reputations, be more forthcoming and state what is plainly true: Regardless of how many infections are going around, regardless of how many are dying, the kinds of masks most people are willing to wear are ineffective, we’ve known that for a long time, and we should stop pretending otherwise.

Wen should admit she was wrong as recently as January 14 when she suggested that masking kids in schools should be “required,” or as recently as January 3 when she said high-quality masks and proof of vaccination should be required in all indoor public spaces. There is no need to mask children in school, period. There never was. People like Leana Wen were complicit in a nationwide program of child abuse, and they should not merely reverse themselves but face up to their grotesque errors and apologize for them. The bonfire of the masks cannot come soon enough.