Mask Wars Were for Nothing: Masks Do Little to Stop Spread

At the very beginning of the pandemic, we made homemade masks at my house. Back then, most people accepted the droplet theory of spread. But by late spring of 2020, I felt the case for wearing masks basically fell apart when Dr. Anthony Fauci called them a “symbol” of good behavior. This seemed to be an inadvertent admission that masks were not a useful tool to stop transmission, and that he had never in his heart departed from his early assessment that they aren’t very useful at all for dealing with a respiratory disease. It was also becoming obvious by this point that Covid was not a serious risk to children, and that children were not very efficient spreaders of Covid.

But fights about masking lasted two years after this.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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At the very beginning of the pandemic, we made homemade masks at my house. Back then, most people accepted the droplet theory of spread. But by late spring of 2020, I felt the case for wearing masks basically fell apart when Dr. Anthony Fauci called them a “symbol” of good behavior. This seemed to be an inadvertent admission that masks were not a useful tool to stop transmission, and that he had never in his heart departed from his early assessment that they aren’t very useful at all for dealing with a respiratory disease. It was also becoming obvious by this point that Covid was not a serious risk to children, and that children were not very efficient spreaders of Covid.

But fights about masking lasted two years after this.