Mask Drama Was Probably for Nothing

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.

Well, here comes Cochrane, basically the gold standard for meta-studies in the field of medical interventions. They looked at 78 credible studies of physical interventions against Covid/flu/respiratory viruses. Some of the findings:

Medical or surgical masks

Ten studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers. Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (9 studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 13,919 people). Unwanted effects were rarely reported; discomfort was mentioned.

N95/P2 respirators

Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (5 studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people). Unwanted effects were not well-reported; discomfort was mentioned.

Reading into the quality of the studies, a pro-masker could make the argument that what we’re really seeing is not the uselessness of masks but the uselessness of mask mandates. That is, there is still enough uncertainty that someone could argue we just needed lots more coercion into better masks and education on how to wear them. But policy-makers should actually heed “real world” application of their policies, rather than notionally perfect compliance and execution.

Of course what’s so galling about these studies is not just that public-health officials oversold this “symbol” of good behavior, but that people’s workplaces, school districts, churches, and friends made this into a sole test of virtue.

I’m thinking particularly of so many co-religionists who portrayed the case for wearing masks as synonymous with “love of neighbor.” As if the only reason to be unmasked were some kind of libertine self-satisfaction.

If we could have had absolute certainty that masks helped the vulnerable, then of course there would be some case that Christian charity would lead people to wearing masks. But there was no such certainty. Masking always rested on prudential judgments. Therefore it should not have been the sort of issue that Christians break communion with each other over. Well-catechized Christians should have been doubly suspicious of mask judgmentalism precisely because they are so familiar with the Gospel’s criticism of virtue-signaling. Jesus took to the woodshed those Pharisees who put on pained faces to make sure everyone knew they were fasting (Matthew 6:16).

It would be healthy if people like Beth Moore and many other Christian leaders looked honestly at the weakness of the evidence supporting mask mandates, and did an examination of conscience about how they loaded guilt on people over something the Gospel doesn’t require.