Cochran Review: Face Masks are Useless in Stopping COVID-19
Updated
The Cochran Institute, a collaboration of international researchers recognized as the highest standard in evidence-based healthcare reviews, recently reported they found no reliable data to support that face masks prevent the spread of COVID-19. Led by Tom Jefferson, Senior Associate Tutor at the University of Oxford, the study highlights the haphazard and unsubstantiated manner in which the Biden administration and other governments around the world failed society by demanding—with no proof to back up their tyranny—that every man, woman, and child cover their faces, get an experimental mRNA injection, or risk killing their loved ones.
Titled “Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses,” the Cochran review confirmed—despite Dr. Anthony Fauci’s power to initiate randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the soul-suffocating issue—there is insufficient data to support community-wide mask recommendations. Throughout the pandemic, Americans have been given no credible data indicating that mask mandates work. And besides being useless in protecting society against COVID-19, the Cochran review found no apparent differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral illness. Instead, void of any proper analysis, the review noted what all Americans should be demanding, and quickly, before the foretold “next pandemic” arrives:
“There is a need for large, well-designed RCTs addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, as well as the impact of adherence on effectiveness, especially in those most at risk.”
Let’s not forget, in the early days, as fear behind the recently rehearsed but since actual pandemic was still being characterized, Dr. Fauci emphatically shot down the idea of everyone wearing masks. In a March 8, 2020 interview with 60 Minutes, the now-retired highest-paid government employee explained that face masks “do not provide the level of protection people think they do” and are unnecessary. Guidance from public health officials was also clear—healthy people do not need to wear a face mask of any kind to protect themselves from COVID-19. Instead, the message was direct that wearing masks could increase an individual’s chances of infection. Did the threat of a face mask shortage prompt the “masks are useless” proclamations in the United States that were soon reversed? Or was the stage being set to promote mask prop use later, to perhaps scare individuals into getting jabbed with an experimental vaccine? As we watch the directives of the pandemic unravel, those types of questions are worth pondering.
During the first three or four months of the pandemic, as individuals grew increasingly anxious about the deadly pathogen being hyped as traveling around the globe, the narrative promoted by Fauci was to calm down, “there is no need to wear a face mask.” To support this, in May 2020, the CDC published a WHO-commissioned study that found no significant reduction in pandemic influenza with the use of face masks. Similar to the recent Cochran Review, the WHO study was a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), considered the gold standard of scientific evidence. The Collaborative Research Fund from the University of Hong Kong supported the study with the WHO in “preparation for the development of guidelines on the use of nonpharmaceutical interventions for pandemic influenza in nonmedical settings.”
Originally published by the WHO in February 2020 and then shared by the CDC in May, the WHO’s collaboration with the University of Hong Kong in setting pandemic guidelines is interesting since, throughout the pandemic, China’s public policy has endorsed that the use of face masks “might be one of the most effective strategies to reduce the transmission of COVID-19, and was recommended by the National Health Commission of China in its guideline issued on March 18, 2020.” Realizing that the communist nation controls its citizens with a stringent digitally monitored social credit system which surely motivates mask submission, the study added, “subsequently, face masks have continued to be commonly used by the public in China since the return to work.”
Further reinforcing that tyranny has a firm grip on China’s population, a March 2021 study published by PubMed on mask-wearing obedience in China affirmed that “due to the highly contagious characteristics of COVID-19 and the continued severe situation globally, mask-wearing has become a part of our ordinary lives.” The study, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, sought to understand factors associated with face mask compliance. The study concluded that social media is the most powerful approach to reaching audiences and promoting behavior change.
With a peek into China’s unwavering adherence to mask compliance, the WHO and CCP’s influence on the flip-flopping mask protocols in the United States is suspicious. Following the WHO’s May 2020 directive that toxic face masks were not needed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, another WHO-funded study published on June 1, 2020, in The Lancet was instrumental in shifting global mask policies. The observational study, which failed to examine any randomized controlled trials, claimed that the use of face masks by both healthcare workers and the general public resulted in an 80 percent reduction in COVID-19 cases.
A little over a month later, on July 14, 2020, as many states began lifting stay-at-home orders, the CDC officially announced—based on studying two hair salon stylists—a new “behavioral recommendation” that all Americans wear cloth face masks to prevent COVID-19 spread. Not surgical masks, not N95 masks, but cloth face masks. Go figure. Citing data from the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the CDC noted that “cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to stop the spread of the virus,” adding that “all Americans have a responsibility to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.” A now-deleted MMWR recommendation offered guidance on how to manipulate the public into cloth face mask compliance, stating:
“Public health messages should target audiences not wearing cloth face coverings and reinforce positive attitudes, perceived norms, personal agency, and physical and health benefits of obtaining and wearing cloth face coverings consistently and correctly.”
Without question, RCTs are the benchmark for making longstanding policy recommendations. Not only did the CDC have the initial RCT data it used in March 2020 to declare face masks were ineffective, but the agency now has Cochran’s just-released gold standard RCT at its fingertips. On top of that, the CDC also has numerous studies across dozens of countries explicitly demonstrating that face masks do not prevent the spread of infection. Yet, face mask discussions are ongoing and the CDC’s current policy recommends that individuals in medium and high community levels wear “a high-quality mask or respirator.”
Just two days ago, in remarks further illustrating the agency’s blatant negligence—willful or otherwise—on February 8, 2023, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told a Congressional hearing on the agency’s pandemic response that no RCTs were conducted to determine if masks stop COVID-19 because “there were so many studies that demonstrated time and time again in the height of COVID transmission that masks were working to prevent transmission.” Responding to questions from concerned Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL), clearly exasperated at the face mask debacle and the negative effect it has had on kids, Walensky added, “I’m not sure anybody would have proposed a clinical trial because, in fact, there wasn’t equipoise to the question anymore.” Remember, the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics demanded that two-year-olds wear masks.
Definitively, the Cochran study emphasizes the manipulative manner in which Dr. Fauci, the CDC, the Biden administration, and other governments worldwide failed society as a whole by demanding individuals cover their faces and become invisible. If Americans don’t pay attention, they will soon wake up too late to a population control system like what presently imprisons those living in communist China. Right now, while opening yet another door for those looking to discover—this time via the draconian mask coordination—another combined global effort to regulate humanity (think the Great Reset), on a more local level, the Cochran study also underscores how U.S. taxpayer-funded health agencies have failed miserably at their intended job of serving the best interests of the American people.
As those fighting the real fight continue to expose the horrors behind the mRNA injections, at the very least, the Cochran study should end face mask discussions once and for all. With no valid data to support population-wide mask mandates on any level, intuitively, the psychological harm face masks pose to children should have been enough to keep all faces uncovered.