The Cochrane Review Confirms the lack of Efficacy of Masking
With all of the data included, it is a beast; 326 pages-worth of high-quality science.
The take-home message is this:
Apparently, masking doesn’t seem to work in the context of the flu or SARS-CoV-2.
Who knew? [sarcasm] But, seriously, we need these kinds of comprehensive and objective studies to back-up what so many people have been voicing for the past three years.
I recently conducted my own extensive review of the masking literature over a period of approximately two months and drew almost the same conclusions as the authors of this Cochrane review:
- Generally, masking studies have been of poor quality.
- Many studies are biased.
- There is a need for well-designed, well-controlled, large randomized controlled trials to obtain more definitive evidence.
“Wearing masks [medical/surgical] in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks”
Even in the context of N95/P2 respirators, this is what the authors concluded…
There were no clear 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 infection.
…and remember that health care workers undergo fit testing for their N95/P2 respirators, which is something that most members of the public don’t even know about.
Nobody can accuse the authors of cherry-picking a few of their favourite papers. Their state-of-the-art review included data from 78 randomized clinical trials!
The ultimate conclusion is the same one that I and many others drew a long time ago: