More Evidence Masks Don’t Work to Prevent COVID-19 by Dr. Joseph Mercola for Mercola
According to an August 28, 2020, article1,2 in The Telegraph, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson now “insists he does not want to see face coverings in schools.” During a question and answer session posted on Facebook, Johnson said:3,4
“There’s no need for it. Indeed, there’s a need not to have it because obviously it’s very, very difficult to teach or to learn with a face mask on.”
British deputy chief medical officer Dr. Jenny Harries stated the evidence for face masks is “not very strong in either direction,” but that advice may change in the future should scientific evidence emerge. For now, head teachers will be allowed to make their own decisions about mask adherence in school hallways and communal areas.
“Dr. Harries said that the wearing of masks in hallways and communal areas ‘can be very reassuring in those enclosed environments’ despite the lack of definitive science,” The Telegraph reports, adding:5,6
“She also urged people to be ‘very kind’ to those with disabilities who were ‘struggling’ with coronavirus measures such as the wearing of face coverings. ‘Many of the actions that we have quite rightly taken to control the pandemic can be quite difficult for people with all sorts of sensory disabilities,’ she admitted.”
Sweden’s Pandemic Response to Masking
Sweden is one of the few countries where draconian pandemic responses have not been widely implemented. Throughout the pandemic, most of the country’s businesses have remained open, and people have to a large degree been allowed to go about their lives as usual, albeit with the general recommendation to social distance whenever possible.
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According to an August 10, 2020, article7,8 in The Times, the epidemiologist in charge of Sweden’s coronavirus pandemic response, Dr. Anders Tegnell, “has dismissed the scientific evidence for mask-wearing as ‘astonishingly weak’ and suggested that making face coverings mandatory could backfire.”
Tegnell insists the only viable solution in the long run is to trust people and give them the responsibility to make sensible decisions for themselves.
“It is a Swedish tradition that we give a lot of responsibility to individuals and influence them. So, we never saw any reason to take more drastic measures … I’m surprised that we don’t have more or better studies showing what effect masks actually have.
Countries such as Spain and Belgium have made their populations wear masks but their infection numbers have still risen. The belief that masks can solve our problem is in any case very dangerous,” Tegnell said in a recent interview with a German newspaper.9,10
Interestingly, despite the country’s lack of lockdowns and mandatory mask requirements, infections have now “dwindled away to a negligible level” on their own.
According to The Times, as of August 10, 2020, Sweden’s total death toll for COVID-19 stood at 5,763. At the peak of the pandemic in mid-April, just under 100 daily COVID-19 related deaths were recorded. By early August, the average death toll was down to one or two per day. Positive test results are also trending downward.
