Health Experts Admit Outdoor Mask Wearing Is Ridiculous by Dr. Joseph Mercola
After a year of questionable advice on masking, ranging from head-scratching and mildly amusing to outright laughable — such as Spain mandating use of face masks while swimming in the ocean — health experts who counter the prevailing narrative on universal masking are finally getting some airtime in the mainstream media.
In an April 22, 2021, article in The New York Times,1 Tara Parker-Pope cites several doctors and virologists who advise against universal mask wearing outdoors.
Health Experts Weigh in on Outdoor Mask Wearing
Among them is Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and an expert on viral transmission mechanics, who notes that brief outdoor encounters, such as walking past someone on a sidewalk or hiking trail, present a “very low risk” for transmission.
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“Viral particles quickly disperse in outdoor air, and the risk of inhaling aerosolized virus from a jogger or passers-by is negligible,” Marr told Parker-Pope.2 “Even if a person coughs or sneezes outside as you walk by, the odds of you getting a large enough dose of virus to become infected remain low.”
Similarly, Dr. Muge Cevic, a clinical lecturer of infectious disease and medical virology at the University of St. Andrews School of Medicine in Scotland, is quoted saying:3
“I think it’s a bit too much to ask people to put the mask on when they go out for a walk or jogging or cycling. We’re in a different stage of the pandemic. I think outdoor masks should not have been mandated at all. It’s not where the infection and transmission occurs.”
Parker-Pope also quotes Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases physician and medical director of the special pathogens unit at Boston Medical Center:4
“Let me go for my run, maskless … Given how conservative I have been on my opinions all year, this should tell you how low [the] risk is, in general, for outdoors transmission for contact over short periods …”
Vaccinated or Not, Masks Don’t Work
Of course, most all of the doctors quoted in The New York Times article make the claim that vaccination lowers your risk of COVID-19, thus you can be more lenient when around other vaccinated individuals. I’ve written many articles explaining why this narrative is nonsensical and just flat out wrong.
In a nutshell, it makes no sense because all COVID-19 “vaccines” are designed to do is reduce your symptoms if or when you get infected. They are not designed to prevent infection, they do not give you immunity against SARS-CoV-2, and they do not prevent transmission, so you can still spread the virus to others if you get infected.
All of this means you present the same “risk” to others whether you’re vaccinated or not. And, to be clear, if you have no symptoms of respiratory infection, the health risk you pose to others is virtually nonexistent.5 You simply cannot spread an infection you do not have.
The minuscule bits of viral RNA that the PCR test can pick up if run through too many augmentation cycles — thereby rendering a false positive result — are not infectious. You need a whole, and live, virus for that.
