Medical Journal Warns About Masks’ Potentially Devastating Consequences

Medical Journal Warns About Masks’ Potentially Devastating Consequences by Jenin Younes and Jeffrey A. Tucker for American Institute for Economic Research

ast week, YouTube took down an AIER-linked video of a scientific roundtable on Covid held by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. The stated reason concerned some passing comments by the scholars that raised questions about the masking of children.

Said a YouTube spokesman: “We removed AIER’s video because it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of Covid-19.”

The ostensibly objectionable remark came from Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff: “Children should not wear face masks,” he said. “They don’t need it for their own protection and they don’t need it for protecting other people either.”

Kulldorff and others were addressing the distressing reality that children in many jurisdictions are masked, on the streets and in classrooms, despite presenting nearly zero risk of severe outcomes from Covid-19 and in the face of substantial evidence that children do not often spread the disease.

YouTube has taken it upon itself to censor the opinions of esteemed scientists that depart from the orthodoxy on masks. This is not surprising given that masks have become dogma – a visible symbol of compliance and fealty to the medical/political agenda that elevates the coronavirus above all else.

This dogma was illustrated by Anthony Fauci’s response to the situation in Texas, which repealed its mask mandate and saw cases plummet. Asked to explain this result, Fauci responded: “I’m not really quite sure….It could be they’re doing things outdoors.” He declined to even consider the fact that perhaps masks are not effective at controlling spread of the coronavirus. In other words, the theory that universal masking stops the virus is becoming non-falsifiable.

AIER’s content has mostly focused on other aspects of lockdowns, yet published several pieces on the topic of masks:

• The Question of Masks
• The Dangers of Masks 
• Masking: A Careful Review of the Evidence
• Masking Children: Tragic, Unscientific, and Damaging
• The Strangely Unscientific Masking of America
• A Year of Disguises

The masking issue is gaining importance both in terms of the scientific issues involved and concerns for liberty and social function. First, there are increasing calls for mask-wearing to be a permanent part of our lives. This article, for instance, suggests that masks should be adopted during flu season, spikes in coronavirus cases, and when a person is ill. Second, one of the many journals linked through the National Institutes of Health’s suite of scholarly works, Medical Hypothesis, has accepted for publication a devastating analysis of the harms caused by widespread, universal masking. The citation is: Vainshelboim B. Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis. Med Hypotheses. 2021;146:110411.

True, this is not a conventional journal and that is precisely why it exists. It was founded out of a concern that valid scientific observations that depart from current trends will not make it through the conventional peer review process with a thesis that is radical or breaks an emergent mold. The journal, published by the Elsevier Public Health Emergency Collection, has a prestigious editorial board that utilizes high standards in selecting material for publication, and can provide a home for unorthodox scientific papers. Indeed, given the state of censorship and the vast scientific confusions that have followed in the wake of lockdowns, such journals are needed more than ever.

Tellingly, this paper is written by a single author, which is to say that one person has stuck his neck out to take responsibility for its contents. John Ioannidis has demonstrated that a feature of problematic studies is that they are performed and reported on by large teams of researchers rather than a single author. This makes sense: large teams can distribute responsibility for truth claims. Not so with single author papers. This enhances, but does not prove, the credibility of published research by single authors.

The well-published and cited author Baruch Vainshelboim works in the Cardiology Division, Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System/Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, United States, and has had an affiliation with Pulmonary Institute, Rabin Medical Center, Beilinson Hospital, Petach Tikva, Israel. He obtained his Ph.D. (Universidade do Porto) in clinical exercise physiology in pulmonary rehabilitation and hence has a strong interest in the relationship between health and masking.

The entire paper is worth reading. It cites most known studies and knowledge in the scientific literature prior to the Spring of 2020, including the WHO: “Facemasks are not required, as no evidence is available on its usefulness to protect non-sick persons.”

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