Do Face Masks Work?
This week marks five years since March 13, 2020, the day President Donald Trump declared a national state of emergency over the novel coronavirus outbreak. The White House issued the President’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America three days later. Among other things, the guidelines advised Americans to avoid bars, restaurants, shopping trips, and social visits. They also said that governors in states with evidence of community transmission should close schools, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues.
Sticking to peer-reviewed science, and setting aside the political question of what the government should do with the information, what do we know now about the ways people tried to protect themselves from the virus? Over the next few days we’ll look at several measures—ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, the vaccines—as well as the matter of how many Americans died of COVID infections. Today we’ll tackle face coverings.
Early in the pandemic, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Anthony Fauci notoriously announced on 60 Minutes that Americans “should not be walking around with masks.” This was a reprise of Surgeon General Jerome Adams’ February 29Â tweet: “Seriously people. STOP BUYING MASKS!” Adams added, “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
A little over a month later, the government did an abrupt U-turn, with Trump announcing on April 3 that the surgeon general and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were now recommending that Americans voluntarily wear cloth masks in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Federal officials still wanted to reserve surgical masks and N95 masks for frontline health care workers.
States then began introducing requirements that individuals wear face coverings in public. By the end of the year, 39 states would adopt such measures.
These contradictory signals helped politicize facial masks. The controversy was further stoked by a January 2023 Cochrane Library analysis that was widely interpreted by many, including some of my Reason colleagues, as concluding that “masks don’t work.” In March 2023, Cochrane’s editor issued a statement. “Many commentators have claimed that a recently-updated Cochrane Review shows that ‘masks don’t work’, which is an
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