Steve Kirsch has been a pitbull when it comes to challenging the public health industrial complex challenging them, rubbing research in their face, and offering huge sums as bets to debate him on a series of topics.
The latest told-you-so comes courtesy of The Cochrane Study, which analyzed “Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory
viruses.”
To assess the effectiveness of physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of acute respiratory viruses.
We searched CENTRAL, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and two trials registers in October 2022, with backwards and forwards citation analysis on the new studies.
They did science with a pile of science and the results (and thanks to Kirsch for highlighting these in his copy).
Pooling of nine trials conducted in the community found an estimate of effect for the outcomes of influenza/COVID-like illness cases (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval(CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials; 276,917 participants; moderate-certainty evidence; Analysis 1.1) suggesting that wearing a medical/surgical mask will probably make little or no difference for this outcome. Two studies in healthcare workers provided inconclusive results with very wide confidence intervals: RR 0.88, 95% CI 0.02 to 32; and RR 0.26, 95% CI 0.03 to 2.51, respectively (Jacobs 2009; MacIntyre 2015). Laboratory-confirmed influenza/SARS-CoV-2 cases Similarly, the estimate of effect or laboratory-confirmed influenza/ SARS-CoV-2 cases (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.42; 6 trials, 13,919 participants; moderate certainty evidence; Analysis 1.1) suggests that wearing a medical/surgical mask probably makes little or no difference compared to not wearing a mask for this outcome.
Six trials were cluster-RCTs, with all participants in the intervention clusters required to wear masks, thus assessing both source control and personal protection. In two trials the clusters were households with a member with new influenza; neither of these studies found any protective effect (RR 1.03 in 105 households (Canini 2010); RR 1.21 in 145 households (MacIntyre 2009)). In two trials the clusters were college dormitories during the influenza season; neither study found any reduction (RR 1.10 in 37 dormitories (Aiello 2012); RR 0.90 in three dormitories (Aiello 2010)).
The research also could not find evidence that N95 masks performed any better than regular medical masks, which, as noted above, makes little or no difference compared to not wearing one.
There are 326 pages in the report if you are brave enough (I know I don’t have that much free time). But that’s all fine print, and maybe there’s a nugget in there to appease the just-in-case crowd, but I doubt it. Even the CDC and NIH knew years ago that these things could not stop the flu virus. They also know there are health risks associated with use, especially long term. Both physical and psychological, and the latter appears to be the reasoning behind the mandates.
As Mr. Kirsch notes, “Whoever is advising people to do this is not basing their decision on any scientific evidence.”
