The Mad, Mad World of The Mask

The Conversation puts its mask on

Like a moth attracted to a street light when mistaking it for the moon (lunar light is how the night critters navigate) and getting mortally singed for its pains, I keep returning to The Conversation in the vain hope of finding some objective, academically rigorous analysis of Covid only to be badly scorched by its fake illumination.

The Conversation is the online public outreach organ of the world’s academics serving in our tertiary institutions.  There are Australian, UK, US, Canadian, New Zealand, EU, African and Indonesian editions which claim a global audience of 42 million.  Many moons ago I was amongst this number and diligently read it but, after its Covid performance, I now try to steer well clear of it.

Like the street light with its treacherous moth lure, however, it can be hard to escape The Conversation’s pull entirely and if you do venture near it, you discover that it is full of Covid Hysterics and severe disappointment awaits.

Having a conversation with The Conversation is like being harangued by a street lunatic.  On Covid, with its Narrative-compliant monologue full of garbled logic, pseudo-science, magical thinking, political dogma and blatant propaganda, The Conversation now provokes revulsion and disgust … yet I can not look away.

The Conversation has been out of the blocks faster than Usain Bolt with its offering on the recent Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews meta-analysis which investigates “physical interventions to prevent respiratory virus transmission”, focusing on facemasks, the most visible ‘pandemic’ theatrical prop – and delivering a resounding fail to the face-rags.  Funded by the world’s government health agencies (bet they didn’t know what a viper in the bosom they were inadvertently nurturing when it came to Cochrane’s mask review), Cochrane is an international network of scientists who conduct reviews of, and synthesise the findings from, the published experimental literature in the fields of medicine including public health.

For the mask review, a dozen researchers from six countries (including Australia) pored through some 78 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and cluster‐RCTs (67 of them conducted pre-Covid and 11 during and post-Covid) with an aggregate total of 610,000 participants.  RCTs are real-world experimental tests of the effect of an intervention (for example, facemask use) measured against a control group that doesn’t receive the intervention.

In short, Cochrane found that masks do diddley squat to reduce the incidence of influenza-like or Covid-like respiratory infections and illness.  For good summary reports on the results of the Cochrane review, see a couple of wise and witty Australian Substacks (Empowered! by Robyn Chuter and Anthony’s Substack by Anthony Colpo).

Cochrane –The mother of all experimental testing

The passing parade of sometimes conflicting health studies can be confusing (one day it’s carbs, wine, chocolate or the sun killing you, the next day they are your key to longevity) and now, for every study showing that masks are just useless placebos, there is one that shows they will save you from death by Covid.  It’s advantage server, deuce, advantage receiver, deuce and so on, study by study.  I’ll see your Denmark RCT (which showed mask don’t work) and raise you a Bangladesh cluster-RCT (which shows they do - if you hold the results in a certain light and squint really hard).

This is why we have the Cochrane meta-analysis process – to break the study-by-study impasse by reviewing the entirety of the experimental evidence, isolating the statistical outliers with their dodgy methodologies and coming to some robust conclusion based on all the study evidence.

The Cochrane Review used to be hailed as the decisive tie-break for the body of sometimes competing evidence on health and medical interventions.  After an early and undistinguished career as a high school English and maths teacher, and until retirement, I worked in the Department of Health for three and a half decades in the Commonwealth Public Service in Canberra (I know, you get less for murder!) and Cochrane, back in those pre-Covid times, was rightly hailed in our ranks as really quite adjacent to the Holy Grail for evidence-based medicine and health interventions.

With Cochrane’s mask review, we now have some six dozen mask RCTs which is a decent old census of all the real world studies of whether people who wear masks fare any better with regard to respiratory infection incidence rates compared to those who go about bare-faced.  This is the fifth iteration of Cochrane’s mask efficacy meta-analysis which was first done in 2007 and it is the fifth fail for the wretched things.

The latest Cochrane review found that facemasks make “little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness/Covid‐19”.  This includes both the ubiquitous medical/surgical masks (the rectangular, blue ones) and the more high-falutin’ N95 ones (which look like a bird’s beak), whether they were worn in the community or in health care settings.

This is the ‘wrong’ conclusion, of course, and, in Covid Land, it can not be allowed to stand.  Amongst the first of the demolition squads to arrive on the scene has been the Australian edition of The Conversation which has chosen to solicit and publish a polemical assault (Yes, masks reduce the risk of spreading Covid despite a review saying they don't) on the Cochrane Review of masks, attempting to discredit it for methodological flaws.

The purging of Cochrane’s deviation from Covid orthodoxy has been entrusted by The Conversation to four academics from Australia (and one from Britain), a tribute of sorts to just how nutty the Australian caste of professional thinkers went during the Antipodean bout with Covid hysteria and policy tyranny.

Mask type and setting

The Conversation criticises the review for mixing ‘apples and oranges’ by treating surgical masks the same as N95 masks when, however, the surgical ones are merely “designed to prevent splatter of fluid on the face and are loose-fitting, causing unfiltered air to leak in through the gaps around the mask” whereas N95s are (supposedly) designed for respiratory protection (based on highly artificial laboratory tests, they claim to filter out 95% of all airborne particles including virus-laden aerosols).  The “assumption that [blue] surgical masks provide respiratory protection” is thus flawed, they argue, and, so, by inappropriately lumping studies of surgical masks (apples) in with N95s (oranges), the wonderfully effective N95s are done a terrible experimental injustice, they say.

The Conversation argues that N95s are superior at virus protection and deserve to be assessed separately from the blue mask and, sifting more apples from oranges, the efficacy of N95s used in “an RCT in a high-risk setting will be obscured if that trial is combined in a meta-analysis with several other RCTs that were conducted in low-risk settings”.

The Cochrane Review, however, didn’t lump all mask types and settings together higgledy-piggledy – it assessed each study for methodological reliability and soundness of conclusion and drew an overall qualitative conclusion from that.  The N95 studies, and different settings, were assessed separately and the masks, too, regardless of type and setting copped a serve for being basically useless.

The Conversation’s pro-N95 authors base their belief in the wonder of N95s on their own meta-analysis which consists of the grand, cherry-picked total of two studies (one of those authored by the lead author of the hit-job on Cochrane).  So, not really that ‘meta’, then, compared to the dozens evaluated by Cochrane, and more a case of ‘policy-based evidence-making’ rather than the reverse (for those interested, Anthony Colpo, in his Mainstream media and biased researchers, turns over the methodological rocks of the pro-mask studies cited by The Conversation and finds all sorts of dirty data doings underneath).

One service The Conversation has performed, however, in its last-ditch defence of the mask is the inadvertent damage they have had to do to the whole Covid mask charade by conceding that the blue medical/surgical masks, the ones that most of the world’s population were mandated, shamed or bullied into wearing for the better part of three years, were utterly useless for their stated intention of protecting against Covid.  To save the reputation of one type of mask (the N95) from the speeding Cochrane Review, they had to throw the old blue mask under the bus.  Masking as we knew it during Covid was all theatre, they are basically admitting.

All-the-time vs part-time use

The Conversation also argues the case for N95s being unfairly maligned by Cochrane because, to be a valid test of that type of mask, it must be worn at all times, they say, not just in a healthcare setting, because you can get the dreaded rona from just about anywhere where people gather.  A medical practitioner saved from the Virus of Doom by masking up in theatre with an N95 will, if they drop their guard, get infected by popping down to the local supermarket, unmasked (or slumming it with a blue mask) after finishing their shift.

As the Cochrane Review found, however, it would be impossible to tell, from any chart of infection rates, just which lines represents the devil-may-care maskless and the deluded blue-masked from the ‘protected’ N95’ers, or the all-the-time users from the part-timers.

This is because, regardless of type or usage protocols, masks don’t work (I must get a shortcut key on my keyboard to save a whole bunch of typing, given the number of times we mask rebels have to use that phrase).

Self-report data is dodgy data

One other major recourse of The Conversation’s science-assassination squad is to question the data integrity of the RCTs and cluster-RCTs reviewed by Cochrane - “self-reported mask-wearing doesn’t at all resemble actual mask-wearing”, they warn, and, thus, “if in a study of masking, most people don’t actually wear them, you can’t conclude that masks don’t work when the study shows no difference between the groups”.

Fair enough - because masks are so dreadful to wear, some people, when part of a mask trial (as they would in the real-world use of masks), wouldn’t wear them when they say they do (even though they are ‘doing it for science!’).  People fiddle with them, drop them below the nose, take them off to eat or drink or talk, or whip them off for ‘just a breather’.  Most people in the brave new world of the mask behave as normal people would when something unnatural obstructs their breathing and oxygen flow to the brain.

Here, however, The Conversation has just unwittingly hoisted themselves on their own petard.  On their own logic that people in mask trials lie about their actual mask use and that, therefore, self-report data on mask use is inherently untrustworthy, any pro-mask study that The Conversation authors cite (and they carefully pick a few mask-compliant studies) would be torpedoed, too, since their pet studies would also have to be based on (dodgy) self-report data.  Sauce for the goose ……..

Long live the mask!

The Conversation’s desperate contortions allow it to arrive at the conclusion that “there is strong and consistent evidence for the effectiveness of masks … in protecting against respiratory infections”.  This is lucky for us masked peasants because without the fallback NPI of masks we would be totally stuffed because of the failure, which The Conversation authors concede, of the Covid vaccines “to prevent infection due to waning vaccine immunity and substantial immune escape from new variants”.

Thanks, academic experts!  We now have a useless injectable whose very uselessness (not to mention danger) requires a useless (and harmful) mask to counter its very uselessness.  Who put these clowns in charge?

In the view of The Conversation, there is a bright future for the mask because of the failure of the vaccines but only if everyone wears the extremely uncomfortable N95 mask and wears it all the time (and, presumably, follows strict clinical fitting and replacement protocols matching laboratory conditions).

The biological desire to breathe freely (and the social need to not look like a dork) which is a barrier to this blessed virus-neutering masked future can be overcome by, you guessed it, mandates, says The Conversation:  “mask-wearing goes up substantially to over 70% if there is an actual mandate in place”, they note with excitement.

Conflict of interest, anyone?

What accounts for the religious, pro-mask tone of our friends at The Conversation?  The academic world made such an irrational fuss over Covid, and made such a huge ideological investment in the  mask (and the vaxxes and all the rest of it), that they are unable to see, or are dismissive of, anything, including some six dozen real-world experimental trials, which contradicts their bias.

It’s not just ideology, of course.  A bit of material investment in the Cult of the Mask also helps to keep our tame academics committed to their Covid placebo of choice.  You have just read the long version of why The Conversation’s response to Cochrane is meritless but there is another, much shorter version which notes that all the authors are either on the Covid gravy train or are so wedded to the ‘pandemic’ narrative that they do pro-bono work for the pharmaceutical/PPE industry. 

In the Disclosure Statements accompanying The Conversation’s article, we learn that the lead author (Professor C Raina MacIntyre, University of New South Wales) “receives funding from mask manufacturer, Detmold, for testing of their masks and is on an advisory board for mask manufacturer Ascend”.  She also “receives funding from Sanofi”, a pharmaceutical company.  The other authors all have professional links, some financial, some not, to the pharmaceutical industry, or have served as advisors to the [pro-mask] Ontario Nurses Association and the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ditto).  ‘Nuff said.

What came first?  The income stream from the mask-makers to the Covid academics or the dons’ ideological commitment to the Covid industry and the approved ideological narrative?  It’s hard to say but what we do know is that The Conversation has laid an almighty egg with its defence of the mask – and it’s a real rotten one.

So, why has academia been so dismally unscientific and propagandistic on all things Covid, including the wretched masks?  Politically, academics these days lean heavily Left (my tribe!) but only in the modern, excessively woke, anti-populist sense with a profound distrust of the icky, non-woke working class, and it is this Left that has generally been the most hysterical and autocratic over Covid (reference the terribly woke, social democrat Covid warriors like Jacinda, Justin, Joe and our own Dictator Dan) under the left-liberal camouflage of ‘saving lives’.

Behind the mask

So what do we learn, comrades, from our little foray into this latest battle from the Mask Wars? From Cochrane, we learn that masks don’t [insert profanity of choice here] work against respiratory viruses (I really must get that shortcut key sorted) and only the Covid neurotics, including those in academia, think otherwise.

Even if masks did work, and there was a respiratory virus out there which packed much more punch that the Baloney Virus, masks should never be mandated/forced because they carry their own unique set of harms and, most importantly, they deny bodily autonomy and medical freedom - and it is the insults to freedom that have been what the last three years of medical tyranny have been about.  That masks don’t, in fact, work just adds further insult to the injury of the official Covid responses.  Yet the mask luxuriates in its new-found ideological hegemony even though most of the things have been (only temporarily, perhaps) retired from active service.

Part of the blame for this mask fetish lies, as we have just seen, with academia and the medical-scientific elite, including the Cochrane top bananas, too, who have succumbed to the Covid distemper of the age.

The previous (fourth) iteration of the Cochrane mask review had been due to be published in April 2020, just before mask-wearing (at least in the hitherto mask-free West) reared its ugly noggin but Cochrane’s negative assessment of mask efficacy in this fourth iteration meant that, as Covid hysteria rapidly mounted, and as a corresponding political momentum to make everyone mask had built up a head of speed, that the fourth review was delayed (censored) for seven months, and, when it did see publication, it was accompanied by a warning from the Cochrane editors meant to discredit its findings.  “Waiting for strong evidence is a recipe for paralysis”, the Cochrane bosses intoned, taking the knee to panicked policy based on what politicians and their health advisers wanted rather than the preponderance of actual scientific evidence.

This extraordinary delay was possible because, as Robyn Chuter notes, “Cochrane’s integrity and independence has been compromised in the last few years by its acceptance of donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” (The Conversation’s "strategic partner").  White-anted by Pharma cash, Cochrane proved hospitable enough to Covid policy hawks to stay its scientific hand when it really mattered i.e. during a looming mask craze.  Now, however, it is safe for the fifth iteration of the Cochrane mask review to go public when it matters much less, politically.

The Covid Hits and Classics keep coming from The Conversation

It’s not just masks, of course, which The Conversation has made a right royal, politically-driven scientific mess of.  Just like those radio stations that play only Hits and Classics, The Conversation’s content programming for Covid is the Hits and Classics we have all learnt to hum along to - ‘global pandemic’, ‘variants of concern’ (the Kraken wakes! – quick, run for the hills), ‘cases’, asymptomatic transmission, the facemask, etc.

There is occasional revisiting of stale old clunkers like lockdown that few now own up to once liking (the Abba of the Covid Hit Parade), or the fad for vaccine passports (see The Conversation’s embarrassing Agony Aunt advice on the etiquette of disinviting your unvaxxed friends to a picnic) which, like disco music and bellbottom trousers, are looked back on in red-faced shame by some of those who indulged in it.  Top of the hi-rotation playlist, of course, is the ‘Safe and Effective’ ballad which lulls listeners (and unwary readers of The Conversation) into a semi-stupor.

Masks – how I loathe them!  Even isolated sightings of the things now can spoil my day as a reminder of the ruinous upheaval and mass messing of minds we have been subjected to by scientific dunces and policy idiots for three years.  I was quite fond of the old mask-free world which will be gone forever if the new, permanently N95-masked world that The Conversation would like to see ever comes into awful existence.  And even if we are spared this extreme, the mental outlook of millions of people from the Covid generation will have been scarred forever.

Never shy about self-promotion, The Conversation puffs itself up for its “academic rigour”, “journalistic flair” and “evidence-based news” but it has about much intellectual and aesthetic appeal as its beloved mask after a day of breathing and coughing into the soggy germ-trap.  As the excellent Substacker, Eugyppius, puts it: “what remains of Team Mask is a bunch of deeply irrational people, and there is no reasoning with them”.  And that includes many of the ‘finest’ academic minds in Australia’s ‘institutions of higher learning’ (sic).