From the R.M. Dolin book, “Truth and Trust in Crisis.”
Chapter 14: Follow the Science: The Fallacy of Facemasks
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl Sagan [1]
Scientists are trained to approach problems divorced from personal bias, with a willingness to be persuaded and a responsibility to validate assertions and observations through hypothesis testing, using experiments to assess likely outcomes.[2] Hypothesis testing involves the following steps
- State your hypothesis.[3]
- Design an experiment to prove the hypothesis.
- Perform experiments and collect data.
- Analyze the data to support or refute the hypothesis.
- Formulate conclusions based on analysis results.
Throughout this crisis, we’ve heard experts like Brix/Fauci, of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, demand Americans wear facemasks, even going to illogical extremes such as recommending you wear two while alone in your house or car. A Texas official advocates wearing facemasks while having sex. At the urging of medical professionals, thirty-seven states have imposed facemask mandates. Under President Trump, mandates were left to individual states to decide but President Biden intends to federalize mandates uniformly across the country.
Medical and government experts apparently don’t review research because a peer reviewed article published in the CDC Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases[4], found that facemasks don’t prevent the transmission of COVID. [5] But that’s not even the most irrational thing to emerge; in New York, politicians and healthcare professionals, backed by complicit media, believe anger prevents infection. The mayor of New York City encourages rioting[6] while, along with his California counterparts, declares sinners shouldn’t be allowed to get right with God, or families feeling the need for fellowship can’t be allowed to gather around a backyard barbeque grill.[7]
When government mandates become so absurd they promote protesters gathering in large groups without facemasks, but threaten to arrest people who worship with facemasks, it begs the question, “What is the real reason for facemasks, and do they accomplish their stated purpose?” When the government intentionally infects nursing home residents but restricts barbeques, how much trust can we give them to have our health as a concern? To answer that, let’s consider the following factors in facemask efficacy,
- Facemask standards do not exist.
- Facemasks don’t seal around the face, so when you exhale unfiltered air escapes.
- Facemasks don’t cover the eyes, which is COVID’s most direct pathway into your body.
- People who wear facemasks tend to touch their faces often.
Facemask Hypothesis Testing, Step 1: Formulate a hypothesis
H1: Wearing a facemask does not prevent COVID transmission.
We frame our hypothesis as the opposite assertion made by medical professionals, politicians, and the media. As an initial metric into proving H1, I found no evidence supporting a facemask’s ability to prevent COVID transmission but will provide peer reviewed evidence later that facemasks do not prevent transmission but to prove or disprove H1 ourselves, we must perform experiments.
Step 2: Design an Experiment
Experiments can be conducted to test the efficacy of facemasks by using items found in most homes. Table 14.1 lists the parameters needed for our hypothesis test[8],[9],[10],[11].
Table 14.1. Parameters for Facemask Hypothesis Test.
To put this dimensional data in perspective, the average porosity, or hole diameter, of a facemask is 290 microns, which is 2,320 times larger than the diameter of the COVID virus. To visualize this differential, imagine you have a large jar filled with marbles at the top of a playground slide that you tip over. The slide contains a random pattern of holes down its length with each hole 2,320 times the diameter of the marbles. If a marble falls through a hole on the way down, it’s analogous to a COVID virus escaping a facemask. If a marble makes it all the way to the bottom of the slide, it’s analogous to a facemask stopping that virus’s transmission. If a marble is one centimeter in diameter, then each hole in the slide is 23.2 meters or 76 feet in diameter. Raise your hand if you think a marble makes it to the bottom.
Step 3: Perform Experiments
Experiment 1: Use a fisherman’s net to capture sugar grains. The fisherman’s net represents a facemask and sugar grains a virus. The porosity of the fisherman’s net is approximately 3cm X 3cm, which equates to 30,000 microns per side. Granulated sugar is a crystal cube with an average size of 550 microns per side; this means a sugar grain is 54.5 times smaller than the net’s opening. Since the COVID virus is 2,320 times smaller than facemask pores, the fisherman’s net is 42.5 times more effective at capturing sugar grains than a facemask is at preventing coronavirus transmission.
Precisely weigh 1 kilogram of sugar into a bowl. Hold the fisherman’s net over a second bowl and pour the sugar into the net. Since it’s difficult to count individual crystals captured by the net, we can weigh the sugar that passes through the net and use the average weight of a sugar grain to approximate how many grains were captured. Keep in mind as you discover the net doesn’t capture any sugar grains that our net is 43 times more effective at stopping sugar than a facemask is at stopping COVID.
Experiment 2: Use a fisherman’s net to capture pieces of cereal. The same fisherman’s net is used in this experiment but with a larger medium. The average diameter of the cereal, say Captain Crunch, Fruit Loops, or Cheerios, is ~1.5 centimeters, or 15,000 microns. This means each opening in the net is 2 times larger than a piece of cereal making our net 1,160 times more effective at capturing cereal than a facemask is at stopping COVID.
To execute the experiment, pour a box of cereal into a bowl and weigh the contents. Next weigh 100 individual pieces of cereal and compute the average weight for a piece of cereal. Divide the weight of the cereal in the bowl by the average weight per piece to determine how many pieces of cereal are used in the experiment.
Hold the fisherman’s net over a large tray and pour the cereal from the bowl into the net. Record the number of cereal pieces the net captures, which represents the number of COVID viruses a facemask can capture by a factor of 1,160. In other words, for every 1,160 pieces of cereal the fisherman’s net captures, a facemask would keep 1 of 1,160 viruses from escaping. Once you discover the fisherman’s net doesn’t capture any pieces of cereal, you understand how effective facemasks are at stopping COVID.
Step 4: Analyze Results
Repeat each experiment multiple times with different brands of sugar and different types of cereal. For each experiment, carefully record the results. For a properly designed and correctly executed experiment, you should observe consistent outcomes each time you repeat the experiment, namely, that the fisherman’s net captures zero sugar grains and zero pieces of cereal.
Step 5: Formulate Conclusions
The fisherman’s net is 42.5 times more effective at capturing sugar grains and 1,160 times more likely to capture cereal pieces than a facemask is at stopping the coronavirus. After repeated trials, the fisherman’s net stopped zero sugar grains and zero pieces of cereal. If the fisherman’s net cannot prevent sugar grains or pieces of cereal from passing through, facemasks cannot stop coronaviruses. An important aspect of our experiment is that when the sugar and cereal were poured into the net, we applied no pressure to push the medium through. However, each time a person exhales while wearing a facemask, pressure is exerted as the viruses is forcefully projected through the mask and around the unsealed sides. Factoring in the effects of pressure and seal leakage further lowers the efficacy of a facemask’s ability to stop COVID, but since our experiments already demonstrate facemasks have zero ability to stop COVID, accounting for pressure and leakage does not alter the outcome.
Based on experiments we conclude facemasks provide no discernable ability to prevent COVID transmission, so why are facemasks mandated? Dr. Fauci provides interesting insight as he contends facemask are a psychological placebo, “wearing a mask is not 100% effective, [you wear it] to show respect for another person.” [12]
If our experiments and Dr. Fauci’s insights are not enough to convince you facemasks do stop COVID, perhaps the CDC can assuage you.
“Here, we review the evidence based on the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical personal protective measures and environmental hygiene measures in non-healthcare settings and discuss their potential inclusion in pandemic plans. Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning.”
Pages 970-972 of the paper: “In our systematic review, we identified 10 RCTs [randomized controlled trials] that reported estimates of the effectiveness of face masks in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the community from literature published during 1946-July 27, 2018. In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks…
Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids… There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
In this review, we did not find evidence to support a protective effect of personal protective measures or environmental measures in reducing influenza transmission. We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility…”[13]
Based on the results of our experiments, extensive CDC trials, and Dr. Fauci’s profound insight, we can conclude that facemask efficacy is a false fallacy as they do not prevent coronavirus transmission. So once again we’re left with another unresolved riddle: “What’s the real reason for facemask mandates?” Once you solve that mystery, you’ll know everything you need to know about our COVID crisis.
Note: This chapter is based on a series of 2020 essays submitted to major media outlets, including the NY Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune. The essays can be found at: https://rmdolin.com/commentary/
Read the entire “Truth and Trust in Crisis,” book.
[1] https://www.quotes.pub/q/one-of-the-saddest-lessons-of-history-is-this-if-weve-been-b-293860
[2] Hypothesis Testing | A Step-by-Step Guide with Easy Examples (scribbr.com)
[3] How to Write a Strong Hypothesis | Steps and Examples (scribbr.com)
[4] Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures – Volume 26, Number 5—May 2020 – Emerging Infectious Diseases journal – CDC
[5] Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures – Volume 26, Number 5—May 2020 – Emerging Infectious Diseases journal – CDC
[6] De Blasio Hints Rioting Is Okay, Going To Church Is Not During Pandemic – They’re ‘Not the Same’ – The Political Insider
[7] Coronavirus: Newsom warns against Fourth of July gatherings (mercurynews.com)
[8] Fact check: N95 filters are not too large to stop COVID-19 particles (usatoday.com)
[9] How Small is a Water Molecule? (yourhomewaterfilters.com)
[10] size of a grain of sugar – Search (bing.com)
[11] Optical microscopic study of surface morphology and filtering efficiency of face masks – PMC (nih.gov)
[12] Fauci says he wears a mask to be a symbol of what ‘you should be doing’ – CNNPolitics
[13] Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures – Volume 26, Number 5—May 2020 – Emerging Infectious Diseases journal – CDC
Comments are closed