Conclusion Regarding that Masks Do Not Work
No RCT study with verified outcome shows a benefit for HCW or community members in
households to wearing a mask or respirator. There is no such study. There are no exceptions.
Likewise, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public
(more on this below).
Furthermore, if there were any benefit to wearing a mask, because of the blocking power
against droplets and aerosol particles, then there should be more benefit from wearing a
respirator (N95) compared to a surgical mask, yet several large meta-analyses, and all the RCT,
prove that there is no such relative benefit.
Masks and respirators do not work.
Precautionary Principle Turned on Its Head with Masks
In light of the medical research, therefore, it is difficult to understand why public-health
authorities are not consistently adamant about this established scientific result, since the
distributed psychological, economic and environmental harm from a broad recommendation to
wear masks is significant, not to mention the unknown potential harm from concentration and
distribution of pathogens on and from used masks. In this case, public authorities would be
turning the precautionary principle on its head (see below).
Physics and Biology of Viral Respiratory Disease and of Why Masks Do Not Work
In order to understand why masks cannot possibly work, we must review established
knowledge about viral respiratory diseases, the mechanism of seasonal variation of excess
deaths from pneumonia and influenza, the aerosol mechanism of infectious disease
transmission, the physics and chemistry of aerosols, and the mechanism of the so-called
minimum-infective-dose.