Researchers in Spain who examined mask mandates for schoolchildren in the Catalonia region found that masking was not linked to a lower rate of COVID-19 cases or transmission.
The Epoch Times reports children aged six and older were required to wear masks in schools in Catalonia when they reopened during the pandemic. Comparing the incidence of Covid cases amongst those children to those aged five and younger from the period of September 13, 2021 to December 22, 2021 researchers found that masking did not produce lower rates of transmission.
“The study shows that there was not a significant decrease in transmission on the courses that were masked (6 to 11 y.o.) when comparing to those that were not (3 to 5),” Clara Prats, one of the authors, told The Epoch Times in an e-mail.
In fact, rates of transmission were higher among the masked children. The incidence rate among the five-year-old group was 3.1 percent, for example, compared to 3.5 percent among the six-year-old group. Neither of those rates, of course, is particularly high.
Researchers noted that “age dependency” was the greatest contributor for the risk of Covid transmission in schools, adding that older children are more likely to have an adult-like response to Covid than younger children. Children are also exposed to a variety of other coronaviruses, they added, providing them more cross-reactive T cells, which also provide protection against Covid.
Based on the study, the researchers concluded mask mandates in school “were not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 incidence or transmission, suggesting this intervention was not effective.”
Dr. Jonathan Darrow, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who analyzed mask studies in 2021, said the Spanish study is just the latest to disprove the efficacy of masking.
“This is one more study that fails to provide good evidence that masks substantially reduce transmission, and that suggests that if they do reduce transmission, they don’t reduce it by very much,” Darrow told The Epoch Times in an e-mail. “Of course, it is always possible that in some other context masks might work better (e.g., better masks, better compliance, less facial touching, more frequent replacement of masks, etc).”
The Spanish study comes as little surprise to mask skeptics who have long questioned the effectiveness of mask mandates.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, senior scientific director of the Brownstone Institute, observed in November, “The truth is that there has been only two randomized trials of masks for COVID. One was in Denmark, which showed that they might be slightly beneficial, they might be slightly harmful, we don’t really know — the confidence interval kind of crossed zero.”
As noted by City Journal, the Denmark study, which was the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) on COVID-19 transmission, had difficulty getting published because it found that 1.8 percent of those in the mask group and 2.1 percent of those in the control group became infected with COVID, a 0.3-point difference that was not statistically significant. After it was published, Vinsay Prasad, an M.D. at the University of California-San Francisco, commended the researchers and called the study “thoughtful” and “well-done,” but noted that there were critics who were upset that the study was published.
“Some have turned to social media to ask why a trial that may diminish enthusiasm for masks and may be misinterpreted was published in a top medical journal,” he wrote in an opinion piece for Medpage Today.
Science, apparently, only matters when it supports the government and mainstream media narrative.
Dr. Kulldorff added, “And then there was another study from Bangladesh where they randomized villagers to masks or no masks. And the efficacy of the masks for reduction of COVID was something between zero and 18 percent. So either no effect or very miniscule effect.”
It’s worth noting those studies looked at the effectiveness of surgical masks.
Studies predating the COVID pandemic (and therefore devoid of an agenda) on the efficacy of cloth masks have found them to be largely ineffective against the spread of respiratory illness. One study found that cloth masks among hospital staff, for example, “may potentially increase the infection risk” of developing an influenza-like virus.
Extensive RCTs and meta-analysis reviews of those studies by the CDC have shown that masks and respirators are ineffective against the spread of respiratory illnesses believed to be spread by droplet and aerosol particles.
“There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission,” the studies found. This applied to masks “worn by the infected person for source control OR when worn by uninfected persons.” The researchers concluded that there was “no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”
