So masks don’t work after all? That’s the conclusion many conservatives took from a comprehensive analysis of the use of masks to prevent the spread of respiratory infections such as COVID-19 — and it’s led, naturally enough, to a lot of football-spiking and I-told-you-so’s.
Delve into the details of the study, however, and it’s clear that the conclusion is better phrased this way: Masks work, but mask mandates don’t. And while conservatives may be unwilling to acknowledge the first point, liberals are reluctant to admit the second.
The authors of the study reviewed 78 randomized controlled trials, but only two are actually about COVID and masks. And they weren’t so much about the efficacy of mask-wearing, as my former colleague Kelsey Piper notes, as about “whether people were encouraged or told to wear masks.” The evidence that well-designed, well-fitted masks block virus particles remains clear and convincing. It was the basis for the idea that mask mandates were a good idea. But this analysis shows that the mandating didn’t do anything.
