Hygiene theatre, "for patrons who cannot remove their masks"
The fine arts as the last bastion of COVID hocus-pocus, all the while science confirms again that masks don't work.
Last weekend I missed the Sunday matinee of “Fifteen Dogs”, a play with a “Content Warning” about “Depictions of animal violence and death.” More concerning to me than that odd trigger warning was the fact that this local Toronto theatre is holding on to a ritual mask requirement for two of its weekly shows, “for patrons who cannot, or are not ready to, remove their masks.” As a bonus, they force their staff to “continue to be fully masked.”
In other news, the Cochrane medical library just published an updated systematic review of “Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses” and confirmed that face masks don’t work.
Back in November, I wrote about “The day that ‘mask’ became just another four-letter word”, focusing on mask safety. I was waiting for an opportunity to add a quick update on mask efficacy, and it looks like today’s the day. A systematic review is a combined analysis of other researchers’ published studies, which represents the strongest level in the hierarchy of scientific evidence. The updated Cochrane mask review now includes six additional randomized control trials (RCTs, the second-strongest type of evidence) that were conducted during COVID-19 among a total of 78 studies examining the effectiveness of face masks and hand hygiene.
Based on the plain-language summary of the review article, across 12 of the studies, wearing of medical/surgical masks in the community or in a health-care settings made little to no difference in catching a flu-like illness or COVID. In a separate comparison of mask types, “wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu … and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a[n unconfirmed] flu‐like illness“. In high school, my teachers used to label this kind of lingo as “subjunctivitis”.
Looking at the main results reported in the scientific abstract, we can indeed gather that the risk ratios for different mask types, comparisons, and outcomes, range from 0.70 (30% risk reduction) to 1.10 (10% risk increase), and that ALL confidence intervals include the 1.0 mark, representing NO EFFECT. Hence my above, more definitive translation of the review results as “face masks don’t work”.
The tweet above by a Canadian academic illustrates the divisiveness of masking. For some, it’s still politics and moral superiority over facts and common sense. And since 2020, “progressive” political positions correlate strongly with a desire for authoritarian leadership, worshipping global pharma corporations, and submitting your body and soul to the State. But don’t worry, it’s all for the “common good” however defined — another blog post is in preparation on this topic!
The masquerade and performative virtuousness continue in some fact-resistant environments, including “higher-education” campuses, municipal employers, and arts & entertainment venues. It’s only logical that a community that required the viewers of an outdoor performance of a “reimagining” of Shakespeare’s Othello in August 2022 to be masked, would go above and beyond with the hygiene theatre at this point in the just-, but not justly, extended pandemic, courtesy of the WHO. Facing the facts seems to be asking too much of the face-mask addicts, those “who cannot remove their masks” according to Toronto’s theatrics community.
And before anyone misunderstands, be aware of the social exclusion experienced by persons with disabilities due to mask mandates and other pandemic restrictions. It is not “just a mask”. By accepting the 2020/21 pandemic measures including capacity limits and outright closures, and now perpetuating mindless mask mandates, the entertainment venues are setting the stage for repeat performances of this discriminatory morality play.
A lot more information on the “science of masking”, their uselessness and harms, the politics of covering our faces, and the long-term impacts can be found at Children’s Health Defense. Ignoring the developmental impact on children, the harms to people’s mental and social health, and the environmental burden of mass masking is shameful. The trusted Swiss Policy Research site, which does not shy from contradicting the contrarians on other topics such as Long COVID, offers comprehensive evidence against masking too. And Marc Girardot perhaps puts it best in the byline of his July 2022 post “We Are All Already Wearing A Mask…” (find it on web.archive.org if you cannot subscribe):
Nature has already given us an air filtration system that is optimised for our bodies and for respiration. Fooling around with it is lunacy.