Those 'feel safe' mask mandates don’t actually work

... In 1920, the American Journal of Public Health published a study asking why widespread masking had had virtually no effect on the spread of the disease.  It concludes that masks dense enough to filter out the flu made it hard to breath, forcing air around the edges.

And yet, public health officials today are still promoting masks with the same level of overconfidence and lack of humility that has characterized most of their response to Covid from the beginning. Mask mandates stem not from knowledge but from people’s desire to feel safe.

The burden of proof lies squarely on those who would impose such a mandate, its costs, and its enforcement costs on society.  Masks’ benefits must clearly and unambiguously outweigh the overall inconvenience and costs. Such proof simply does not exist. Ian Miller of Rational Ground has collected dozens of graphs showing no correlation between mask mandates and case rates, despite their popularity with politicians.

A 2011 study in the Cochrane Library claimed that masks might help reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. By 2020, the updated study concluded with moderate certainty that, “wearing a mask probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza compared to not wearing [one].”

Three prominent studies concur. A Danish study showed no statistically significant effect from masking. Studies in Georgia and Bangladesh showed improvements of roughly one percentage point in transmission, hardly worth the socialization cost to kids or the health costs to adults....

Senate Votes ‘Yes’ to Repeal Biden’s Federal Vaccine Mandate, Breitbart, December 9, 2021.