Biden’s former COVID adviser tries to discredit randomized controlled trial that found no statistically significant real-world performance difference between surgical masks, N95s. Fauci reportedly can’t cite any evidence masks work in deposition.
The CDC took nearly two years to formally recognize distinctions between masks for mitigating COVID-19 spread, finally saying in January that cloth masks offer “the least” protection and N95 respirators, which meet strict federal standards, “the highest.”
The agency’s slight nod to the largely symbolic value of cloth masks, predominantly worn in school settings, followed months of calls by onetime White House COVID advisers, among others, to promote masks actually designed to stop aerosolized transmission. It also spurred a run on N95s, sending prices skyward.
But a new peer-reviewed, randomized controlled trial (RCT) of N95s versus surgical masks, considered the midrange of protection, is undermining the late federal pivot to higher-quality masks and calls to reimpose mask mandates in schools, among other settings.
Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM) this week and led by researchers at Canada’s McMaster University, the study found no statistically significant difference in protection between the two kinds of masks in healthcare facilities in Canada, Israel, Pakistan and Egypt.
Funders included the Canadian government and World Health Organization, which unlike the U.S. opposes masking young children and also found “no evidence” face coverings made a difference against influenza in a 2019 study.