The value of masking during the pandemic was "approximately zero," according to a Cochrane review of high-quality research, reports John Tierney in City Journal. "Neither surgical masks nor N95 masks" -- not to mention cloth masks that many of us wore -- "have been shown to make a difference in reducing the spread of Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses."
"The gold standard for medical evidence is the randomized clinical trial, and the gold standard for analyzing this evidence is Cochrane," which is funded by the National Institutes of Health and other nations’ health agencies, writes Tierney.
But the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) bureaucrats don't want to "follow the science," he writes.
Masking young children made even less sense than masking adults given that "Covid-19 poses virtually no health risk to healthy children," writes Tierney. Yet "the CDC continues to recommend masking all students in communities where infection rates are rising. While the WHO advises against masks for children under six, and the European Union advises against them for students under 12, the CDC cruelly recommends masking everyone from age two on up."
Dozens of peer-reviewed studies show that "masks cause social, psychological, and medical problems, including a constellation of maladies called 'mask-induced exhaustion syndrome',” writes Tierney. Yet young children are still being masked -- preschoolers! -- just at the time when they should be developing language and social skills.