QUACK Apologizes for Advocating Mask Wearing

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

Well, warm welcome to today's talk and it turns out that these [cloth] masks we wore for such a long time are actually completely useless.

As indeed are these, uh, paper ones that we also wore for a long time.

So, they don't seem to do anything at all according to the, uh, the data and as well as that, they make your glasses steam up.

Now, welcome, it's Thursday the 2nd of March, um, 2023 today.

Now, I want to apologize for advocating for the use of masks for, um, pretty well all of, uh, the end of 2020 and pretty well all of 2021.

We changed our position on this channel on the, uh, 19th of February 2022.

So, for advocating masks before that, my apologies, I was wrong, or at least it's certainly not supported by the data.

So, let's look at the author's conclusions of this study here. I just want to read these out.

Before, this is about the Cochran review I will show you in a minute.

Um, the pooled results of randomized controlled trials did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infections with the use of medical surgical masks.

There were no clear differences between the use of medical surgical masks compared to the N95/P2 masks, either.

In respiratory, in these respirators, in healthcare workers made essentially no difference when used in routine care to reduce the spread of viral, uh, infection.

So there we go – that is the author's conclusion.

This is the paper here, and it is a very comprehensive Cochrane review.

Um, it's available freely. It's a, a very comprehensive piece of work. There's a plain language summary, there's a ordinary abstract, and there's a huge amount of detail there citing in great detail all of the literature.

It's a, it's pretty well a day's work to read it actually, um, but it’s all there.

So, what is it telling us and why we were wrong?

Come to that, um, Winston [stuffed toy dog] was wrong as well but he only does what I tell him so it's not his fault.

All that time and they weren't really doing anything at all.

Um, and YouTube allows me to apologize for, um, advocating mask wearing because it doesn't have a particular policy about mask wearing.

Anyway, do physical measures such as hand washing or wearing masks stop, slow, slow down the spread of respiratory viruses?

Now today we're not going to do hand washing we're just going to look at the, the masks.

We might look at hand washing, which does have some efficacy, but the mask wearing doesn't.

Evidence published up to, uh, October 2022. So, you know, a reasonably up-to-date study.

Now the background here is that done previous work on the 2009 H1N1. Uh, the done work on, um, SARS Coronavirus 1 in 2003, the covid pandemic, of course, updated the Cochrane review that was last published in 2020, with all the latest data.

So this is as up-to-date as we, uh, get and this is as definitive as we can be as we speak now on Thursday the 2nd of March 2023.

Main results – 11 randomized control trials and cluster randomized control trials.

Now a cluster randomized control trial just means instead of taking individuals in a trial they take groups. So a group of people who wore masks and a group of people who didn't wear masks; perfectly legitimate, well-recognized research method.

78 randomized controlled trials. Now first of all, the data on medical surgical masks compared to no masks, wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcomes of influenza-like illness. Wearing a mask may make little or no difference to how many people caught a flu-like illness, according to the plain language summary.

So, does wearing masks protect us in the community against becoming infected with covid and influenza? No. Not really, according to this.

Um, risk ratio is, uh, 0.95. In other words, you could argue there's a five percent protective effect but you can't, really, because there's a range it's 0.84 to 1.09 and, um, they can only give moderate-certainty evidence.

Now this moderate-certainty evidence, of course, is that it makes no difference.

So they are moderately sure that it doesn't make any difference based on the, uh, summation of all the data from all these clinical trials in what is a fairly sophisticated Cochrane review.

Nine trials 276,917 individual participants, moderate-certainty evidence it made no difference.

No difference in how many people caught flu-like illness.

So, there you go. Um, I was wrong all that time.

Uh, wearing a mask in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza. So this is laboratory-confirmed influenza or SARS coronavirus 2.

So what about laboratory-confirmed diagnosis – what's the difference there?

Well, the relative risk is, is 1.01, in other words you could argue there's a one percent increased chance of getting a positive diagnosis of covid or influenza but of course in practice it makes no difference.

It makes no difference.

This is what the data actually shows.

Confidence limits there, 95 percent, the 95 percent confidence between 0.72 and 1.42. So one, bang on one, basically. Six trials 13,919 individuals and they are moderately certain, moderately certain is actually quite good, that, moderately certain that there is no difference.

They didn't work.

Harms were rarely reported or measured upon so they've got very low-certainty evidence if there was any harms done ‘cause harms basically weren't measured in the studies so we basically don't know if they did harm or not.

Um, I can't say more than that. We simply don't know that they have low-certainty evidence that they don't know that it did harm.

Now what about the sophisticated masks? The, uh, the N95s are supposed to filter out 95 percent of micro-particulates the P2 respirators, the more sophisticated ones worn in industry and hospital. Compared to, what they did here was they compared these to medical surgical masks so the medical surgical masks are basically useless.

What about the sophisticated ones are they any better?

We pooled trials comparing, uh, comparing N95/P2 respirators with medical surgical masks.

We're very uncertain on the effects of N95/P2 respir-, respirators compared with medical surgical masks on the outcome of clinical respiratory illness.

So they're not really sure but then they say this and again, this is from the plain language summary which is remarkably useful:

Compared with wearing medical, uh, with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference.

So, all this money spent on PPE, all the lucrative contracts awarded by the government probably made essentially no difference to anyone.

So, there we have little or no difference to how many people have confirmed flu and may make little or no difference to how many people have, catch a flu-like illness.

So just to break that down, confirmed influenza by, uh, laboratory diagnosis relative risk there is 0.7, now that may look like there's a 30 percent protection and it is based on 7,779 individuals but because of the quality of the studies it turns out to be very low-certainty of evidence.

So basically their conclusion is it makes little or no difference.

That is, wearing these sophisticated expensive masks compared to wearing cheap paper and cloth masks. No great advantage.

In fact, you can't say there’s any advantage at all. Little to no difference.

Influenza-like illness, uh, N95/P2 respirators compared with medical surgical masks, uh, may be effective.

Now there's a, there's a possibility that there's some benefit here that is this is not to wearing masks per se this is wearing the, uh, the sophisticated masks compared to the N95/P2 mask compared to wearing the paper ones.

There the relative risk is uh is 0.82 which will give about an 18 percent potential protective benefit, uh, there but, but, um, based on 8,400 but it's low-certainty.

So there might be a, that they may be effective but there's a low level of certainty that they may be effective.

So, certainly nothing conclusive at all that they are.

Basically the conclusion is, compared with wearing medical or surgical masks wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little or no difference to how many people have confirmed flu and may make little or no difference on how many people catch a flu-like illness or respiratory illness or infection.

We're wrong. We were wrong. Uh, I was wrong.

The use of, uh, N95/P2 respirator compared to medical surgical masks, they say, probably makes little or no difference to laboratory-confirmed influenza infection, so laboratory-confirmed influential infection now, in fact if anything it makes it 10 percent more likely. Relative risk equals 1.1.

We can't say it makes it more likely because they're not sure.

Number there in the studies that the pooled were 8,407 individuals and they have moderate-certainty evidence that it makes, probably makes little or no difference.

So moderate-certainty evidence it probably makes little or no difference.

Restricting pooling to health care workers, now, in healthcare settings made no difference to the overall findings.

So, even in healthcare settings healthcare workers wearing these sophisticated masks made no difference to the principle that it probably makes little or no difference to laboratory-confirmed influenza infection and by extension to other conditions.

Harms were poorly measured and reported again. So, whether it did harm, or not, we simply don't know.

Uh, discomfort was certainly reported on many occasions so, no question, well, they give very low-certainty evidence about discomfort but it's pretty obvious they are uncomfortable to wear, especially for a long shift.

So, even the sophisticated masks made little or no difference to covid, made little or no difference to influenza, even in healthcare settings.

And one new trial they reported on as well in the meta-analysis, uh, surgical, medical surgical masks were non-inferior to N95 mask respirators, in other words, they were no worse they were just the same, in other words. Uh, they were not inferior they were the same as, and that's from 1,009 healthcare workers in four countries, uh, providing direct care to covid-19 patients.

So wearing medical surgical masks or wearing N95 respirators made no difference to how useless they were in providing protection to healthcare workers providing direct care to patients.

Um, there we are. Um, check it all out it's all there.

The abstracts tell you most of what you need to know but if you read through the detail there and the level of analysis is really, uh, quite excellent, um, it must have taken months to prepare such a comprehensive, uh, document.

Cochrane's not always perfect but this is as good as we've got in this instance.

So, um, I've apologized, um, let's hope Dr. Fauci now apologizes. Let's hope the, um, Department of Health, the UK Health Security Agency now apologizes. Let's hope the FDA and the CDC apologize, um, let's hope, uh, President Biden he was a great mask advocate let's hope he now apologizes.

Um, our prime ministers have worn masks over many occasions let's hope they now apologize for misleading the public or at least advocating interventions which are not supported by the evidence.

I got it wrong. I misinterpreted the evidence at the time, um, I, I apologize for that.

There's other things I probably got, well there's other things I did get wrong as well, but we're in the confines of the channel that we're in now, so I can apologize for, um, misleading information on, on mask wearing.

But there again, this is how science progresses.

But the key thing is okay, you, you, you, you advocate something for a while; you realize you're wrong, you change. You have to admit you're wrong, you have to change, you have to move on.

And unless people join me in admitting they got it wrong then can we really move on, can we really change, can we have this dialectic progression, uh, in, in, into a more enlightened future?

So, there's the evidence I'll just finish, I think with the, um, the author's conclusion:

“The pooled results of the randomized controlled trials did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infections with use of medical surgical masks there were no clear differences between the use of medical surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers.”

That's as definitive as we've got.

There we go.

Um, let's, let's, uh, let's learn and let's move on.

Thank you for watching.

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