Article by David Livermore.

Excerpts:

The results have been grim. Non-Covid excess deaths in England and Wales now exceed 1,500 per week (around 15 per cent higher than expected), often occurring at home. And 117,000 citizens have already died on the NHS’s several million-long waiting lists, which is equivalent to two-thirds of Covid’s 180,000 death toll.

Accordingly, there is no merit in a return to masking. Three lines of evidence tell me that masks offer virtually no protection. First, 12 pre-Covid trials showed no convincing protection against respiratory viruses, albeit with comparisons confounded by different mask types. Secondly, the DANMASK trial, undertaken during the pandemic, showed no statistically significant benefit to mask wearing. And thirdly, the introduction of national mask mandates has nowhere reversed a rising Covid trend. The virus is aerosol-borne and aerosols flow around the sides of a surgical mask, and can also pass though a mask, as they are smaller than a mask’s pores. Tight-fitting N95 masks should be more protective, according to laboratory tests. But they are uncomfortable and, where mandated – for example, in Bavaria – have been no more successful in reversing a rising tide of Covid infections than other mask types.