Danish Study Questions Use of Masks to Protect WearersMasks prevent people from transmitting the coronavirus to others, scientists now agree. But a new trial failed to document protection from the virus among the wearers.
By Gina Kolata
Nov. 18, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ET
Few public health measures have ever been as contentious as the requirement to wear masks in public. Many Americans and public health experts view the measure as a civic obligation necessary to halt the pandemic now rampant in the United States. Others see it as an ineffectual infringement on personal liberty.
President Trump has transformed mask-wearing into a partisan issue, less a sensible health protection than a badge of party affiliation.
A new study, the first of its kind, is likely to inflame the controversy. Researchers in Denmark reported on Wednesday that surgical masks did not protect the wearers against infection with the coronavirus in a large randomized clinical trial.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, did not contradict growing evidence that masks can prevent transmission of the virus from wearer to others. But the conclusion is at odds with the view that masks also protect the wearers — a position endorsed just last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ...
“Our study gives an indication of how much you gain from wearing a mask,†said Dr. Henning Bundgaard, lead author of the study and a cardiologist at the University of Copenhagen. “Not a lot.†...
I don't believe it was Trump who turned this whole virus thing, masks and all, into a partisan issue. NYT editorializing aside, the study seems to indicate that mask mandates are pointless.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/health/coronavirus-masks-denmark.html
