New York Times columnist: Mask ‘misinformers’ were right

An editorial published in the New York Times Tuesday by columnist Bret Stephens admits that mask mandates “were a fool’s errand from the start.”

Stephens bases the article on a large-scale study recently conducted by the Cochrane Institute, considered the “gold standard of evidence-based reviews,” which concluded that surgical masks and even N95 or P2 respirators offer little protection against COVID-19, if at all.

The researchers reviewed 78 global studies involving over a million people. Significantly, the studies they looked at were randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, which are considered to be high-quality research and the scientific optimum.

Stephens cites the study and quotes its lead researcher, Dr. Tom Jefferson, who said in a recent interview that “[t]here is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop.”

“Mask mandates were a bust,” acknowledges Stephens. “Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as ‘misinformers’ for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong.”

And while those who did the mocking and censoring, including the mainstream experts and pundits, ought to acknowledge their error, Stephens says there is little chance of that. As proof, he refers to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s refusal to accept the Cochrane study.

At a congressional hearing last week, Walensky dismissed the meta-analysis by saying that not enough people in the studies wore masks.

"One of the limitations in that study was clearly stated that people were not actually engaged in the intervention — so you actually have to wear the mask for it to work," she said. 

The CDC’s own studies which claim high mask efficacy are population studies which have been criticized by medical experts as low-quality “shaky studies” based on “shaky methods”. 

“No study — or study of studies — is ever perfect. Science is never absolutely settled,” writes Stephens in a stark contrast to earlier articles published by the New York Times which claimed that “masks are more important than ever”:

The public health debate on masks is settled, said Joseph G. Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard. When you wear a mask, "you protect yourself, you protect others, you prevent yourself from touching your face," he said. And you signal that wearing a mask is the right thing to do.

Stephens concludes that true scientists and medical experts deserve an apology, but there is a limit to his mea culpa: the writer says that those who were mocked, shunned and abused should be happy just to be right.

The last justification for masks is that, even if they proved to be ineffective, they seemed like a relatively low-cost, intuitively effective way of doing something against the virus in the early days of the pandemic.

But “do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy. And the people who had the courage to say as much deserved to be listened to, not treated with contempt. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.

But Stephens’ article does not appear to have changed many minds; those who believed masks work will likely always believe masks work, no matter the scientific evidence.

Journalist Kurt Eichenwald, for example, became enraged at Stephens’ article, which he called “reckless and wrong”. He then wrote a series of 12 tweets trying to tear down the Cochrane study, which he called “outrageous”.

But others did not even bother attacking the study and instead expressed solidarity with the government, which they said behaved with honor and sincerity.

“Bret Stephens vilified and applauded the wrong people,” read a letter to the editor by David Yanes. “Mr. Stephens’s conclusion, based on the Cochrane study, that ‘mask mandates were a bust’ may be true. I don’t know. But I do know that the C.D.C. and other medical professionals recommending mask wearing were not acting out of incompetence, negligence or for any sinister reason. Based on the best available science these men and women were doing their best to protect the health and safety of the American people.”

Those who opposed masks, on the other hand, did so with bad intentions.

On the other hand, most of those opposing the mandates were not doing so based on an evaluation of the science, but rather on a misguided interpretation of American individualism rooted in right-wing ideology that was reinforced by Donald Trump and amplified on the internet.

Intent and motive matter. So, even if it turns out that masks are ineffective against the spread of Covid, before calling for an apology from the people who were on the front lines fighting the pandemic, as Mr. Stephens does, let’s remember who was working for the welfare of the country and who was objecting to the precautions for political, not health, reasons.