A year ago, the Cochrane research collaborative drastically revised its review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on masking, deeming them "inconclusive" and finding that masks make "little to no difference" against COVID-19 or influenza. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is following suit by pressuring its advisers to revise their recommendations on masking in healthcare settings.
The White House's promise to authorize COVID boosters before the Food and Drug Administration had evaluated them led the agency's top two vaccine regulators to resign. The CDC's Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) is reviewing the evidence for the effectiveness of surgical masks versus N95 respirators in healthcare settings. A presentation at HICPAC's meeting last summer found "no difference" between the two, while emphasizing concerns with the evidence.
A draft "systematic review and meta-analysis" confirmed no difference for lab-confirmed infections. However, N95s did better for "self-reported" infections, but respirators were also more frequently reported for difficulty breathing, headaches, dizziness, and fatigue. HICPAC is adding "subject matter experts" to the committee to help answer its questions, which could imply that the agency should recommend N95s "for all pathogens that spread by the air."
The CDC's own Emerging Infectious Diseases published a study early in the COVID pandemic of systematic reviews of 14 RCTs, which found no "substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza" from wearing masks. Other research has also questioned whether N95s are an improvement in real-world settings.
The Canadian government and World Health Organization funded a study a year ago that found no statistically significant difference between N95s and surgical masks. A U.K. government meta-review last year found no real-world evidence that N95s and equivalent masks protect those at highest risk of severe COVID.
The CDC's pushback on HICPAC's recommendation has been flagged by a former Senate Finance Committee investigator, Paul Thacker. He argues that "N95s don’t really work at all unless they’ve been fit-tested, never soiled, and used only once." The CDC did not respond to Thacker's queries or those from Just the News.
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