'If masks don't work, why do surgeons wear them?'

Dr. Jim Meehan, a surgeon who has performed over 10,000 surgeries wearing a mask, recently wrote an op-ed where he explained the difference between surgeons wearing masks and the general public wearing masks for COVID-19.

“The premise that surgeons wearing masks serves as evidence that ‘masks must work to prevent viral transmission’ is a logical fallacy that I would classify as an argument of false equivalence, or comparing ‘apples to oranges,’” Meehan said. “Although surgeons do wear masks to prevent their respiratory droplets from contaminating the surgical field and the exposed internal tissues of our surgical patients, that is about as far as the analogy extends.”

They also wear masks to prevent droplets or spray from getting on them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released their most recent systemic analysis confirming the same.

“Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning,” according to the CDC at https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article.

Did you catch that? Not only were masks not a substantial effect, but neither is surface cleaning. Wow.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is about viral transmission. Surgical and cloth masks do nothing to prevent viral transmission,” Meehan said. “We should all realize by now that face masks have never been shown to prevent or protect against viral transmission, which is exactly why they have never been recommended for use during the seasonal flu outbreak, epidemics or previous pandemics.

“The failure of the scientific literature to support medical masks for influenza and all other viruses is also why Fauci, the U.S. surgeon general, the CDC, WHO and pretty much every infectious disease expert stated that wearing masks won’t prevent transmission of SARS CoV-2. Although the public health ‘authorities’ flipped, flopped and later changed their recommendations, the science did not change, nor did new science appear that supported the wearing of masks in public,” he said.

He explained that if a surgeon were sick, he would not perform surgery, knowing that the virus would not be stopped by the surgical mask.

The difference, according to Meehan, is that people wearing masks in public are breathing carbon dioxide and limiting arterial oxygen. They are re-wearing masks and constantly touching them which more likely increases contamination and the transmission of disease. Surgeons are in meticulously sterile surgical suites equipped with heavy duty air exchange systems with increased oxygen, which limits the negative effects of masks on the surgeon and staff.

He said if nothing else, you should at least “reject the illogical anti-science recommendation to block only two of the three ports of entry for viral diseases. Masks only cover the mouth and nose. They do not protect the eyes.”

We have to continue to question public policy, especially when it just so clearly seems to go against science. Children have been unequivocally shown to not be affected and not be spreaders, yet we have 5 year olds in school wearing masks and running on the playground, reducing their oxygen with masks. We have healthy people who aren’t sick being bullied and attacked because they aren’t wearing a mask when science supports them.

Even when you look at the cities like New York and Los Angeles that had strict lockdown measures and masking, they have fared far worse than the cities like Houston that did the opposite. After a year of data, Dr. Anthony Fauci flip flopped and now is wearing two masks, and even though he is vaccinated, he said we still need to wear masks.

Now we are being told we need to continue to get vaccinated and still wear masks, and if doctors and scientists who actually know what they are talking about report the opposite, they are censored by big tech companies who don’t practice the science. Is that facist?

A citywide prevalence study of almost 10 million people in Wuhan, China, found no evidence of asymptomatic transmission. Coughing, which is a prominent symptom of COVID-19, may result in far more viral particles being shed than talking and breathing, so people with symptomatic infections are more contagious, irrespective of close contact.

So, go ahead and wear a clean mask, but let’s respect each other.

Julie Reeder can be reached by email at [email protected].