COVID-19
We all want this crisis to end. Read this. Then find a mask and put it on when you go out in public
This is article is abridged for your convenience.
Public use of masks to control the coronavirus pandemic
(Originally published March 29 by Longrich Paleo Lab)
Nicholas R. Longrich, PhD
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom
The Longrich Paleontology Lab is part of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath. We use fossils to understand large-scale evolutionary change in organisms and ecosystems.
The US and UK governments, as well as the World Health Organization, currently advise against the use of masks by the public to fight the ongoing Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic (1). But could they be wrong?
The governments of China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Viet Nam, Czechia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Taiwan all recommend that the public wear masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus. In some countries, like Japan, masks aren’t officially recommended, but are still widely used by the public. Many countries treat masks as a strategic resource. China has ramped up production of facemasks, converting Foxconn factories that once made iPhones to make face masks. Taiwan has also ramped up the production of facemasks, prohibited their export, and implemented price controls and rationing. It’s hard to see how both approaches could be right. Increasingly, advice against the use of face masks has been questioned (1) (2) (3), including by the head of China’s CDC (4). Austria has recently moved to make mask wearing in public obligatory, and in the United States, the CDC is now debating their use.
Common sense, scientific studies, but perhaps most of all the success of countries using masks to fight the coronavirus suggest that masks may make a difference. There are fewer scientific studies available to guide decision making than we might like, and the evidence is not always clear-cut. However, decision-making in a crisis requires that decisions be made in the absence of perfect clarity. What is clear is that the exponential mathematics of pandemics mean that even if masks are of limited benefit in reducing infection rates, masks could make a large difference over time, potentially slowing the pace of the pandemic, limiting its spread, saving lives, and finally, letting countries to restart the economies that their people depend on for their livelihoods.
Figure produced by Johns Hopkins University using data from Worldometers on March 29.
Masks protect you from others, others from you
It seems sensible to assume that any barrier between two people’s airways reduces the chance of an air-borne virus being transmitted between them. Masks worn by infected people catch some fraction of virus-laden respiratory droplets that are released by breathing and coughing. Perhaps just as important, breathing through a mask slows and deflects air as it is exhaled, potentially reducing the distance that viral droplets travel as aerosols.
Meanwhile, masks worn by uninfected people catch a fraction of the virus they’d otherwise inhale. If both infected and uninfected people wear masks, then these effects multiply. For example, hypothetically, if an infected person’s mask reduces the amount of virus spread by 75%, and the uninfected person’s mask reduces it by another 75%, then the total reduction of the virus spread is 94%.
It’s still possible that this reduction isn’t enough to prevent infection. However, masks could still protect people— because dosage matters. Lower dosing of virus means infection takes longer to build up, giving the immune system time to mount a response.
The immune system fights viruses, like a farmer trying to remove weeds from his field. How difficult those weeds will be to control depends on how many seeds there are. 1000 seeds in a field might not be a challenge, but 1,000,000 or 100 million make weeding far more difficult. In the same way, even when masks fail to prevent infection, by lowering the initial dose of virus they could conceivably make the difference between mild symptoms and a severe illness requiring hospitalization, or even leading to death.
Models suggest masks could work to control pandemics
Of course, it’s possible that masks might have only limited benefit in stopping the spread of COVID-19— for any number of reasons. Masks might provide limited protection, because they are less effective than suggested by some studies, because people misuse them, because of shortages of effective masks like surgical masks and N-95s— or all of these.
But to understand how they could still make a difference, we have to consider masks in the context of small reductions in viral transmission rates. Consider how epidemics grow— exponentially. Allowed to spread unchecked, one case of Covid-19 becomes 2.5 (assuming for this model an R0 of 2.5), each case causing 2.5 more, and so on. Over the course of 15 reproductive cycles, each taking 7 days, or about 3 months in total, one case becomes 2.5 x 2.5 x 25… or 2.5^15 = 931,323 cases (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. A simple model showing exponential growth in an uncontained outbreak over time (generation time = 7 days, R0 = 2.5) and with small reductions in the reproductive rate R.
Now, let’s suppose widespread use of masks cuts the growth rate by just 10%. Each person now infects 2.25 others, who infect 2.25 others, and so on. Over 15 cycles, 2.25^15 = 191,751 cases. An 80% reduction. Understanding this exponential growth explains how the virus caught the world by surprise even as the pandemic was monitored in real time. Exponential growth just doesn’t make sense, until you do the numbers, and even, they’re still hard to believe. But another counterintuitive aspect of exponential growth is that small decreases in the exponent greatly slow growth. A 10% increase in the exponent can have a massive effect, but even a limited intervention, with a 10% decrease over time, pays large dividends (Fig. 1).
These are very, very simple models. But sophisticated modeling also shows large scale use of masks could slow, even stop pandemics. A 2010 study found that above a certain threshold, widespread use of effective masks can reduce the reproductive number (R) of an influenza virus below 1, and the pandemic stops (25). If face masks were highly effective (well-designed, used properly and consistently), then public use of masks could stop a flu pandemic if used by just 50% of people. If masks were less effective, more than half the population would have to wear them to stop the pandemic. If masks were highly ineffective, they could flatten the curve of the epidemic, but wouldn’t stop it (25). We don’t know which model is most accurate. But does it even matter? In the context of the current pandemic, any of these scenarios would be a huge win.
Real world experience suggests masks work in pandemics
The most compelling evidence of the potential effectiveness of masks in the fight against COVID-19 comes from their use in the real world. Places that have controlled their coronavirus epidemics most effectively – China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Kuwait, Czechia, Slovakia, Japan- use masks (Fig. 2). Aside from China, which was the epicenter of the pandemic and so played catchup in developing and implementing its strategy, virtually all of the worst outbreaks are in Western countries that officially advise against mask use, and where there is little culture or practice of mask wearing.
Figure 2. Western countries (US, Canada, Australia, UK, Western Europe) versus countries and territories using masks as part of official government or in practice policy (China, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Kuwait, Slovakia, Czech Republic, in blues and greens). Countries with official or unofficial policies of mask usage have controlled the outbreak far better than those without. Note that Austria currently uses masks but has only revised its official policy recently.
Places like China, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Kuwait, Czechia and Singapore differ greatly in political organization, ranging from communism to democracies, and also in their level of economic development and population density. And strikingly, these countries also differ in their suppression strategies. China implemented a lockdown of Wuhan, shut down industry nationwide, implemented temperature checks and social distancing, tested extensively— and employed masks. Korea responded with an aggressive testing and contact tracing—and masks. Japan has done far less extensive testing than Korea, but shut down schools and large gatherings— and used masks. The pandemic management strategies used by these countries far more diverse than has been appreciated. Arguably one of the few things all these successes share is widespread wearing of masks. And on the other hand, one common factor shared by the pandemic suppression strategies of the US, Canada, the UK and Europe is the decision to discourage the use of masks by the public. This evidence doesn’t prove, but it does very strongly hint that masks are a critical part of these country’s suppression strategies. And by watching countries like Austria that have recently revised their policies, we can test this idea.
What kind of mask? Surgical masks as good as N95s; are improvised masks better than nothing?
Would cloth masks work? Research into the effectiveness of cloth masks is limited (34). Existing research shows homemade masks are- unsurprisingly- inferior to surgical masks. However, they appear to be better than nothing. One laboratory study found homemade masks were half as effective as surgical masks in filtering particles (35). Another study found homemade masks made from various materials stopped virus aerosols, but less well than surgical masks (36). A surgical mask stopped 90% of viral aerosol particles, a dish towel, 72%, linen, 62%, and a cotton T-shirt, 51% (36).
Conclusions
Strong scientific evidence and rational arguments exist for the widespread, public use of facemasks. The principle behind facemasks- they reduce the amount of virus exhaled by infected people, and inhaled by uninfected- suggest they should be a primary tool in combating any respiratory virus. Scientific research, including experimental studies, retrospective studies of the SARS epidemic, hospital studies of COVID-19, and modeling studies, all suggests masks are likely to be effective in controlling the pandemic. Most importantly, the experience of countries using masks against SARS and the current coronavirus pandemic imply that they are effective when used by the public. However, modeling studies and the real-world experience of countries like China and South Korea suggests that neither masks, nor anything else, provides a magic bullet against a pandemic. So strategies should not rely on any single intervention, but rather a wide range of interventions, potentially including masks. Further research and open debate on the effectiveness of masks and other strategies are urgently needed.
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Half the country still believes the convoy was a menace; the other half thinks it was a mirror that showed how fragile our freedoms had become.
This Thanksgiving I am grateful for many things. The truckers who stood up to injustice are among them.
When the first rigs rolled toward Ottawa in January 2022, the air was sharp, but not as sharp as the mood of the men and women behind the wheels. They were not radicals. Seeing a CBC a campaign of disinformation about them begin as soon as their trek started, even when Ottawa political operatives hadn’t yet heard, I started following several of them on their social media.
They were truckers, small business owners, independent contractors, and working Canadians who had spent two years hauling the essentials that kept a paralyzed nation alive. They were the same people politicians, including Prime Minister Trudeau, had called “heroes” in 2020. By 2022, they had become “threats.”
The Freedom Convoy was born from exhaustion with naked hypocrisy. The federal government that praised them for risking exposure on the road now barred the unvaccinated from crossing borders or even earning a living. Many in provincial governments cheered Ottawa on. The same officials who flew to foreign conferences maskless or sat in private terraces to dine, let’s recall, still forced toddlers to wear masks in daycare. Public servants worked from home while police fined citizens for walking in parks.
These contradictions were not trivial; they were models of tyrannical rule. They told ordinary people that rules were for the ruled, not for rulers.
By late 2021, Canada’s pandemic response had hardened into a hysterical moral regime. Compliance became a measure of virtue, not prudence. Citizens who questioned the mandates were mocked as conspiracy theorists. Those who questioned vaccine efficacy were treated as fools; those who refused vaccination were treated as contagious heretics. Even science was no longer scientific. When data showed that vaccines did not prevent transmission, officials changed definitions instead of policies. The regime confused authority with truth. One former provincial premier just this week was still hailing the miracle of “life-saving” COVID vaccines.
For truckers, the breaking point came with the federal vaccine mandate for cross-border transport. Many had already complied with provincial rules and workplace testing. Others had recovered from COVID and had natural immunity that the government refused to recognize. To them, the new rule was not about safety; it was about humiliation. It said, “Obey, or you are unfit to work.”
So they drove.
Donna Laframboise, one of the rare journalists who works for citizens instead of sponsors, described the convoy in her book Thank You, Truckers! with gratitude and awe. She saw not a mob but a moral statement. She showcased for us Canadians who refused to live by lies. Their horns announced what polite society whispered: the emergency had become a creepy habit, and the habit had become a tool of control.
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When the convoy reached Ottawa, it was messy, loud, and human. There was singing, prayer, laughter, dancing and some foolishness, but also remarkable discipline. For three weeks, amid frigid temperatures and rising tension, there were no riots, no arsons, no looting. In a country that once prized civility, that should have earned respect.
Instead, it attracted the media’s and government’s contempt.
The Trudeau government, rattled by its own public failures, sprung to portray the protest as a national security threat. Ministers invoked language fit for wartime. The Prime Minister, who had initially fled the city claiming to have tested positive, returned to declare that Canadians were under siege by “racists” and “misogynists.” The accusations were as reckless as they were false. The government’s real grievance was not chaos but defiance.
Then came the Emergencies Act. Designed for war, invasion, or insurrection, it was now deployed against citizens with flags and thermoses. Bank accounts were frozen without charge or trial. Insurance policies were suspended. Police weilding clubs were unleashed against unarmed citizens. The federal government did not enforce the law; it improvised it.
A faltering government declared itself the victim of its citizens. The Emergency declaration was not a reaction to danger; it was a confession of political insecurity. It exposed a leadership that could not tolerate dissent and recast obedience for peace.
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The convoy’s organizers, who kept the protest largely peaceful, were arrested and prosecuted as though they had plotted sedition. They were charged for holding the line, not for breaking it. The state’s behaviour was vindictive, not judicial. Prosecutors went along with it, and so did courts.
In a healthy democracy, such political trials would have shaken Parliament to its core. Legislators would have demanded justification for the use of emergency powers. The press would have asked precisely which law had been broken. Citizens would have debated the limits of government in times of fear, times which seem to continue just under the radar.
Not much of that happened.
Canada’s institutions have grown timid. The press is subsidized and more subservient. The courts happily defer to the administrative state. Law enforcement has learned to follow politics before principle. Academics have been lost for about generation. Under such conditions, how can citizens object to unscientific and coercive policies? What options remain when every channel of dissent—media, science, judiciary, and law enforcement—is captured or cowed?
The convoy’s protest, let’s remember, was not the first major disruption in the Trudeau years. A year earlier, Indigenous activists blocked rail lines and highways in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs opposed to a pipeline. The blockades cost the economy millions. They were called “a national conversation.” Few arrests, no frozen accounts, no moral panic.
In 2020, Black Lives Matter marches were cheered by politicians and news anchors. Some protests were peaceful, others destructive. Yet they were treated as expressions of justice, not extremism.
Even today, pro-Hamas Palestinian demonstrations that include violence and intimidation of Jewish citizens are tolerated with a shrug. The police stand back, bring them coffee, citing “the right to protest.”
Why, then, was the Freedom Convoy treated as a crisis of state?
In a liberal democracy, protest is not rebellion. It is a civic instrument, a reminder that authority is contingent. When a government punishes peaceful protest because it disapproves of the message, it turns democracy into décor.
The trials of the convoy organizers are therefore not about law but about legitimacy. Each conviction signals that protest is permitted only when it pleases the powerful. This is the logic of every soft tyranny: it criminalizes opposition while decorating itself with the vocabulary of rights. I see this daily in Nicaragua, my native land.
The truckers’ protest revealed what the pandemic concealed. The COVID regime was unscientific and incoherent. It punished truckers who worked alone in their cabs while allowing politicians to mingle maskless at conferences. It barred unvaccinated Canadians from air travel but allowed infected citizens to cross borders with the proper paperwork. It closed playgrounds and churches while keeping liquor stores open.
These contradictions were not mistakes; they were instruments of obedience. Each absurd rule tested how much submission people would endure.
The truckers said, “Enough.” I am grateful that they did.
For that, Chris Barber (Big Red) and Tamara Lich 
are still being punished. Their trials have now concluded, save for possible appeals, yet their quiet defiance remains one of the few honest moments in recent Canadian history. It showed that courage is still possible, even the state seems to forbid reason.
The government’s response revealed the opposite: that fear, once politicized, is never surrendered willingly. The state that learned to rule through emergency will not soon unlearn it. They cling to its uses still.
Canada lives with the legacy of that winter today. The trials are finished, but the divisions persist. Half the country still believes the convoy was a menace; the other half thinks it was a mirror that showed how fragile our freedoms had become.
Trudeau’s government is no more, yet the spirit of his politics lingers. He did not create the divisions by accident. He cultivated them as a strategy of control. The country that left him behind is also less free, less trusting, and less united than it was before the horns sounded in Ottawa. Carney’s government is Trudeau’s heir.
The trials and sentencing measure the distance between the Canada we imagined and the one we inhabit.
The truckers’ convoy was imperfect, yet profoundly democratic. It stood for the right of citizens to say no to a government that had forgotten how to hear them. The echo of that refusal still moves down the Trans-Canada Highway. It is the sound of liberty idling in the cold, waiting for a green light that will not soon come.
This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for the abounding love and understanding in my life. I am grateful for my spirited children and their children. I am grateful for my nonagenarian father and for my siblings. I’m grateful for the legion of aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews on all sides of the family. I am grateful for loyal friendships and for my colleagues and coworkers who share the quest for a freer country. I’m grateful to my adoptive Alberta, and Albertans, also struggling to be strong and free.
I am grateful for the Truckers, wherever they came from, for their courage.
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The Vigilant Fox
In one of the greatest violations of medical ethics in modern history, a new study from South Korea has uncovered devastating consequences from promoting and mandating the COVID-19 injections on the population.
These shots were pushed on babies and pregnant women, directly contradicting the ethical rule against introducing new medical interventions to such vulnerable groups before long-term effects are fully understood.
But they weren’t just aggressively promoted; they were enforced. Refusing the COVID-19 injection could cost you your job, bar you from concerts, businesses, and museums, and, in some cases, even deny you a life-saving surgery unless you complied with the mandate.
Now, as many doctors long warned, the consequences of such reckless health policy are surfacing, and one of the most alarming outcomes is a dramatic rise in cancer risk.
A large-scale population study out of South Korea has now found a 27% overall increase in cancer linked to the COVID-19 injections that were marketed as “safe and effective.”
Dr. John Campbell noted: “There’s a one in a thousand chance that this result arose by chance.” He illustrated the overall cancer rise with a stark graph, as seen in the short video below:
With regard to the details of the study, Children’s Health Defense reports:
The study used data from 2021–2023 for over 8.4 million people in South Korea’s National Health Insurance Service database. The sample was split into two groups based on vaccination status. The vaccinated sample was further split into booster and non-booster groups.
Researchers tracked the patients for one year. The vaccinated group was tracked following vaccination. The results showed a statistically significant higher risk of cancer in the vaccinated group, including:
• Overall cancer: 27% higher risk
• Breast cancer: 20% higher risk
• Colorectal cancer: 28% higher risk
• Gastric cancer: 34% higher risk
• Lung cancer: 53% higher risk
• Prostate cancer: 69% higher risk
• Thyroid cancer: 35% higher risk
These results are nothing short of devastating. Our worst fears have become reality.
And the worst part is that it didn’t have to be this way. Health officials ignored caution, silenced dissent, and turned public health into a reckless experiment.
Now the consequences of such reckless policies have turned the COVID wave into a health tsunami. The longer this issue is ignored, the greater the damage will become. It’s time for health officials to take responsibility for what they’ve done.
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