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In a stunning announcement, the White House confirmed that the world is round, bears go to the bathroom in the woods, and masks don’t work against the coronavirus. Ok, I made that up. White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha did, however, make the stunning admission during a recent online discussion that masks aren’t the magic safety net that we’ve been told:

“There is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.”

There, that’s it. That’s the end of my article.

No no, I’ll continue. What a shocker. Despite widespread masking being required in most of the country for months and sometimes years during the height of the COVID pandemic, most people with a lick of common sense quickly realized that they would do very little to stop transmission. First of all, all you had to do is watch a mask-wearer for a few minutes to see that most people kept fiddling with them to get the fit right, or they wore them with the sides open. Dudes with big beards looked comical with their masks pushed off their faces by their facial hair, allowing air to flow in and out with impunity.

Have you ever been talking to a mask fanatic and they pull it aside to say something to you? As if they feel they have that one moment of safety; “the virus won’t attack me because you’re my friend and I have something important to say!”

Biden’s covid chief Ashish Jha just said, “There’s no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” Who suddenly gave him truth serum? pic.twitter.com/DUgEu1HPJ2

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 21, 2022

My question has always been: if they work so well—then why didn’t they work? We had mandatory masking seemingly forever here in Los Angeles, yet our rates of COVID were as bad or worse than places like Florida whose policies were far less draconian.

Jha spoke at an online event called “The Future of COVID and Public Health,” arguing that improving indoor air quality should be prioritized:

“So you’re never going to get the kind of benefit from mandatory year-round masking as you would from making substantial improvements in indoor air quality, plus it’s a lot easier to implement as well,” Jha added. “So this is an area where we’re doing a lot and trying to really encourage people to use the resources they have to make those investments and start really improving ventilation filtration in buildings.”

Here’s the good doctor hawking masks back in 2021:

3. Masks

This is unnecessarily controversial

People – can we please stop fighting about this?

Masking helps

Cloth masks help a little

Higher quality masks (KF94, etc.) should be considered in high transmission areas

They are cheap and widely available

4/7

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) August 8, 2021

“Cloth masks help a little,” he wrote. All right, let’s give him that. Maybe they help a little—so was it worth it to cut our faces off from society, assure developmental problems in our youth, and create a sense of alienation between ourselves and the world? Sorry, a “little” benefit is nowhere near the threshold that should have been applied. The truth is, masks were little more than virtue signalling talismans designed to indicate to your neighbors, “I’m one of the good guys. I’m down with the struggle.”

The vaccine and booster saga played out in the exact same way: they told you one thing (that vaccines would keep you from getting the virus or transmitting it), but your own eyes told you that it wasn’t true. “Boosters are incredibly effective”—yet First Lady Jill Biden, President Joe Biden, Pfizer CEO Bourla, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, and yes, Dr. Anthony Fauci, all got severe rebound COVID this year despite having more jabs than a pincushion.

One of the more enduring effects of the COVID epidemic is the complete loss of faith and trust in our institutions by the American people.