Why Mask?
A simple question to NSW Health without a simple (or any) answer.
A note to my subscribers, this post is too long for email and will be truncated by most providers. Please read it via SubStack.
It was May 2023 when we reached out to the New South Wales (NSW) Health Media team via email with the following questions:
“I am reaching out to kindly request some clarification and insights on the basis for the mask-wearing advice provided by NSW Health.
Specifically, I am interested in understanding the scientific evidence, studies, and expert opinions that underpin NSW Health's recommendations on mask usage. It would be immensely helpful if you could provide information on the key factors and considerations that have influenced the advice, such as:
The role of masks in preventing the spread of respiratory infections, including COVID-19.
The effectiveness of different types of masks (e.g., surgical masks, cloth masks, N95 respirators) and their suitability for different settings or situations.
Any studies or research that have been conducted to evaluate the impact of mask-wearing on reducing transmission rates.
The considerations taken into account when determining mask mandates or recommendations for specific population groups (e.g., children, elderly, immunocompromised individuals).
The ongoing monitoring and evaluation processes used by NSW Health to assess the effectiveness and appropriateness of mask-wearing advice.”
We did not receive a reply.
Today is Sunday 14 April, 2024. It has been 320 days since we sent this email and despite an exhausting ordeal trying to find this information, likely inconveniencing dozens of bureaucrats along the way, we still do not have answers to these questions from NSW Health.
Though masks were allegedly so important in our pandemic response and despite our collective suffering through numerous Public Health Orders mandating “face coverings”, including the most nonsensical rules around when, where and how they had to be worn, the evidence underpinning these Public Health Orders, rules, guidances and recommendations has not been provided by NSW Health.1
The ordeal
Given the lack of reply to our initial inquiries, on 10 August 2023, we made a formal complaint via NSW Health’s webform.
The complaint was ignored.
So on 22 August 2023, we lodged a complaint with the NSW Ombudsman who handle complaints about NSW government agencies for reasons such as:
unreasonable delays
failure to act on complaints
failure to reply to correspondence
The Ombudsman was very responsive and helpful, but by October 2023, NSW Health had still not responded because (as the Ombudsman advised):
“[T]here have been delays in trying to get in touch with the appropriate person at the Ministry of Health”
Incredibly, one person at NSW Health held the knowledge to provide answers to our questions and this one solitary person could not be located.
By 3 November (a mere five months since our initial inquiry), the Ombudsman found this person and promised their answers would be forthcoming:
“I received a call from the Ministry of Health regarding your matter, and they advised me that they would respond to your complaint and CC in our office as well.”
By 29 November 2023, we had not received this promised reply and so we engaged our local member of state parliament, assured by the Ombudsman that doing so would not derail the lengthy Ombudsman process we had commenced.
Simultaneously, our complaint was escalated to the Senior Investigation Officer in the Complaints and Resolution Branch at the NSW Ombudsman Office who, without explanation, gave NSW Health a further two months to respond to our questions.
A new date of 10 January 2024 was set for our expected response from NSW Health.
At this point, could we remind our readers that we had asked essentially two very simple questions:
Why do/did we mask?
How do we know they work/worked in doing what they were promised to do?
When NSW Health failed to meet this January 2024 deadline (a mere 227 days since our original inquiry), we followed up with the Ombudsman once more. The Ombudsman replied:
“The Ministry of Health have advised me that a response has been drafted but is awaiting sign off. Given that it is a low activity time of the year, I have provided them with an extension to 25 January 2024.”
On 16 January 2024, we finally received the response and apology from the Director of NSW Health’s Media unit, but as you can see, it was not responsive to any of our original questions:
“I am writing in response to your emails to the Ministry of Health seeking information. My sincere apologies for the delay in getting back to you.
The NSW Ministry of Health media team responds to enquiries from media organisations and to individuals representing those organisations. We do not respond to enquiries from all members of the public.
There is extensive information available on our NSW Heath website in relation to COVID-19 and advice re the wearing of masks.”
Unfortunately, we did not qualify as a “media organisation” to NSW Health and that partly explained their lack of a timely response. To their credit, however, they did try and point us to the “extensive information” available at their website.
The first link in their email took us to this page, which on 16 January 2024 looked like this:
As you can see in the top-right of the page, a keyword search for the word “mask” on the page brought up zero results.
The second link took us to this page, which on the 16 January 2024, looked like this:
Once more, the word “mask” did not appear on the page.
We sought further advice about where to find the information we were seeking in a follow-up email to the Director of Media at NSW Health on 16 January 2024:
“Thank you for your email, and for your apology for the significant delay.
I am confused by the reply though and would appreciate if you could clarify two things for me please:
I wrote in my email . . . [“]I am a freelance journalist writing for Shifted Paradigms, a publication on Substack . . . focused on various topics related to health, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.” I had contacted the media unit of NSW Health because I had identified myself as a freelance journalist in my emails and as an individual representing the publication “Shifted Paradigms” . . . is there any other form of media accreditation that I require to elicit a timely and complete response from the NSW Health media team?
The link you've provided concerning the “wearing of masks” is a general COVID-19 page and the word “masks” doesn't even appear on the page. Even on the COVID-19 page, there's nothing in “COVID-19 guidelines and fact sheets” and other sub-topics when clicked through. I understand that NSW Health still has “mask-wearing advice” pages, however, that's not the information I had sought in my email when I wrote: “I am interested in understanding the scientific evidence, studies, and expert opinions that underpin NSW Health's recommendations on mask usage. It would be immensely helpful if you could provide information on the key factors and considerations that have influenced the advice”. It’s possible that the pages that existed in 2023 (or earlier) have been moved, but is the information emphasised in bold from my 29 May 2023 email above still available? Again, I would be happy to make a GIPA request to follow this up, but if it’s publicly available still, would appreciate a link to where it can be found.” [emphasis original]
We received their reply on 29 January 2024:
“In answer to your question re wearing of face masks the following information is available on the NSW Health website here .
As advised previously, if you require further information, you can access NSW government information under the Government Information Public Access (GIPA) Act 2009.
You can apply for access to government information via a request to the relevant department.”
The link provided in the email took us to this page here (which appears no different from the most recently archived version of the page on 10 December 2023):
Which as the title showed, only provided the “guidance” around wearing face masks. It did not provide “the scientific evidence, studies, and expert opinions” which had underpinned or underpins NSW Health's recommendations on mask usage.2
Our request for the provision of “information on the key factors and considerations that have influenced the [mask-wearing] advice” was ignored.
On 7 February 2024, we followed up once more:
“I’ve consulted the links you've suggested, but none of the information on the page, nor the links as I can see it, contain information that shows the scientific basis for the mask-wearing advice . . . Are you saying that this is information that I need to submit a GIPA request to obtain? In the interests of transparency regarding public health messaging, surely this information should be prominent and publicly available.”
By 20 February 2024, it appeared our multipronged strategy to elicit a response from NSW Health was starting to work.
By way of our local MP, we received a response from none other than the NSW Health Minister, the Honourable Ryan Park MP:
His exposition was accurate, but once more, it did not provide answers to our questions and simply pointed us to the same “recommendations” and “guidance” documents. We consulted the documents from the Infection Prevention and Control Expert Group (ICEG) referenced in Mr. Park’s email, but they also simply provided further “guidance” and “recommendations” about mask-wearing. We sought further information from Mr. Park via our local MP, but unfortunately, the matter was considered closed because we had already received our “response” from the Minister.
We then returned to the NSW Ombudsman, but they too explained they had reached the limits of their powers with NSW Health, and the matter was also closed.
So, we returned to the Director of NSW Health’s Media Unit via email on 27 February 2024, who on 7 March 2024 responded with the intention of “[replying] to you before the end of the week with some further advice.”
The further advice never arrived.
Despite multiple follow-ups since then, we’ve been ghosted by NSW Health once more, and so we have initiated the same old process. We have sought the intervention of the NSW Ombudsman and our local MP once more and we will update you in due course when they reply.
Conclusions
Let’s pause for a moment and recall the point of this exhausting endeavour.
We simply wanted to learn the following:
The role of masks in preventing the spread of respiratory infections, including COVID-19.
The effectiveness of different types of masks (e.g., surgical masks, cloth masks, N95 respirators) and their suitability for different settings or situations.
Any studies or research that have been conducted to evaluate the impact of mask-wearing on reducing transmission rates.
The considerations taken into account when determining mask mandates or recommendations for specific population groups (e.g., children, elderly, immunocompromised individuals).
The ongoing monitoring and evaluation processes used by NSW Health to assess the effectiveness and appropriateness of mask-wearing advice.
Yet NSW Health has not been able to produce any information responsive to any of the above.
Perhaps they don’t have the information.
Perhaps they do have this information and don’t want to release it because it might reveal something uncomfortable.
Recalling the embarrassment for the Burnet Institute when the study they led showing that mask wearing “turned the pandemic around” was retracted because of serious methodological errors and conclusions which were not supported by the evidence in the study itself.3 We wonder if this is the sort of embarrassment that NSW Health is keen to avoid if their “evidence” is similarly as strong.
Perhaps advice from SARS-CoV-1, published in this 2003 article, is still relevant:
“[NSW] Health authorities have warned that surgical masks may not be an effective protection against the virus . . . ‘As soon as they become saturated with the moisture in your breath they stop doing their job and pass on the droplets.’ . . . Mr Bell agreed with Professor Cossart's assessment regarding the effectiveness of the masks. “I think they're of marginal benefit," he said. ‘In a way they give some comfort to people who think they’re doing as much as they can do to prevent the infection’.”4
The title of the article was “Farce Mask: It's Safe for Only 20 Minutes”. Note that back then, when common sense was much more common, we knew it wasn’t a question of the effectiveness of masks, it was even a question of their safety.
Perhaps NSW Health relied on evidence contradicted by the Cochrane Library systematic review in January 2023 which found “wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness” and “there is just no evidence that [masks] make any difference”.5
Critics of this Cochrane Library study argued that the clinical trials the study assessed were poorly designed, and therefore, this was how the study authors erred in essentially saying masks were useless.
So, both the study and its critics concluded there was no evidence masks worked, but again, you should still wear them:
From the article above, we were told:
“[R]espirators are designed for respiratory protection and cloth and surgical masks are not. The [Cochrane Library] review starts with an assumption that masks provide respiratory protection, which is flawed.”6 [emphasis added]
Let that sink in:
Cloth and surgical masks are not designed for respiratory protection and it is flawed to think that they do.
Now that we can do away with the surgical masks, what about those respirators?
Even if respirators did provide this presumed protection, do you remember the respirator-mandates in NSW?
No, neither do we.
We had mask-mandates requiring surgical or cloth masks to be worn and these were considered just fine by our health bureaucrat (singular - the he/she/they who we have not been able to find to provide answers to our original questions).
If masks were so essential, why didn’t the Public Health Orders mandating mask-wearing address the role of masks in preventing COVID-19 transmission:
From the above, COVID-19 was a “potentially fatal condition and is highly contagious”, and therefore, you had to “wear a fitted face covering at all times” in certain areas:
Do you notice the missing detail?
COVID-19 is dangerous
????????
Wear your mask!
320 days later we still don’t know part 2 to NSW Health’s syllogism and why were we told we had to wear masks, or why they thought masks worked.
We wonder if NSW Health’s strategy is to hope that we’re all just quietly happy to move on and accept the many mistakes of the pandemic years, masks included.
But there’s one thing we can assure you: we won’t forget.
It is crucial that we continue to demand transparency and accountability from our unelected public health authorities.
If you share our concern over the lack of clear, evidence-based communication from NSW Health regarding mask-wearing policies, we urge you to contact your local representatives to demand they push for clearer, more transparent communication from health authorities.
We urge you to ask why we were subjected to these unscientific interventions despite their numerous known harms.7
The more voices they hear, the harder we are to ignore.
Do not be silent.
As an aside, note also the page gives advice to “please be kind and considerate of someone’s choice to wear a mask”, suggesting that people might have finally caught on to the futility of mask-wearing to “control the spread” and that those COVIDian holdouts who still believe in The Science of masking are being subjected to ridicule.
The Sydney Morning Herald, “Farce Mask: It's Safe for Only 20 Minutes”, https://www.smh.com.au/national/farce-mask-its-safe-for-only-20-minutes-20030427-gdgnyo.html, accessed 14 April 2024.
Al Jazeera, “Did a report really say masks don’t help prevent the spread of COVID?”, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/7/did-a-report-really-say-masks-dont-help-prevent-the-spread-of-covid-19, accessed 11 April 2024.
MacIntyre, R. et. al., “Yes, masks reduce the risk of spreading COVID, despite a review saying they don’t”, https://theconversation.com/yes-masks-reduce-the-risk-of-spreading-covid-despite-a-review-saying-they-dont-198992
Alexander, P. E., “More than 170 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and Harms”, https://brownstone.org/articles/studies-and-articles-on-mask-ineffectiveness-and-harms/, accessed 14 April 2024.