Masks in Surgery Do Not Prevent Infection

With the pervasive, cancer-like invasion of masks in every aspect of life, the debate yet rages over their effectiveness.

But those of us who’ve actually done the research, and continue to investigate the mask issue, have found ourselves atop a mountain of evidence, the true massive scale of which becomes clearer daily. Of course our fellow citizens avowing masks are just obeying and complying out of ignorance, but our elected and unelected officials cannot claim ignorance without admitting incompetence.

Especially medical professionals or health organizations including the Oregon Health Authority and Centers for Disease Control, who until 2020 never once told the general public to constantly wear masks for prevention of respiratory virus infection. These people are expected to already know the science, to have already done the research, to already have the information.

This mountain of evidence we’re revealing existed long before Covid-19. And we’re finding that the only reason the general public doesn’t know about it is that the OHA or CDC do not want them to know about it. Rather than give them the truth, the pro-maskers are only given ways to argue with us.

One of the main arguments maskers are told to use is the example of the operating room. You’ve heard the canned lines: “If masks don’t work then why do surgeons wear them?” or “Would you want to be operated on by a doctor without a mask?“

And that’s where we’re going today, my fellow anti-maskers: the surgery setting.

Now, at this point us anti-maskers have discovered that it’s basically an open or whispered secret in the medical field that masks are pointless. Let’s hear those whispers.

We start by going back to May 1980, in a study probably a bit overshadowed by the global news of the volcano eruption we were dealing with here in the Pacific Northwest. But in that little study they looked to see if infectious particles could get past a surgeon’s mask and infect a wound, over 20 operations. Answer: they do.

“At the termination of each operation, wound irrigates were examined under the microscope. Particle contamination of the wound was demonstrated in all experiments.“

Step forward just a year and in Volume 63 of the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1981, where we find another example of surgery wounds being infected despite masks. In this study surgeons performed serious surgeries such as bowel resections without masks. This killed the patients, right?

Wrong. By taking off their masks for these operations, they actually halved the number of surgery wound infections. Halved! As the authors state:

“There was no increase in wound infections when masks were discarded in 1980; in fact there was a significant decrease.”

Further, the authors make it absolutely clear that masks are not effective but rather, harmful:

“While it has been shown that facial movements behind a mask can increase wound contamination, it has not been shown that wearing a mask makes very much difference to the contamination of the theatre environment or that the number of airborne bacteria can in any way be correlated with wound infection … there is no direct evidence that the wearing of masks reduces wound infection.”

And they finish with this bombshell, now nearly 30 years old:

“The conclusion is that the wearing of a mask has very little relevance to the wellbeing of patients undergoing routine general surgery and it is a standard practice that could be abandoned.”

Next we go to 2001, in Der Anaesthesist where surgical face masks were examined during regional anesthesia. The authors interestingly note disadvantages to masks:

“deficient assessment of lip cyanosis, anxiety, retention of CO2, costs”

And as the for the results, masks or no masks, patients still found themselves contaminated with bacteria from staff:

“Surgical face masks worn by patients during regional anaesthesia, did not reduce the concentration of airborne bacteria over the operation field in our study. Thus they are dispensable.”

In 2000, a five-year look at the use of masks of patients undergoing continuous dialysis in Brazil’s Hospital São Lucas came to an end, with yet more bad news for maskers. After 94 patients were treated by maskless healthcare workers, none of them suffered a greater rate of the dangerous dialysis complication of peritonitis, than patients elsewhere being treated by masked staff:

“Peritonitis rates during the study period were not different from those reported by other centers, supporting the hypothesis that routine use of a face mask during CAPD bag exchange may be unnecessary.”

Next, just browsing the abstract of this 1992 study, which, like the 1981 surgery study, found that masks in surgery were pointless. After three thousand surgeries only a slight statistical difference was found between masked and unmasked staff and the number of surgical wound infections. And that difference found masks to be 1.2% more likely to cause infection rather than prevent it. As the authors state:

“These results indicated that the use of face masks might be reconsidered”

 

and that masks

 “have not been proven to protect the patient operated by a healthy operating team.”

Jump back to 1989, in another study on masks in a clinical setting. As you may know, heart catheter insertions do have a risk of infection. You’d think after 504 surgeries that at least someone would have been infected by a maskless or capless doctor. Nope. It was found the risk of infection from an unmasked person was nonexistent:

“No infections were found in any patient, regardless of whether a cap or mask was used. Thus, we found no evidence that caps or masks need to be worn during percutaneous cardiac catheterization.”

A similar study on heart catheterization also found the same thing 12 years later, in more than 850 patients undergoing the procedure. The authors found a similarly insignificant difference in surgery site problems, and even of those, the authors say “none of these could be ascribed to definite infection.” And as with the 1989 heart catheter study, this one also unequivocally came to the same conclusion:

“The routine use of caps and masks does not seem to have that much beneficial impact on the occurrence of procedure-related inflammations or infections in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory.”

And finally we look at a systematic review of mask use during surgery, done just back in 2016. The authors narrowed their search down to three randomized controlled trials involving 2,106 people. Here, yet again, the determination that masks are not needed during surgery to prevent infection:

“There was no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials.”

And they conclude with yet another bomb:

“…it is unclear whether the wearing of surgical face masks by members of the surgical team has any impact on surgical wound infection rates for patients undergoing clean surgery.”

If the case for masks is “settled,” as pro-maskers claim, then how could a maskless surgical team have no statistical impact on surgical wound infection? Only one way: masks are not effective.

There are more and more of these studies and trials being revealed each week it seems, and these are by far not the only ones. And as you can see, this science is not even remotely new, and any doctor or medical professional today has zero excuse for not being aware of at least one of these studies.

And yes, even the CDC has admitted in many ways that masks actually don’t work, I’ll wrap up here with a little tidbit on their “guidance” on masks for C19.

Their idea of a “contact” with an infected person is when you’ve been closer than six feet to someone who’s symptomatic, or has tested positive, for more than 15 minutes. And if you have, you should get tested and quarantine for 14 days.

The kicker is that they openly admit masks don’t matter:

“This is irrespective of whether the person with COVID-19 or the contact was wearing a mask or whether the contact was wearing respiratory personal protective equipment (PPE)”

When decades of studies, trials, and science prove masks don’t prevent infection, and then the very CDC openly confirms this, there can be no debate any longer:

Masks simply do not work.

Addendum: For a few months I’ve been aiming to write about how masks worn by surgeons or surgery staff relate to wound infections during surgery, and as other more prominent and respected bloggers or reporters than this one have begun rolling out pieces on it, I felt it’s finally the right time to roll out my own. But to be sure, I am most certainly not the first to write about the studies, trials, and meta-analysis discussed here and I sincerely thank everyone across the world who’s worked to bring this science to light!

Source: Dissenters and Skeptics of Oregon