Speaking to SKY News this morning, Cambridge epidemiologist Dr. Raghib Ali said that “there’s not very good evidence” to show that mask mandates help to reduce the spread of covid-19. He told Kay Burley:
“Given the experience of Wales and Scotland who have had a mask mandate since July, actually their rates are now in fact have been higher than England throughout that period.
And Wales now has the highest rates in the UK. So unfortunately, there’s not very good evidence that making masks mandatory is gonna really, is kind of the main factor here so, I would encourage people to wear masks in those settings, but a mask mandate…I don’t really think there’s good evidence that’s gonna be the key thing here.”
He sounded very nervous and Burley moved on quickly. She said that his comments were “interesting” and then asked him for his thoughts on what we should we be doing to reduce covid cases. He said we should have the jabs, the boosters and the flu jab too.
The government’s own data clearly demonstrates that wearing a mask to prevent infection is a nonsense. Sceptics called it an arbitrary measure when the government mandated wearing masks last year. It was far more sinister than arbitrary. We know that now.
Raghib Ali was very, very careful when choosing his words in his conversation with Burley. He clearly believes that masks have no effect on transmission, but stopped short of saying just that. Maybe he felt that there would be consequences for saying it.
In any case, fair play to him for saying what he did.
There's "not very good evidence" to show that making masks mandatory reduces #COVID19 infections, says Dr Raghib Ali from the University of Cambridge.
Wales has the highest rates of COVID in the country despite having a mask mandate, he adds.#KayBurley: https://t.co/lTwohop8fB pic.twitter.com/gTdTG4XNfV
— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 22, 2021
