If Masks Don’t Work, Why Do Surgeons Wear Them?

Yes it's 2024 and we're still having to explain this to people

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

It’s 2024 and people still can’t seem to get over masks.

I see people advertising that they have Covid by turning up in crowded locations wearing a mask. Nobody else is wearing a mask and yesterday neither were they. But this morning they didn’t feel quite right so they took a test (yes, they’re still buying tests and testing too). They cough and splutter into their masks, thinking they are being responsible citizens by wearing a cheap piece of cloth in front of their faces. They have been indoctrinated into believing that this unsealed barrier will prevent any virus they have from being transmitted around the room.

Here’s a message for those people - if you are sick enough to think you need a mask, stay at home. If you are wearing a mask purely because a test told you to - don’t. Virtue signalling doesn’t protect anyone in the real world.

Even more depressingly, the people that I thought had got over their mask indoctrination are still extremely defensive about them. I had a conversation last week with a friend who I thought hated masks now. We laughed about the person I mentioned above - the person who turned up advertising they had Covid by wearing a mask. I thought ‘phew, maybe things are going back to normal’ until I uttered the blasphemous words of ‘masks don’t even work anyway’.

Suddenly a fire erupted behind their eyes and the tone of the conversation instantly turned to anger. ‘They’re bringing back masks in hospitals and they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t work’. This person has never read a single mask study in their lives. Mention the Cochrane review and they will blankly stare back. So I tried explaining but after years of repeating the same points, getting the same eye rolls and angry stares, I decided to give up on trying to illuminate this mask believer.

They are still all around us. They hate masks and laugh at others who wear them but they believe in their power and as soon as they are ordered to wear them, they will do so again without a single thought.

Since that encounter I came across this article from 2020. It is a very useful summary to try to explain why surgeons wearing masks doesn’t mean masks actually work. Hopefully these arguments will be getting through to some people but, to be honest, after my conversation last week, I have very little hope for most others.

A classic fallacious argument: "If masks don't work, then why do surgeons wear them?"

Published on July 22, 2020 by Jim Meehan MD

A response to people who use the classic fallacious argument, "Well, if masks don't work, then why do surgeons wear them?"

I'm a surgeon that has performed over 10,000 surgical procedures wearing a surgical mask. However, that fact alone doesn't really qualify me as an expert on the matter. More importantly, I am a former editor of a medical journal. I know how to read the medical literature, distinguish good science from bad, and fact from fiction. Believe me, the medical literature is filled with bad fiction masquerading as medical science. It is very easy to be deceived by bad science.

Since the beginning of the pandemic I've read hundreds of studies on the science of medical masks. Based on extensive review and analysis, there is no question in my mind that healthy people should not be wearing surgical or cloth masks. Nor should we be recommending universal masking of all members of the population. That recommendation is not supported by the highest level of scientific evidence.

First, let's be clear. The premise that surgeons wearing masks serves as evidence that "masks must work to prevent viral transmission" is a logical fallacy that I would classify as an argument of false equivalence, or comparing "apples to oranges."

Although surgeons do wear masks to prevent their respiratory droplets from contaminating the surgical field and the exposed internal tissues of our surgical patients, that is about as far as the analogy extends. Obviously, surgeons cannot "socially distance" from their surgical patients (unless we use robotic surgical devices, in which case, I would definitely not wear a mask).

The CoVID-19 pandemic is about viral transmission. Surgical and cloth masks do nothing to prevent viral transmission. We should all realize by now that face masks have never been shown to prevent or protect against viral transmission. Which is exactly why they have never been recommended for use during the seasonal flu outbreak, epidemics, or previous pandemics.

The failure of the scientific literature to support medical masks for influenza and all other viruses, is also why Fauci, the US Surgeon General, the CDC, WHO, and pretty much every infectious disease expert stated that wearing masks won't prevent transmission of SARS CoV-2. Although the public health "authorities" flipped, flopped, and later changed their recommendations, the science did not change, nor did new science appear that supported the wearing of masks in public. In fact, the most recent systemic analysis once again confirms that masks are ineffective in preventing the transmission of viruses like CoVID-19: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

If a surgeon were sick, especially with a viral infection, they would not perform surgery as they know the virus would NOT be stopped by their surgical mask.

Another area of "false equivalence" has to do with the environment in which the masks are worn. The environments in which surgeons wear masks minimize the adverse effects surgical masks have on their wearers.

Unlike the public wearing masks in the community, surgeons work in sterile surgical suites equipped with heavy duty air exchange systems that maintain positive pressures, exchange and filter the room air at a very high level, and increase the oxygen content of the room air. These conditions limit the negative effects of masks on the surgeon and operating room staff. And yet despite these extreme climate control conditions, clinical studies demonstrate the negative effects (lowering arterial oxygen and carbon dioxide re-breathing) of surgical masks on surgeon physiology and performance.

Surgeons and operating room personnel are well trained, experienced, and meticulous about maintaining sterility. We only wear fresh sterile masks. We don the mask in a sterile fashion. We wear the mask for short periods of time and change it out at the first signs of the excessive moisture build up that we know degrades mask effectiveness and increases their negative effects. Surgeons NEVER re-use surgical masks, nor do we ever wear cloth masks.

The public is being told to wear masks for which they have not been trained in the proper techniques. As a result, they are mishandling, frequently touching, and constantly reusing masks in a way that increase contamination and are more likely than not to increase transmission of disease.

Just go watch people at the grocery story or Walmart and tell me what you think about the effectiveness of masks in the community.

If you can't help but believe and trust the weak retrospective observational studies and confused public health "authorities" lying to you about the benefits and completely ignoring the risks of medical masks, then you should at least reject the illogical anti-science recommendation to block only 2 of the 3 ports of entry for viral diseases. Masks only cover the mouth and nose. They do not protect the eyes.