Professor of Microbiology Beny Spira wasn’t initially a mask sceptic.
It was only when mask mandates were announced in Brazil that the university of São Paulo academic became curious: what did the existing scientific research show about the effectiveness of masks?
“Turns out there were lots of studies,” he told Smile Free’s Dr Gary Sidley, “and the better the study, the lower the effect of masks observed. So I asked myself, ‘why the mandates?'”
Prof Spira has published a peer-reviewed study in the scientific journal Cureus looking at the correlation between the rate of mask-wearing in the population and the number of reported Sars-COV2 infections and deaths from October 2020 to March 2021 in 35 European countries.
His findings were striking – no correlation between mask wearing and infection levels (in other words, masks didn’t make a difference to infection levels) – but a moderate to strong POSITIVE correlation between deaths and mask usage (in other words, countries that masked more actually had more Covid deaths).
“Correlation is not causation,” Prof Spira points out. “But it warrants a serious investigation… perhaps masks are causing more harm than good (for Covid) – we don’t know.”
Watch the interview to discover:
- Two hypotheses for why mask wearing could actually increase Covid death rates
- Why the argument “but you might expect increased masking in places with a worse Covid situation” isn’t supported by the evidence
- Plus why vaccinations levels don’t explain the picture either
- Why masking has some characteristics of a pseudoscience
