From [HERE] Mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic were an exercise in scientific insanity and evidence is mounting that the long-term physical consequences may not be evident for some time.1 It started with recommendations to wear a mask in public and quickly deteriorated to questionable advice ranging from head scratching and mildly amusing to the outright laughable.
Spain's mandated use of face masks while swimming in the ocean,2 double masking,3 triple masking and masking while exercising4 all fall into one of those categories, depending on your perspective.
On the other side of the coin were business owners and individuals who recognized the madness of wearing masks to protect against a virus since for nearly 25 years researchers have questioned the effectiveness of surgical and cloth masks. An NBC report5 in February 2021 showed a grocery store in Naples, Florida, where hardly any of the customers wore masks.
The news reporter said the store owner “is known for his conservative and often controversial viewpoints.” The owner posted a sign that individuals who have a medical condition were exempt from the mask mandate order and since by HIPAA guidelines and the Fourth Amendment they could not legally ask about medical conditions, the store assumed if you did not wear a mask you had a medical condition.6
Mask mandates were put in place without ever properly evaluating efficacy, they divided communities and were used as a form of virtue signaling and a visible reminder of compliance with what became the “new normal.” Research7 has demonstrated that masks do not protect but, rather, increase the risk you may get sick.
The rationale behind a widespread mask mandate must be questioned, yet it doesn't appear that public health officials are paying attention to science. Is that really surprising?
Long-Term Consequences of Face Masks Are Unknown
A group of scientists from Germany, Poland, India and Austria8 sought to evaluate the effects of mask wearing on physiological, metabolic and clinical parameters. In a 2023 review of past use, the researchers noted that in most countries face masks had been restricted to health professionals for decades.
They wrote that even before 2020, effectiveness was debatable and it wasn't until 2020 that leaders and scientists began suggesting that masks might protect against viral transmission, even though the evidence was weak. Certain properties of surgical face masks were used to justify their use in hospital settings in the past, such as preventing bacteria from entering surgical wounds and during operations.
Yet, past research also found the evidence to support use during surgery was not unequivocal.9 The studies included in the featured 2023 systematic analysis evaluated the adverse effects masks may have. The median trial duration was only 18 minutes, yet the pooled results were significant.
In reviewing the literature, the researchers found both standard surgical masks and N95 masks had significant effects, but the N95 mask had a greater impact on clinical parameters. The researchers measured adverse effects in decreased oxygen saturation, minute ventilation and simultaneous increase in blood CO2, heart rate, humidity and systolic blood pressure.
During exertion, a robust relationship to mask wearing was noted in discomfort, shortness of breath, heat and humidity. When the symptoms of the participants were pooled, there was a significant prevalence of headache, acne, skin irritation, shortness of breath, voice disorders and dizziness.
The researchers found that the masks interfered with oxygen uptake and carbon dioxide (CO2) release, which compromised respiration. They concluded that the risks and benefits of face mask wearing must be assessed against side effects and the available evidence of their effectiveness against viral transmission: “In the absence of strong empirical evidence of effectiveness, mask wearing should not be mandated let alone enforced by law.”10
The result of this systematic review is similar to another published in 202111 that evaluated 44 mostly experimental, quantitative, studies and 65 substantive publications. They looked at psychological and physical deterioration and found there was a significant correlation between oxygen drop and fatigue.
Of participants wearing N95 masks, 82% showed a rise in CO2, 72% had a drop in oxygen and 60% reported headaches. The researchers concluded: “Extended mask wearing by the general population could lead to relevant effects and consequences in many medical fields.”12
Masks Raise CO2 Levels
Your body's homeostasis depends on balance. CO2 and oxygen must also be in balance. When CO2 levels are too high, it can be an indication of other underlying medical conditions, such as kidney failure, lung disease and Cushing syndrome.13
Too much CO2 can also trigger health conditions.14 Excess CO2 reduces blood pH, which may be associated with protein misfolding and altered interaction with nucleic acids, metals and drugs. Clinical presentation of the systemic effects is hypothesized to include diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer and neurological disorders.
In other words, too much CO2 in the blood may be responsible for long-term health conditions well beyond the short-term effects of headache, fatigue and dizziness. A 2021 paper15 described the effects of wearing a face mask on CO2 concentration.
The researchers found there was no difference in the three types of face masks tested, which included a surgical mask, N95 mask and cloth mask. They wrote that the concentrations of CO2 had no toxicological effects according to the literature, yet "concentrations in the detected range can cause undesirable symptoms, such as fatigue, headache and loss of concentration."16
These recorded side effects strongly suggest the brain was oxygen deprived. While the researchers noted the short-term exposure to high CO2 levels in the blood may not trigger “toxicological effects,” the long-term effects were not measured. Another study published in early 202117 also found that while face masks increased CO2 levels, they remained below the short-term National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) limit.
For those who only read the title of the paper, it appears as if wearing a face mask poses no significant health challenges. However, short-term use was defined as 15 minutes. For individuals who wore their face masks consistently throughout the day, as was required in states with a mask mandate, CO2 limits were exceeded.
These tests were performed on healthy adults. A study published in late 2022,18 evaluated CO2 levels in healthy children who wore face mask coverings. Since many countries made it compulsory for children to wear face masks in school, these scientists sought to determine the average CO2 levels in an experimental control study over 25 minutes.
After baseline measurements were taken, children wore either surgical masks or an FFP2 mask, similar to an N95 mask. Researchers measured breathing frequency and pulse in 45 children with a mean age of 10.7 years. They found that the difference between the two masks was small and not significant but that wearing any mask raised the CO2 content quickly to a “very high level” in healthy children in a seated resting position.19
