A leading proponent of face masks as a means of countering the spread of respiratory infections appears to have changed her mind. Professor Trish Greenhalgh, University of Oxford – described as the “high priestess” of the face mask movement, who even appeared on her X feed wearing two face masks during the COVID-19 years – has endorsed a letter to the WHO in which it is claimed, as reported in the Guardian, “There is ‘no rational justification remaining for prioritising or using’ the surgical masks that are ubiquitous in hospitals and clinics globally, given their ‘inadequate protection against airborne pathogens’.”

This is a remarkable volte-face by Professor Greenhalgh whose adherence to the face mask ideology seemed, at times, to defy both logic and the best principles of evidence-based medicine. Once a leading proponent of evidence-based medicine with many entries of her own in the Cochrane Library – the repository of gold standard systematic reviews of clinical evidence including on face masks – she was reported once as saying that “too much weight on evidence-based medicine can be the enemy of good policy”.

In the face of a persistent lack of evidence for the efficacy of face masks in preventing the spread of respiratory infections, up to and including the Cochrane review by Tom Jefferson and colleagues in 2023, Greenhalgh and colleagues decided to ignore this review, criticising its focus on gold standard evidence, and produce their own ‘review’ of the evidence. That review, as reported in the Daily Sceptic, conveniently only included studies that showed face masks in a favourable light. Unsurprisingly, their conclusion was that face masks were effective and should be promoted during respiratory pandemics.

While the above pivot would appear to be good news, sadly it is not all that good. And the bad news is revealed in Global Health Now, the daily newsletter of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, dated January 12th. The Guardian article, containing a link to the letter, is headlined: ‘Face masks “inadequate” and should be swapped for respirators, WHO is advised’. The letter was addressed to WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and the recommendations apply only to clinical staff in hospital environments.

The letter to the WHO chief is titled ‘A Call for the Universal use of Respirators in Healthcare’. In it, the signatories say that as COVID-19 “continues to circulate globally and to mutate” that the WHO must “support equitable access to certified respirators globally”. Thus, the letter meets the first two criteria of Hudson’s Razor which warns that anything that is:

(1) presented as a global crisis; for which there is

(2) only a global solution.

is probably a con. Especially if it requires:

(3) suppression of dissent.

Read More: Leading Mask Proponent Has Change of Heart