Remember when Dr. Fauci emphatically told Americans not to wear facemasks when the coronavirus pandemic hit our shores more than one year ago?

If you don’t recall, allow me to jog your memory. During a “60 Minutes” interview on March 8, 2020, Dr. Fauci said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”

In the same interview, Fauci also said:

“While masks may block some droplets, they do not provide the level of protection people think they do. Wearing a mask may also have unintended consequences: People who wear masks tend to touch their face more often to adjust them, which can spread germs from their hands.”

Fauci was far from the only government official downplaying masks once upon a time.

On February 27, during a congressional hearing, Dr. Robert Redfield, then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responded, “No,” when asked if Americans should wear facemasks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Two days later, then-U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams tweeted, “They [facemasks] are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching coronavirus.”

That was then. This is now.

So, what happened? Somehow, almost every infectious disease expert did an abrupt 180 and got fully on board the facemask bandwagon. By late spring 2020, in the blink of an eye, wearing a facemask became a requirement to participate in society.

However, the question remains: Do facemasks actually prevent the spread of COVID-19?

According to a recent study by Stanford University, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis,” the answer remains, “No.” //

“Clinical scientific evidence challenges further the efficacy of facemasks to block human-to-human transmission or infectivity. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 246 participants [123 (50%) symptomatic)] who were allocated to either wearing or not wearing surgical facemask, assessing viruses transmission including coronavirus. The results of this study showed that among symptomatic individuals (those with fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose etc…) there was no difference between wearing and not wearing facemask for coronavirus droplets transmission of particles of >5 µm. Among asymptomatic individuals, there was no droplets or aerosols coronavirus detected from any participant with or without the mask, suggesting that asymptomatic individuals do not transmit or infect other people.”