Cloth masks are worse and may increase the rate of infection.

[AnaadiNitya]

Carl Heneghan is a clinical epidemiologist with expertise in evidence-based medicine, research methods, and evidence synthesis.
He is Director of the NIHR SPCR Evidence Synthesis Working Group a collaboration of nine primary care departments across UK universities. He set up and directs the Oxford COVID Evidence Service, has over 400 peer-reviewed publications (current H Index 67); published 95 systematic reviews. He is Editor in Chief of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, and Editor of the Catalogue of Bias.

He recently attended an online
aCOVID 19 special response committee meeting. He is saying there is no evidence these masks work especially in the way we are being told to wear them.

Here is the video

To me that is not what he is saying, he is saying that the evidence is incredibly thin and certainly for cloth masks (the type most people are wearing) there is no evidence. There are no large scale RCT's on mask wearing - only observational studies.

Now if the government want to give us all an endless supply of FFP masks, fit test us all then train us all to use them that I will go along with!

BTW that Melinda Mills/Oxford unit link is a meta analysis of studies, not a study in itself. It references the same studies I have read and comes down on the side of mask wearing, but having read through there are far too many "maybes" and "probablys" for my liking, plus it is examining all the wearing observational studies that Carl Heneghan is referring to anyway.