I Talked to an “Anti-Masker” and It Caused Me to Examine the Evidence

Do non-surgical masks, like cloth masks, protect us from COVID-19?

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

It all started because I was selling a dresser on Kijiji.

The buyer was on her way and I was getting things ready in my condo. As expected, the security guard let me know that someone was here for me. I asked him to send her up.

A minute later, I received a call from the buyer asking me to come to the lobby. It sounded like there was a problem. I hurried downstairs.

When I got there, I saw the building manager and the front-desk security guard blocking a young women’s entrance to the building. I walked up to them, totally confused.

“She can’t enter the building without a mask,” the security guard said.

That’s when I noticed she wasn’t wearing one. “You don’t have a mask?” I asked.

“Nope,” she responded. “Can I talk to you outside?”

I nodded and followed her out.

We were no more than five feet from the entrance when she turned to me and said, “You don’t believe in masks, do you?”

I paused, never having had this conversation before, and said, “Yes, I do.”

“Come on!” She cried, exasperated. “All the evidence points toward them not being effective at all.”

She then spent the next 20 minutes telling me about how no studies have shown any evidence that cloth masks are effective at blocking COVID-19, that air and virus will flow around the sides of the masks, that six feet of social distancing is pointless because the virus can travel up to 27 feet through the air, that governments and health agencies are overblowing the impacts of COVID-19, that it’s not really any more deadly than a typical influenza outbreak, and that the whole thing is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government in its bid to take over the world and make puppets out of us all.

She threw a lot of information at me, but only went into any depth about mask-wearing. She was dumbfounded that governments and scientists alike have been insisting that masks are effective at blocking the virus without, she believed, any evidence to back it…