The return of masking
How does New Zealand know masks work? The answer lies in behavioral surveys.
I started this Substack to look into Covid era topics, and how it affects us today. While Covid seems over (so over!) it has a long tail.
The Covid legislative framework is in place until November 2024, a national isolation and quarantine system is being worked on, there’s been a furthering of consultants as a shadow government, and of course higher living costs due to inflation caused by excessive money printing.
But I didn’t think masks would be pushed en-masse again - yet another marketing campaign has been rolled out on masking:
Mask mandates
I detailed a history of mask mandates that showed how masks were not a thing, to how they were a thing, then a bigger thing, then a non-thing unless you are visiting a health care setting with autocrats staffing it.
Decision-making during Covid stated, “…Government has a legal responsibility to ensure that the response to the pandemic is effective, justified and proportionate.” I wouldn’t have cared to write about masks if they hadn’t been legislated, accompanied by a $4,000 infringement (which could max out at $12,000) for not complying. Is that proportionate?
But the above marketing campaign is not aimed at the currently legislated health care mask mandates (with an infringement of $1,000 - which I doubt is enforced) it’s just public health advice. Yet…I write about it.
And I write about it because at no point have I seen any concerted effort to prove that community masking was effective and justified, and the use of mandates, and punishments for not complying, was proportionate.
Statements, over and over, were made during the height of mask mandates through 2022, by then Minister of Covid-19 Ayesha Verrall and then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern that “....it was clear masks were making a big difference…”
When community mask mandates were dropped in September 2022, New Zealand had racked up well over 1.6 million reported infections.
Tell me again how you know it worked?
And how did we get to public health pushing mask use in costly marketing campaigns over winter for all types of winter illness?
This time last year
A mid-June 2022 briefing on the Covid protection framework to Cabinet, noted that the Ministry of Health was reviewing whether to strengthen mask mandates further in the orange setting that the country was now in:
Yes, this time last year they considered again requiring schools to mask, and curiously whether they should remove requiring masks in transport as it didn’t make sense when you could take the mask off for eating and drinking. I say curiously as when mask mandates were first legislated in New Zealand - they were solely for public transport, and this concern was raised then too.
A Horizon survey commissioned in June 2022 showed some comments:
By July 2022, more TRA research showed sentiment had progressively gotten worse, the country was headed in the wrong direction, and negative comments were rising. People reported how often they wore masks - which was also dropping like a stone.
In August 2022, the Ministry of Health provided a public health assessment on the value of mask mandates to Minister Verrall. Which can be summed up as - masks! masks forever!
They wished on a star that it would be better from a public health perspective if mask wearing would become a “default behavior."
And that recommending might have better results:
The mask fatigue comment gives away what is also discussed within the briefing - the above behavioral research and surveys on compliance, and they noted people simply weren’t wearing masks.
Because Cabinet were responsible for mandates, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) rather than the Ministry of Health, answered my questions on how the September 2022 decision to drop community mask mandates was made.
I also asked for how they assessed mandates were working, and reducing spread as claimed.
DPMC’s response to me, stated, “For the impact of mask mandates, it is reasonable to conclude that mask mandates were having a positive impact on the outbreak for the period they were in place.”
Reasonable to conclude? Based on what DPMC? Is this an example of your self-called “…high performing policy system that supports and enables good government decision making.” Eh it’s reasonable to say it works - therefore it works.
The remainder of their answer mostly focussed on the above surveys as a key element of decision making due to interpreting my request as adherence when I asked how do they know mask mandates were effective.
They only tracked self reported compliance. Not actual effectiveness.
When compliance dropped in the surveys - community mask mandates were dropped.
Compliance was 1 of the criteria used as part of policy making by DPMC to compare options, if people didn’t go along with it - they’d likely note that against the policy to Cabinet.
And just because they were dropped, you should know that they looked into re-instating them. A review of Covid restrictions later in November 2022, in preparation for summer, looked into it again for public transport, and acknowledged older people were the most at risk:
This is conjecture. Despite the firm words, while there’s no doubt older people are most at risk (the average age of death in 2022 was 83 from Covid) the isolation and mask requirement impact on older people is an assumption based on shaky modelling data.
How public health knows masks work
A March 2023 OIA asked what work was underway at the Ministry of Health since the Cochrane review on interventions had found masks inconclusive. Their response, “...notes the findings of the Cochrane study and will continue to monitor emerging international evidence regarding COVID-19 including evidence of mask efficacy.”
It goes on to say:
Not us folks - the government version of a get of jail card.
Although that August 2022 public health assessment called the evidence for masks “substantial” - their references largely rely on limited influenza studies. It’s always been problematic to me that I haven’t come across any attempt for masking to be studied in a New Zealand context. Again, they admit this but interpret it only as to whether people wear masks (adherence):
They’re fine to put money into surveys and marketing campaigns, but not to actually figure out how and where and when masks work to definitively reduce transmission as they claim in a New Zealand context?
I keep mentioning that New Zealand context as Minister Verrall was asked in a press conference during winter 2022 why mask mandates were kept when most countries had dropped them. She responded New Zealand is different. She failed to provide an answer on how that is when I asked her office - who simply transferred the question to the Ministry of Health to also ignore and send me back a random CDC lab based study.
The Ministry of Health funds research - they’ve funded a group of Covid vaccination research projects. And this myocarditis study that had the date to be published removed.
Before:
After:
And yes, er…I did ask about it. Then that happened. Sorry folks.
Throughout Covid when OIA requestors to the Ministry of Health asked about masks they were referred to the same studies again and again, or the changing WHO advice on community masking.
But was it appropriate to mandate masks - and now advise them, and be responding still to OIAs in 2023, that request the efficacy assessments used for mask mandates - simply with links to Norwegian and Irish rapid reviews from 2020?
I actually read those sources cited as evidence. I don’t think anyone else did. The reviews talk about the lack of high quality and usable evidence - that influenza based lab and observational studies should be treated cautiously as being transferable to community masking for Covid.
I guess referencing New Zealand’s own 2020 rapid review by the Chief Science Advisor, Ian Town at the Ministry of Health, that found mask evidence inconclusive and with harms - isn’t really convincing enough, huh?
But perhaps this is all just a plan to find a way to use up the 31.5 million masks that the Ministry of Education still has stockpiled?
If you cannot safely remove asbestos with it because the particles are too small. Then it's not going to stop droplet nuclei that carry the virus which are smaller and are liquid.
Biological suits are almost exclusively sealed, positive pressure based systems with their own source of air/oxygen.
Not chemical masks which have carbon based filters.
Not particular masks with fine filtration.
Not pieces of cloth without a rating.
Because those simply will not work.