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Anthony Fauci’s claim masks work ‘for individuals’ slammed by Oxford scientist

Anthony Fauci’s claim masks could work for individuals even if they didn’t work at the population level lashed, as First Lady Jill Biden isolates with a mild case of Covid-19.

Oxford University epidemiologist Tom Jefferson says Anthony Fauci, pictured, might be relying on ‘trash studies’ to claim the effectiveness of masking. Picture: AFP
Oxford University epidemiologist Tom Jefferson says Anthony Fauci, pictured, might be relying on ‘trash studies’ to claim the effectiveness of masking. Picture: AFP

A top Oxford scientist has slammed America’s most famous public health tsar Anthony Fauci for claiming masks work to stop Covid-19, as the White House reveals President Joe Biden has started “masking indoors” after First Lady Jill Biden developed “mild” Covid-19.

Oxford University epidemiologist Tom Jefferson said Dr Fauci might be relying on “trash studies” to claim the effectiveness of masking, as some US hospitals, universities, school and employers reintroduced mask mandates amid an uptick in Covid-19 hospitalisations across the US.

“So, Fauci is saying that masks work for individuals but not at a population level? That simply doesn’t make sense,” Dr Jefferson told Australian journalist Maryanne Demasi on Tuesday, when asked to respond to Dr Fauci’s latest claims.

“When you’re talking about the effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong,” Dr Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN on Sunday (Monday AEST).

“But when you talk about as an individual basis of someone protecting themselves, or protecting themselves from spreading it to others, there’s no doubt that there are many studies that show that there is an advantage.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre said on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) that President Biden would begin “masking indoors” following news First Lady Jill Biden, who has received at least four doses of Covid-19 vaccines, had contracted the disease for the second time.

Dr Jefferson was one of 12 authors of an authoritative 305-page Cochrane analysis published in January that assessed 78 high-quality scientific studies that included more than 610,000 participants and concluded masking made no difference in stopping SARS-like viruses.

“There is just no evidence masks make any difference. Full stop,” he said at the time, prompting a furious response from other public health experts, who claimed masks were effective.

Jill Biden, right, pictured in 2020 with husband US President Joe Biden, has developed Covid-19 for a second time. Picture: AFP
Jill Biden, right, pictured in 2020 with husband US President Joe Biden, has developed Covid-19 for a second time. Picture: AFP

“What I do know is that Fauci was in a position to run a trial, he could have randomised two regions to wear masks or not. But he didn’t and that’s unforgivable,” he added.

Dr Fauci became a champion of masking – advocating ‘double masking’ at one point – to stop the spread of Covid-19, despite his earlier remarks in February and March 2020, obtained by a freedom of information request, that they utility extended to “making people feel a little better”.

“Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci wrote in a private February 2020 email, unearthed through FOI requests.

“The typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material,” he added, two months before US state and local governments – and many governments around the world – began to mandate masks for hundreds of millions of people.

Global mask sales surged to 378.9 billion units in 2020 from 12.5 billion in 2019, equivalent to around 50 masks per person across the globe according to online database Statista.

A 16 per cent rise in hospitalisations of patients with Covid-19 across the US over the week to August 26th, fuelled by new ‘perola’ and ‘eris’ variants of Sars-Cov2, has revived the debate on mandatory masking, which polarised US politics throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

The virus “keeps finding new ways to challenge humans, to find new hosts and repeat hosts, and it’s relentless” Dr Eric Topol, a public health expert at Scripps Translational Research Institute, told CNN last month.

Republican senator JD Vance from Ohio said he would introduce a bill, the Freedom to Breath Act, to ensure “no federal bureaucracy, no commercial airline, and no public school can impose the misguided policies of the past”.

“We tried mask mandates once in this country. They failed to control the spread of respiratory viruses, violated basic bodily freedom, and set our fellow citizens against one another,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

Read related topics:CoronavirusJoe Biden
Adam Creighton
Adam CreightonContributor

Adam Creighton is Senior Fellow and Chief Economist at the Institute of Public Affairs, which he joined in 2025 after 13 years as a journalist at The Australian, including as Economics Editor and finally as Washington Correspondent, where he covered the Biden presidency and the comeback of Donald Trump. He was a Journalist in Residence at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in 2019. He’s written for The Economist and The Wall Street Journal from London and Washington DC, and authored book chapters on superannuation for Oxford University Press. He started his career at the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. He holds a Bachelor of Economics with First Class Honours from the University of New South Wales, and Master of Philosophy in Economics from Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/anthony-faucis-claim-masks-work-for-individuals-slammed-by-oxford-scientist/news-story/2a33d8bdd3a1d39da65d9bea0084dcc9