Hope he gets better soon. Regarding masks, this scientific study concludes they are ineffective at blocking covid-19 transmission between people.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/
Interesting article, but I checked the disclaimer on the page, and it stated in part:
"
PMC is a repository of content primarily from two sources: peer reviewed journals that overall have met NLM’s standards for PMC; and peer reviewed author manuscripts deposited in compliance with the public access policy of NIH or other collaborating funders.
PMC is not a publisher and does not publish journal articles itself. Once a journal as a whole has been accepted for inclusion in PMC, NLM does not judge the quality of individual articles and relies on the scientific publishing process to identify and address problems through published comments, corrections, and retractions. NIH and other funders do not dictate the journals in which their funded authors may publish. Consequently, author manuscripts in PMC may be from journals that have not yet undergone scientific review by NLM, are traditionally out of scope for the NLM collection, or have not met NLM’s standards for PMC.
In addition, as of June 2020 PMC includes preprints reporting NIH supported research in support of the NIH Preprint Pilot. As preprints are interim research products that have not been peer reviewed, readers should be aware that any aspect of the research, including the results and conclusions, may change as a result of peer review.
The presence of an article in PMC does not reflect an endorsement of, or concurrence with, the contents of the article by NLM."
This particular article was published by them in November of 2020, and it appears to me that the world has had more experience and learned more about the efficacy of face masks related to Covid since then. It was not from a peer reviewed journal, and is a single author article which may or may not have been reviewed by peers. There is no indication of what review(s) the article may have undergone. I do note that the grammar is erratic and there are typos here and there. I therefore assume it has not been reviewed, but published under the June 2020 preprint pilot referred to in the third paragraph quoted above.
This article is not actually a scientific study, it is a compilation and interpretation of articles and meta-analyses and studies, some of which date back a few years. This approach is generally is OK with me, but we should realize it is not a report of a study conducted by the author or others. It is instead an interpretation of other studies reported in scientific literature. Cherry picking is by no means uncommon with an article of this nature.
The article is so relentlessly negative that I personally would take its interpretation with caution. If this sounds like I read it with a questioning attitude and looking for a basis to challenge its assertions, that is a correct assumption. YMMV.
