Pulitzer Prize-Winning Health Journalist Revealed the Real Purpose of Masks in 2018: Fear
After her presentation, which periodically cast doubt on the historical utility of general public masking around the world, she fielded a question from a member of the audience on such measures. This was her candid response. Watch:
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“And there’s only a couple of countries that have ever really done large scale studies to try and figure out what might work,” she said. “Japan, it may not surprise you, as one of them. And they, in one of their large studies, they basically showed that the masks, it seemed like the major efficacy of a mask is that it causes alarm in the other person. And so you stay away from each other.”
Garrett expanded on the clinical findings with a personal anecdote.
“And that’s what I think happened with SARS,” she said. “When I was in the SARS epidemic, I saw it everywhere, all over Asia people started wearing these masks and it is alarming. When you walk down a street and everybody coming towards you has a mask on you definitely do social distancing. You definitely — it’s just gut thing, but did the mask really help them? Did the mask keep the virus out?”
“Almost certainly not,” Garrett concluded.
Thus, “public health experts” are acting more like authoritarian social engineers, implementing public policy dictates by decree, than actually giving health advice that benefits citizens individually.
Dr. Eleanor Murray, a Harvard-educated epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Public Health, has advocated for mask mandates as a tool to change social behavior, rather than because they have any usefulness for personal protection. Murray stated it quite bluntly in a Washington Post piece she co-wrote in March 2022.
“Masks are far more powerful as a public health tool implemented through mandates than as an individual protective measure,” Murray wrote in the article.