In most countries, the uses of medical face masks have been restricted to professionals for decades. In the health-care setting, masks constituted a mandatory self-protective and third-party protective measure for medical personnel prior to COVID-19 pandemic based on the assumption of efficacy of masks in reducing transmission of pathogens, especially bacteria.
*Link to full article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1125150/full
The effectiveness of masks in all healthcare settings was debatable even before 2020. In 2020, many scientists and leaders started to believe that the use of masks could also provide protection against viral transmission, although evidence for the effectiveness of this measure was only weak.
Since the pandemic began, a large number of studies tried to assess the antiviral effectiveness of masks, with hardly conclusive results.
During the 2019 SARS-CoV-2 outbreak face masks were deployed as a mandatory public health measure for the general population in many countries around the world, making them one of the most important universal life-style attributes that directly affect how we breathe.
As with any other preventive measure and/or intervention, masks also have specific disadvantages.
CONCLUSION: Face mask side-effects must be assessed (risk-benefit) against the available evidence of their effectiveness against viral transmissions. In the absence of strong empirical evidence of effectiveness, mask wearing should not be mandated let alone enforced by law.
