“The absence of evidence of effectiveness is not the same as having evidence of ineffectiveness,” chirps Jennifer Nuzzo of Brown University’s School of Public Health in the latest bid to explain away the Great Mask-Mandate Fiasco of 2020 onward.

That is, she ignores the elephant in the room: For years, Public Health Inc. lectured America to mask up — and kept them out of their kids’ schools and countless public places if they didn’t — on the basis of no evidence at all.

Her New York Times essay is yet another effort to deflect from that betrayal, after the gold-standard Cochrane scientific review of mask mandates’ effectiveness found they made “little or no difference.”

Obscenely, Nuzzo turns this into an argument for spending more money to study mitigation efforts — that is, a cash windfall for everyone in her public-health field — so that they can give better advice amid the next once-in-a-century pandemic.

But that dodges the real question: Why did they lie to us?

And bully us?

And why won’t Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control and the whole public-health establishment apologize even now?

OK: Lab data suggest that if everyone masks up relentlessly in exactly the right way (ideally with more-expensive N95 masks or better), it could somewhat reduce transmission of bugs like COVID.

But the evidence as of March 2020 (and still) was that people just don’t work that way: They don’t cover their nose, or wear the mask tightly enough or whatever.

Trying to make everyone do it was nothing more than public-health theater, not science.

An honest public-health establishment would’ve said: We think this might help . . . but we really have no good ideas.

Heck, we don’t even know if lockdowns are wise — because whatever safety you gain on COVID must be balanced against the huge costs to mental health and the economy.

Instead, the leading experts concealed their uncertainty.

They postured, posed and pretended.

And when the politicians and bureaucrats translated their “advice” into ham-handed oppression, they didn’t speak up.

Instead, Fauci & Co. actively denounced and suppressed any experts who dissented.

It was “an emergency,” Nuzzo pleads: That was “the context in which states first mandated masks, issued stay-at-home orders and closed schools.”

Right: In the emergency, the experts panicked — pretended to have answers and fostered arbitrary orders.

It was never about “following the science”; it was about protecting — abusing — their own air of authority.

And now the liberal establishment is trying to “stop the spread” of . . . awareness of their betrayal.

Will this containment effort be as effective as an N95, or as worthless as a cloth bandana?

Just as with COVID, we expect the truth will always out.