The most frustrating aspect of the response to the release of the 2023 Cochrane Review , which found that wearing a medical or surgical mask “probably makes little or no difference” in reducing the spread of respiratory viruses such as COVID-19, is that it was treated as just one study among many, and that the jury was somehow still out. But it is beyond dispute that masking as a public health policy to stop the spread of COVID-19 didn’t work. That’s a significant finding.

Whatever minimal benefit masking had was drastically outweighed by the costs, such as the negative impact the practice had on the brain development and socialization of children , among other things. We can be sure of this precisely because the Cochrane Review was not just one study among many, but instead the world’s most esteemed meta-study, or study of studies. The National Institutes of Health describes it as the “gold standard for meta-analytic review.” It has an extremely low vulnerability to bias, and it is also generally conservative in its conclusions . Its sample size is massive. Its methods are sound.

The review’s lead author, Tom Jefferson, drove the point home in an interview with Maryanne Demasi following the release: “There is just no evidence that [masks] make any difference,” he said. “Full stop.”

Demasi then noted that his report included N-95s, which are thought to offer more protection than regular masks. But Jefferson waved that notion away as well. “It makes no difference — none of it.”

In the weeks since, there has been hand-wringing among establishment figures who fear that the results of the review have been misinterpreted, which, in their warped view, will endanger lives. But after years of bullying and hectoring the public into going along with mask mandates, it’s obvious they’re afraid of being proven wrong. They enjoyed the authority COVID restrictions granted them, and they’re not willing to be discredited.

But it’s too late. The implications behind experts’ masking mistake are massive. One can only imagine how many times a vulnerable person with a high-risk medical profile wore a mask in public with a false sense of security only to get sick and die as a result. Or how many children — who were never at serious risk from COVID-19 to begin with — were made to endure years of needless anxiety and limited human contact, exacerbating our ever-raging youth mental health crisis.

It’s understandable why they are terrified at the prospect of being proven incorrect. I wouldn’t want any of that on my conscience, either.

Yet the evidence is impossible to ignore. Newly released research confirms the Cochrane Review’s findings. Data collected by researchers from St. George’s Hospital in London over a 10-month period found that masking mandates made no impact on the transmission of COVID-19 during the omicron wave. Indeed, masks made “no discernible difference” in reducing hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections at all, the researchers found.

The study was even lauded by Dr. Jeanne Noble, director of COVID Response at the University of California, San Francisco’s Parnassus Emergency Department, and an advocate for more robust vaccine mandates in California. “The bottom line,” she said, “is that lifting the hospital mask mandate did not lead to a measurable increase in hospital-acquired COVID infections. This study’s findings are consistent with the recent Cochrane metanalysis, summarizing the best available data to date on the impact of masks in allowing the transmission of respiratory viruses including COVID-19.”

Masking “truthers” will doubtless pick this latest study apart in order to save face. After years spent treating skeptics as subhuman, it’s their only remaining play. But as a public health policy, mandated masking is deader than dogecoin. Only those who refuse to “follow the science" would see it as a preferred solution to stop the spread of a respiratory virus.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner and the founder of Crush the College Essay. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, the National Catholic Register, and the American Spectator.