Resurfaced footage from 2018 exposes the true purpose for masking laws at least from one health journalist, who is a current advocate for such mandates.
Laurie Garrett is a Pulitzer and Peabody award-winning health journalist who previously worked as the senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. In the video from 2018, she claims that masks “almost certainly” did not aid in stopping the spread of SARS’, which is a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus infection.
The speaker’s speech is from her keynote address to the National Academy of Medicine, during which she discussed the history of pandemics and their potential for a future epidemic.
She then explains how viruses can be transferred via masks during the closing portion of her talk.
“There’s only a few countries that have ever really attempted to figure out what works on a large scale. One of the countries it may not surprise you is Japan. They essentially demonstrated in one of their major studies that masks, it looks like, had the most impact on whether or not people stayed away from each other because they gave off a social warning.”
“I’m not sure what caused it. But that’s what I think happened with SARS. When I was younger, during the SARS epidemic, I observed people all over Asia donning masks, and it is concerning; when you walk down the street and see everyone coming toward you with a mask on, you definitely social distancing, it’s a gut level thing.”
“But, did the mask truly aid them? Was the virus kept out by the mask? Almost certainly not. If the virus was on their face, the mask would not have made a difference. As a result, I believe this is an area that has been under-researched and underfunded.”
She also stated that using hand sanitizer might not be properly studied, for example.
Garrett’s address from 2018 was called, “From the 1918 Pandemic to 2009 H1N1: Is the World Ready For the Next Outbreak?”
In December 2020, as the vaccines were first being introduced in the United States, Garrett claimed on MSNBC that even with the vaccine, Americans should mask up and try to maintain social distance measures.
“We will witness a massive increase in cases and fatalities long before the vaccine is widely accessible,” she predicted at the time.
