A newly released meta-analysis on the use of face masks for reducing the transmission of viral respiratory infections within community settings shows the evidence for their effectiveness is equivocal at best.
“Available evidence from RCTs is equivocal as to whether or not wearing face masks in community settings results in a reduction in clinically- or laboratory-confirmed viral respiratory infections. No relevant studies concerned SARS-CoV-2 or were undertaken in community settings in the UK.”
Here is an example they provided of the highly equivocal nature of their study findings:
“One study found lower rates of self-reported symptoms of influenza-like illness (ILI) in the intervention compared with the control arm; however, in secondary analyses with laboratory-confirmed ILI, the rate of infection was less in the control arm than the intervention arm.”
The researchers pointed out that there is considerable controversy on the topic of the effectiveness of mask wearing, and proper risk/benefit analyses should be conducted given their implications to health policy.
They noted that while face masks filter droplets believed to contain viruses like SARS-CoV-2, they also have a number of drawbacks. For instance, if not used correctly, they:
“…may even increase transmission if they act as fomites [objects or materials which are likely to carry infection] or prompt other behaviours that transmit the virus such as face touching. For example, a face mask that has been worn for several hours becomes moist and acts as a potential source of contamination. Studies show that people touch their faces 15-23 times per hour on average (9,10), and this may mean that eyes and contaminated face masks are touched, spreading the virus.”
The researchers commented on the implications of their findings for policy and practice:
“While the potentially biased self-reported outcomes from RCTs suggest a small benefit of face mask wearing, findings on clinically- and laboratory-confirmed infection remain equivocal. In addition, none of the studies concerned SARS-CoV-2 and none were conducted in the UK. All were in community settings that were different in many respects from the situation pertaining to SARS-CoV-2 in the UK. In light of this, judgements about the benefits or harms of wearing face masks will have to be made using a priori arguments rather than the data reviewed here: the scientific evidence should be considered equivocal. Such arguments should pay special attention to specific settings where the risk of infection is high and the opportunity for physical distancing is low (e.g. on crowded public transport), and to the need for education and training to maximise the potential benefits of wearing masks and mitigate the risk that they will transmit infection by acting as fomites.”
Clearly, in a time and age when mandatory medical interventions, including so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, hand-washing, and mask wearing, are increasingly being implemented and institutionalized under the auspices of the public safety, we need to let the evidence itself (and not simply fear and a desire to control) guide these public health decisions and policies. When the evidence of safety and effectiveness is lacking, or worse, when there is evidence of unsafety and ineffectiveness, it is our job to inform ourselves and others, and not consent to unethical, unlawful, or unconstitutional orders that violate our health and bodily sovereignty. Join the non-profit, health freedom advocacy project www.Standforhealthfreedom.comto learn more about your rights and what you can do to protect them.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.
Did science make a last-minute, game-changing discovery about masks? No. However, those who are profiting from this crisis saw an opportunity: It can be instrumentalized to create a specific social climate.It is about keeping fear, anxiety, and paranoia going. It is about being constantly reminded that things are NOT going back to normal. In short, it is about social engineering.
Patients with Lyme disease are typically treated with a standard antibiotic, which may include doxycycline, amoxicillin, or cefuroxime, for a 2 to 4 week period. However, studies have shown that between 36-63% of treated patients continue to suffer with persistent symptoms. [1]
Study findings suggest that current Lyme disease treatment may not eliminate the Borrelia burgdorferi infection or the immune system may fail to clear the infection or bacterial debris, resulting in ongoing symptoms. In the past few years, several new treatments for Lyme disease have been investigated in the laboratory or made available to patients in an effort to address chronic symptoms.
Although still in the early stages, two new treatments for Lyme disease seem to show promising results. Published case reports describe the effectiveness of dapsone, an antibiotic typically used to treat skin conditions and disulfiram, frequently prescribed for alcohol abuse.
Dapsone
Horowitz et al. reviewed data from 200 patients to evaluate “the efficacy of dapsone combined with other antibiotics and agents that disrupt biofilms for the treatment of chronic Lyme disease/post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS).” [2]
They found that it “decreased eight major Lyme symptoms severity and improved treatment outcomes among patients with chronic Lyme disease/PTLDS and associated co-infections.”
This new treatment for Lyme disease was not without side effects, however. Horowitz reports, 46 of the 200 patients stopped treatment due to an ‘adverse reaction.’ The adverse effects were not specified.
When used for other conditions, dapsone’s side effects have included haemolysis, agranulocytosis, photosensitivity, skin eruptions, neuropathy, and toxic or cholestatic hepatitis. [3]
Disulfiram
Disulfiram, a medication used to treat alcohol abuse, may be one of the new treatments for Lyme disease in the near future. Two small studies have shown positive results.
Dr. Kenneth Liegner reports that 3 patients, who required extensive, ongoing antibiotic treatment due to neurological Lyme disease and Babesia, “were able to discontinue treatment and remain clinically well for periods of observation of 6–23 months following the completion of a finite course of treatment solely with disulfiram.” [4]
One patient did relapse at 6 months and was re-treated with disulfiram.
The results from another group of 30 patients who received disulfiram were described by Liegner during the 2019 International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) annual conference. “Results have been impressive, and disulfiram use, with careful supervision, has been relatively safe.”
“It will remain to be seen whether disulfiram has a role in acute or early Lyme disease or babesiosis,” Liegner adds.
Furthermore, “Any role for disulfiram in children, with their incompletely matured nervous systems, remains to be determined and should be approached with caution, as there is little experience with its use in children.”
None of Liegner’s three patients stopped treatment with disulfiram. One patient had a temporary psychiatric hospitalization, and a second stopped after a syncope event that led to a concussion that required hospitalization. And according to Liegner, the risk of adverse events was even lower in the study involving 30 patients.
Disulfiram’s side effects, when prescribed for other conditions, have included “encephalopathy, convulsion, cranial and peripheral neuropathy, toxic optic neuropathy, irreversible injury to the basal ganglia with permanent neurological deficits, hypertension, and drug-induced psychosis, presumably due to the inhibition of dopamine beta-hydroxylase,” writes Liegner.
Another study investigating disulfiram as one of the new treatments for Lyme disease and co-infections was launched in 2019 by Dr. Brian Fallon, from the Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center at Columbia University.
Azlocillin
A study by Stanford Medicine suggests that the antibiotic azlocillin “completely kills off the disease-causing bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi at the onset of the illness.” In addition, the authors say, azlocillin “could be effective for treating [Lyme disease] patients infected with drug-tolerant bacteria that may cause lingering symptoms.” [5]
Researchers tested azlocillin in mice infected with Lyme disease at 7-day, 14-day and 21-day intervals and found that it eliminated the infection. Additionally, in lab dishes, the azlocillin killed drug-tolerant forms of B. burgdorferi, “indicating that it may work as a therapy for lingering symptoms of Lyme disease,” according to the Stanford team.
Azlocillin has not yet been prescribed or studied in Lyme disease patients.
Azlocillin adverse events for other indications have included hypersensitivity reactions, hypocalaemia, hepatotoxicity, diarrhea, and leukopenia. [6] There are also costs and risks associated with the need to administer azlocillin intravenously.
Combination: daptomycin, doxycycline, and ceftriaxone
Researchers from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that a combination of antibiotics – daptomycin, doxycycline, and ceftriaxone − eradicated the slow-growing variant form (persisters) of the Lyme bacteria in a mouse model. Scientists believe persisters may be responsible for the chronic symptoms that some Lyme disease patients experience.
“There is a lot of excitement in the field because we now have not only a plausible explanation but also a potential solution for patients who suffer from persistent Lyme disease symptoms despite standard single-antibiotic treatment,” says Ying Zhang, MD, Ph.D., senior author on the study.
Zhang and his team hope to test the drug combination in people with persistent Lyme disease
Daptomycin has not yet been prescribed to Lyme disease patients, and adverse effects, for other conditions, have included myopathy/rhabdomyolysis, eosinophilic pneumonia, and anaphylactic hypersensitivity reactions. [8]
There are also costs and risks associated with the need to administer daptomycin intravenously.
Editor’s note: I am encouraged by all the research seeking to identify new treatments for Lyme disease and remain hopeful that we will develop research designs to evaluate the value of these and other treatments for tick-borne diseases.
Adrion ER, Aucott J, Lemke KW, Weiner JP (2015) Health Care Costs, Utilization and Patterns of Care following Lyme Disease. PLOS ONE 10(2): e0116767. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0116767
Horowitz RI, Freeman PR. Precision medicine: retrospective chart review and data analysis of 200 patients on dapsone combination therapy for chronic Lyme disease/post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome: part 1. Int J Gen Med. 2019;12:101-119.
Wozel G, Blasum C. Dapsone in dermatology and beyond. Arch Dermatol Res. 2014;306(2):103-124.
Liegner KB. Disulfiram (Tetraethylthiuram Disulfide) in the Treatment of Lyme Disease and Babesiosis: Report of Experience in Three Cases. Antibiotics (Basel). 2019;8(2).
Pothineni VR, Potula HSK, Ambati A, et al. Azlocillin can be the potential drug candidate against drug-tolerant Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto JLB31. Sci Rep. 2020;10(1):3798.
Parry MF. The tolerance and safety of azlocillin. J Antimicrob Chemother. 1983;11 Suppl B:223-228.
Feng J, Li T, Yee R, et al. Stationary phase persister/biofilm microcolony of Borrelia burgdorferi causes more severe disease in a mouse model of Lyme arthritis: implications for understanding persistence, Post-treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS), and treatment failure. Discov Med. 2019;27(148):125-138.
Patel S, Saw S. Daptomycin. In: StatPearls. Treasure Island (FL)2020.
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**Comment**
This type of work has been a long time coming but is desperately needed. I’ve posted on all of these treatments before here:
My husband and I both tried Disulfiram. He did fine on it while I suffered with psychosis: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/10/15/disulfiram-psychosis-update/. Others have suffered the same side-effect; however, work with your doctor to mitigate risks as much as possible by titrating up slowly and only using the dose required for you to achieve benefit. For some, this dosage is quite small.
I’m still glad I tried it and would recommend it; however, if you are a single patient, make sure you have a support system in place and people checking in on you regularly.I had no idea I was going mad. Thankfully my family picked up on it. I spent a week in the hospital with the most severe toxic reaction to disulfiram the UW hospital has ever seen. Buyer beware.
Effective Lyme treatment is typically overlapping in nature to address all forms of borrelia as well whatever coinfections are present. Each case is extremely individual based upon what pathogens are at play as well as nutritional, hormonal, mineral, environmental, and immune status challenges.
Lyme/MSIDS weakens the body in many areas. Supporting those areas is key and takes savvy in hunting down and addressing. Partner with your practitioner by learning as much as you can so you can bring ideas to the table.
Addressing this is a partnership and will require your participation.
Please notice one of Wisconsin’s own, Pierre Kory, M.D, medical director at the Trauma & Life Support Center and a faculty member in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, is a part of FLCCC(Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group).
If the MATH+ protocol works with near-100% effectiveness, a vaccine may not even be necessary. The MATH+ protocol gets its name from:
Intravenous Methylprednisolone
High-dose intravenous Ascorbic acid
Plus optional treatments Thiamine, zinc and vitamin D
Full dose low molecular weight Heparin
Kory’s testimony transcript reviews and summarizes the MATH+ protocol, and explains why the timing of the treatment is so important. As explained by Kory, there are two distinct yet overlapping phases of COVID-19 infection.
Phase 1 is the viral replication phase. Typically, patients will only experience mild symptoms, if any, during this phase. At this time, it’s important to focus on antiviral therapies.
In Phase 2, the hyperinflammatory immune response sets in, which can result in organ failures (lungs, brain, heart and kidneys). The MATH+ protocol is designed to treat this active phase, but it needs to be administered early enough.
In this interview with Freddie Sayers, Executive Editor of UnHerd, Professor Levitt explains why he thinks indiscriminate lockdown measures as “a huge mistake,” and advocates a “smart lockdown” policy, focused on more effective measures, focused on protecting elderly people.
He first spoke out in early February, when through analysing the numbers of cases and deaths in Hubei province he predicted with remarkable accuracy that the epidemic in that province would top out at around 3,250 deaths.
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
According to some, social distancing is part of “the new normal.” Alas, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest social distancing and lockdowns will not be necessary at all, and were probably a bad idea in the first place
The rate of SARS-CoV-2 mortality never experienced exponential growth, as was predicted, which suggests a majority of people may have had some sort of prior resistance to the virus
Statistical data reveals a mathematical pattern that has stayed consistent regardless of the interventions implemented. After two weeks of exponential growth, the growth curve quickly becomes sub-exponential
Evidence for resistance to SARS-CoV-2 is emerging. One recent study found 40% to 60% of people who had not been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 still had resistance to the virus on the T-cell level. According to the authors, this suggests there’s cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2
One statistician believes the ratio of people that are not susceptible to COVID-19 could be as high as 80%. Once sensible behaviors such as staying home when sick are entered into this model, any potential benefit of lockdown efforts vanish altogether
According to some, Bill Gates prominently among them, social distancing is part of “the new normal.” Alas, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest social distancing and lockdowns will not be necessary at all, and were probably a bad idea in the first place.
According to Nobel-prize-winning scientist Michael Levitt,1 the rate of SARS-CoV-2 mortality never experienced exponential growth, as was predicted, which suggests a majority of people may have had some sort of prior resistance or immunity.
Levitt, a professor of structural biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, received the Nobel Prize in 2013 for his development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.
No Exponential Growth in Mortality
Statistical data, he points out, reveal a mathematical pattern that has stayed consistent regardless of the interventions implemented. As reported by Freddie Sayers in the video above:
“After around a two-week exponential growth of cases (and, subsequently, deaths) some kind of break kicks in, and growth starts slowing down. The curve quickly becomes ‘sub-exponential.’ This may seem like a technical distinction, but its implications are profound.
The ‘unmitigated’ scenarios modelled by (among others) Imperial College, and which tilted governments across the world into drastic action, relied on a presumption of continued exponential growth — that with a consistent R number of significantly above 1 and a consistent death rate, very quickly the majority of the population would be infected and huge numbers of deaths would be recorded.
But Professor Levitt’s point is that that hasn’t actually happened anywhere, even in countries that have been relatively lax in their responses …
He believes that both some degree of prior immunity and large numbers of asymptomatic cases are important factors … He describes indiscriminate lockdown measures as ‘a huge mistake,’ and advocates a ‘smart lockdown’ policy, focused on … protecting elderly people.”
Quarantining the Healthy Was Unnecessary
Now, evidence for prior resistance to SARS-CoV-2 is emerging, adding support to Levitt’s suspicions that the lack of exponential mortality growth may be due to the fact that a majority simply aren’t (and weren’t) susceptible to the disease in the first place.
A study2 published May 14, 2020, in the journal Cell, found 40% to 60% of people who had not been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 still had resistance to the virus on the T-cell level. According to the authors, this suggests there’s “cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.”
In other words, exposure to coronaviruses that cause the common cold appear to allow your immune system to recognize and fight off SARS-CoV-2 as well. This is great news. Professor Karl Friston, another statistician whose expertise is in mathematical modeling, believes resistance or prior immunity could be as high as 80%. Sayers reports:3
“[Friston] invented the now standard ‘statistical parametric mapping’ technique for understanding brain imaging — and for the past months he has been applying his particular method of Bayesian analysis, which he calls ‘dynamic causal modelling,’ to the available Covid-19 data …
His models suggest that the stark difference between outcomes in the UK and Germany, for example, is not primarily an effect of different government actions (such as … earlier lockdowns), but is better explained by intrinsic differences between the populations that make the ‘susceptible population’ in Germany — the group that is vulnerable to Covid-19 — much smaller than in the UK …
Even within the UK, the numbers point to the same thing: that the ‘effective susceptible population’ was never 100%, and was at most 50% and probably more like only 20% of the population.”
Social Distancing Should Not Be Part of ‘New Normal’
As noted by Sayers, this really throws the idea of social distancing being an unavoidable part of the post-COVID-19 “new normal” into question. What’s more, once sensible behaviors such as staying home when sick are entered into this model, the effect of lockdown efforts “literally goes away,” Friston says.
According to Friston, the reason why Sweden and the U.K., for example, have had very similar mortality rates despite vastly different government interventions (Sweden did not impose mandatory stay-at-home orders or business closures while the U.K. did), is because Swedes who felt sick stayed home anyway. This is common sense for most people, especially during an active pandemic.
When Sayer asks Friston to comment on Neil Ferguson’s now discredited Imperial College model4that predicted the death of 2 million Americans and 500,000 Britons unless draconian lockdown and social distancing measures were implemented, he replied that Ferguson’s models were correct “under the qualification that the population they were talking about is much smaller than you might imagine.”
“In other words, Ferguson was right that around 80% of susceptible people would rapidly become infected, and … that of those between 0.5% and 1% would die — he just missed the fact that the relevant ‘susceptible population’ was only ever a small portion of people …”Sayer writes.
Pandemic Response Plan Has Been a Giant Flop
Why did U.S. public health officials persuade lawmakers to almost immediately shutter businesses and issue stay-at-home orders for most of our population rather than implementing traditional disease control measures that identify, quarantine and treat the sick? Remember, quarantining is normally reserved for those infected, not for the healthy.
This is a question that deserves an answer. We’re unlikely to get it, however, because the answer would likely reveal that this pandemic has been yet another massive fraud to enrich multinational corporations at the expense of just about everything and everyone else. And, if it weren’t for the captured mainstream media, it would never have worked.
At this point, we can clearly see that an all-encompassing global totalitarian plan had been quietly put together, piece by piece, behind the scenes, only to be put into action once a pandemic — real or imagined — emerged. A key player in the coordination of this plan has been Bill Gates, who stands to profit in any number of ways, both from vaccines and technological rollouts.
As noted by investigative journalist James Corbett in his four-part Corbett Report on Gates,5 “every aspect of the current coronavirus pandemic involves organizations, groups and individuals with direct ties to Gates funding.”
This includes the World Health Organization, of course, but also the two research groups responsible for shaping the decision to lock down the U.K. and U.S. — the Imperial College COVID-19 Research Team responsible for the grossly inaccurate mortality model, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation — as well as the National Institutes of Health, and the NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been leading the White House pandemic response team.
Then, of course, there was Event 201, conducted six weeks before the infections started. This was a tabletop exercise staged in October 2019 in which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security got together to gauge the nation’s preparedness for a global coronavirus pandemic.
While that exercise revealed “massive preparedness gaps,”6 we’ve seen no shortage of preparedness in terms of comprehensive plans for how to track and trace the infection and vaccine status of everyone using electronic means.
Ditto for plans requiring everyone to carry vaccine records in order to regain the freedom to work, get an education, travel and engage in social activities going forward. I wrote about this elaborate proposal in “Rockefeller Foundation’s Plan to Track Americans.” As noted by Corbett:7
“Given the incredible reach that the tentacles of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have into every corner of the global health markets, it should not be surprising that the foundation has been intimately involved with every stage of the current pandemic crisis, either.
In effect, Gates has merely used the wealth from his domination of the software market to leverage himself into a similar position in the world of global health. The whole process has been cloaked in the mantle of selfless philanthropy, but the foundation is not structured as a charitable endeavor.
Instead, it maintains a dual structure: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation distributes money to grantees, but a separate entity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, manages the endowment assets. These two entities often have overlapping interests, and … grants given by the foundation often directly benefit the value of the trust’s assets.”
Medical Mafia
Indeed, I wrote about this illegal setup in “Bill Gates — Most Dangerous Philanthropist in Modern History?” The Canadian citizen journalist who goes by the name “Amazing Polly,” has also detailed how global health groups shamelessly use extortion and protection to achieve their goals, which have everything to do with building wealth and nothing to do with protecting or improving public health.8 For more details on this, see “Global Health Mafia Protection.”
In Mafia protection racket schemes, people will pay extortion money when they are convinced bad things can or will happen if they don’t pay the fee. The same phenomenon is now seen with governments who might have been skeptical about an imminent pandemic until the arrival of COVID-19 and now want to pay for preparedness.
All in all, it’s looking like a giant racketeering scheme. And to keep it going into the future, they need everything to fall in line with the idea that nothing can ever be the same as it was pre-COVID-19. Well, that is a lie.
Throughout this pandemic, common-sense prevention strategies have been rebuffed and denigrated, helpful treatment strategies have been suppressed, and scientists and doctors have been censored for speaking out about the usefulness of alternative therapies or older, inexpensive drugs such as hydrochloroquine.
All of this is evidence that public health is not a primary concern but transferring assets to the very wealthy certainly is. Many will be enriched from the global vaccination program and its tracking and tracing technologies, which will ultimately be tied to digital IDs and digital economies.
Enough is enough. The global population needs to see the plan for what it is — a global, totalitarian power grab — and renounce it. We’ve allowed fear to dramatically alter our world. Let’s not make things worse by making those alterations permanent. As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher in her thought-provoking commentary, “How Fear of a Virus Changed Our World”:
“Some of the core values, which have shaped our history and defined who we are as a nation, have been put on trial in 2020 because we are paralyzed by fear of a virus that doctors say could be hiding in the breath of every person who comes near us and contaminate everything we touch …
The authoritarian lockdown approach by governments to the coronavirus pandemic has been framed as a choice between safety and liberty … Public health officials have persuaded lawmakers to divide the American people into two classes: those who are considered “essential” and allowed to continue working and those who are considered “nonessential” and barred from earning a living.
Small businesses and services judged to be “nonessential” have been forced to close their doors … while, paradoxically, everyone is free to roam through grocery stores, drug stores and big box stores like Walmart, Target and Home Depot, owned by big corporations … What we have allowed to be done in the name of public health has no parallel in American history or human history.
The world did not lock down during centuries of epidemics of smallpox, which was a highly contagious virus and had a case fatality rate of 30% … Societies have not closed businesses and schools to prevent tuberculosis, a contagious disease that spreads the same way as coronavirus and has a case fatality rate still between 20% and 70% …
Why are the majority of people in educated societies like the U.S. cowering in fear before a virus that does not cause any symptoms or complications in the majority of children and adults under the age of 65, and has a mortality rate of about 1%, which is even lower if all the asymptomatic infections are counted? …
You have an opportunity, right now, to contact your elected representatives and let them know how you feel about protecting civil liberties and vaccine informed consent rights in your state. Sign up to use NVIC’s Advocacy Portal to defend voluntary vaccine choices.
And, when you go to the polls November 4, 2020, think hard about who you are voting for and why. If you don’t like the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that your governor or other elected representatives have made, your vote in this and every election beyond this one could affect whether America will continue to value liberty or throw it away.”
“New experiments show effective Bartonella treatments must do more than kill growing germ forms – they should also kill hibernating persister forms of Bartonella and include agents to remove biofilms.” Marty Ross MD
Recent research published in 2019 and early 2020 is changing the approach I take to treat Bartonella. Previous research showed Bartonella has rapidly growing germ forms – thus the antibiotics I recommended in the past treated growing forms only. New research shows that Bartonella also has non-growing forms called persisters. Think of a persister as a hibernating form of the germ that ignores most antibiotics and immune system attacks. In addition, this new research shows that Bartonella can form protective sugar-slime coverings called biofilms. These biofilms can block the immune system and antibiotics from reaching Bartonella. This new research is based on petri dish laboratory experiments.
In this updated article I review the best treatment approaches to eradicate Bartonella based on my clinical experience and this new science. (See link for article)
A newly released meta-analysis on the use of face masks for reducing the transmission of viral respiratory infections within community settings shows the evidence for their effectiveness is equivocal at best. 
