The Ottawa Hospital is reinstating mask mandates starting September 11. This is deeply concerning as many dread that it won’t be long before others follow suit.

Beginning September 11, masking will be required in all clinical areas and waiting rooms at The Ottawa Hospital. pic.twitter.com/uk3QQUBCkh

— The Ottawa Hospital (@OttawaHospital) September 6, 2023

After thoroughly dissecting the existing medical evidence, a Cochrane Library review published in January concluded “there was not a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.”

This makes mask mandates nothing more than an ideologically motivated directive rather than an evidence-based recommendation.

Canadians lease follow the evidence and respect freedom of choice by denouncing harmful, unnecessary, and unscientific mandates.

As the mainstream media fearmongers amplify purported experts and new COVID-19 scariants, there is mumblings and musings about more mandates, lockdowns, and other public health measures being broadly applied.

But medical professionals knew all along that forced masking was useless, arbitrary, and unnecessary.

The Ottawa Hospital's decision was denounced by Matt Strauss, a critical care physician and the former interim medical officer of health for Haldimand-Norfolk, in a repost on X (formerly Twitter).

“The best scientific evidence we have does not show any benefit from this sort of face-covering,” Dr. Strauss says. “That makes this a faith-based edict, rather than an evidence-based recommendation.”

Strauss further shares a screenshot of the largest meta-analysis of randomized control trials conducted by an esteemed reviewing body, the previously mentioned Cochrane Library.

https://t.co/pyWZOgV9HC pic.twitter.com/iotwPspyYV

— Matt Strauss (@strauss_matt) September 7, 2023

In 2015, the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) successfully argued against a policy that would have required unvaccinated nurses to wear masks during flu season if they chose not to get a flu vaccine.

An arbitrator ruled similarly in 2018, rescinding a hospital's vaccinate or mask policy.

After reviewing extensive expert evidence received by the St. Michael’s hospital and the ONA, the arbitrator struck down the hospital's evidence and concluded the “policy is illogical and makes no sense – the exact opposite of it being reasonable. There are a number of collateral reasons that support this conclusion.”

The same holds true for community masking.

The mandate was never based on science, evidence, or data; rather, it was based on public opinion polling.

Former MPP Randy Hillier shared the polling rationale for the mandate in his riding, in the Ontario legislature, from July 2020.

In a deep dive on mask efficacy, methodologist and evidence-based researcher Paul Elias Alexander compiled 170 comparative studies and articles on mask ineffectiveness and… harms!

The basis of these studies are that the data supporting the use of cloth or surgical masks is limited, masks are nothing more than a costly and unnecessary ritual, and non-fit tested masks are leaky and thus ineffective at filtering particles that are invisible.

While community masking does not decrease the transmission of respiratory viruses, they do have side effects and potentially hazardous risks.

According to this peer-reviewed study from the spring of 2021, unfavourable mask effects include central nervous system impairments, like mask-induced exhaustion syndrome.

Masks affect your skin, ears, nose and throat, and major organs like the heart, lungs, and circulatory system. Masking has chemical, physical and biological effects, according to statistically significant results in scientific literature.

There is vast evidence to show that facemasks are not only ineffective, but harmful.

The author of this article from American Thinker highlights the developmental detriment children have faced from indiscriminate masking policies, and satirically makes masking about equity.

“We can disable all children by physically impairing them from acquiring language skills and verbal mastery beginning at birth by masking the population,” author Valerie Walsh writes before concluding that “[a] masked population constitutes a physical impairment for children and/or students that impedes language acquisition and brain development.”

Face masks are psychologically damaging.

These 20 reasons why facemasks are useless or immoral highlight adverse outcomes of masking such as cavities, facial deformity due to mouth breathing, bacterial pneumonia, and immune suppression by causing subconscious anxiety and fear.

Public Health Ontario, in a document used as “evidence” for population masking originally published in April 2020, acknowledges “there are theoretical risks of harms from public mask use including self-contamination from improper use and facial dermatitis or discomfort” and that “children may experience more discomfort from wearing a mask compared to adults.”

All of this is why Canadians are calling on health authorities to never again implement unscientific and indiscriminate mask mandates. This arbitrary measure is not justified, it’s clear that mandates did not work in the past and come with very harmful, long-term consequences.