Today’s read is from  Jeffrey H. Anderson, president of the American Main Street Initiative, a think tank for everyday Americans. He served as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2017 to 2021. Here’s an excerpt:

Recent responses to the Cochrane review suggest that there may be no cure for maskaholics.

“Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference.” Such was the verdict of a recent Cochrane review, a systematic assessment of all medical research on masks. How much should one trust this overarching study? Medical journals say that Cochrane reviews are “recognized worldwide as the highest standard in evidence-based healthcare,” are the “best single source of highest-quality systematic reviews,” and are “regarded as the final word in the medical debate on a topic.”

The mask advocates’ grasping-at-straws response to this review has been that Cochrane doesn’t know what it’s doing (despite its “worldwide” reputation for providing “the highest standard” of medical research).

Read the column in its entirety here.