The curious case of the Danish mask study

DANMASK-19, the first trial of mask use during covid-19, was “negative.” Masks didn’t work. We knew this before the trial was published because we were told so on social media. The authors were reported by the media to be struggling to find a major journal for their trial.1 Journals weren’t proving brave enough to publish the study, said the authors, and they didn’t make a preprint available. When the mythical trial was finally published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine we didn’t need to read it. We already knew its damning verdict on mask wearing. Social media told us as much. Eminent professors of evidence based medicine, Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, confirmed this in an article for the Spectator .2 Except that …