Ian Miller, Our Favorite Data Nerd on Masks

BUCK: When it comes to masks, he is our favorite data nerd — and we say that with love. Ian Miller joins us now, author of Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates. He’s got a Substack called Unmasked, which I subscribe to, recommend you do as well. Ian, thanks for being with us.

MILLER: Oh, thanks so much for having me.

BUCK: So, you share these great graphs and charts and you share the data. In almost the same way that Libs of TikTok just exposes what is for people to see on the left, you share the data that are, so people can understand that it’s very clear at this point that mask mandates do not work. Just wondering what you think of what Philadelphia has done with their mask mandate, L.A. is putting one in place, Fauci says the courts shouldn’t weigh in. What is the data telling us about all this?

MILLER: So, Philadelphia was a great, really fun example because they ended up after four days and the mayor tried to take credit for hospitalizations dropping and cases leveling off in four days. You know, after we’ve been told for two years that it takes two weeks to show any benefits. So, you know, it was pretty encouraging to me, actually.

It seemed like people were pretty upset by it and there’s a lot of pushback and hopefully that’s the trend going forward. L.A., I’m completely unsurprised that they are gonna continue masking in transit and other areas. It’s one of the areas it’s been most devoted to masking, which makes sense because L.A.’s numbers have been some of the worst in the country and worst in the world throughout the pandemic despite their dedication to masking. And, obviously, we know Fauci is never gonna let up on continuing on push for masks. It’s always gonna be too soon for him despite all the data showing it’s made no difference.

CLAY: Ian, you’ve done phenomenal work, and I appreciate you making the time to come on with us. Where does this go? I got asked this morning — we do an OutKick mailbag — somebody said, “Why would they be appealing this decision?” Because they had the opportunity to just say, “Hey, that’s a crazy Trump judge down in Florida.”

Their base blames her for changing it and they can kind of follow in the wake of her opinion and allow this to change, which seems politically palatable to them because it then allows them to say, “Hey, this is over.” What are they doing? What’s the plan here?

MILLER: Yeah, my concern is that they’re doing this to try to maintain the authority that they thought they had, to mandate masks on planes and buses and other transit. You know, I think the fact that they didn’t try to get an immediate stay shows me that they’re not too dedicated to actually fighting this.

I think they’re kind of trying to have it both ways where they can signal to their base, the people who want masking forever, will say, “ook, we’re appealing, we’re gonna fight this,” but also not kind of anger voters and other people who have just been fed up with it and were so excited — as we saw these videos of people on planes, and so excited — to take masks off.

I am concerned they will try to bring it back in the winter, especially in places like New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere. But my hope is that this appeal is kind of a halfhearted attempt that doesn’t really go to anywhere.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Ian Miller, author of the book Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates. Ian, one thing that I have heard — and actually you’ve heard some of the advisers to the Biden White House on covid start to say — is they go, “Okay. So fine. Cloth masks don’t really work.” I mean, they always leave a little bit of hedging like, “don’t work as advertised.”

From the data that I’ve seen, a lot of it, by the way, is stuff that you’ve been sharing publicly. Cloth masks don’t work, period, like, don’t work to stop covid. There’s no percentage that you can actually even prove, you know, 5%, 10%. But then they’ll say, “N95s,” and I worry that we may go through, ’cause you brought up this will come back — and I complete agree with you.

The Biden administration wants the power to reinstitute mask mandates even if they don’t do it now ’cause they may want to do it in the future. But I worry that we’re gonna go through what Germany did, right, with N95 masks as a mandate. What dos the actual data tell us about N95s? Are they 10% effective, 2% effective, 50%? You tell me.

MILLER: Right. Well, in theory they would be the most effective masks, but in order for that to be possible they have to be fit tested to every individual person, and obviously you can’t reuse the same mask over and over again, which is obviously what people do in the general population. So what we saw in Germany and in Austria where we have N985 masks is their numbers have skyrocketed in every metric, cases, hospitalizations, deaths.

And they far exceeded other parts of Europe that don’t have these kinds of mandates so, you know, again in practice, I think it’s a 0% benefit. I do these comparisons with Germany and Sweden where obviously in Sweden hardly anybody is wearing a mask and N95s are not mandated, and their numbers have been better than Germany during this entire time period where Germany has had these very strict, high-quality mask mandates.

So again, just as with all the other types of masks, every time that you do these comparisons, there’s zero percent benefit. There is no benefit whatsoever. And it’s kind of ridiculous they keep pushing for it.

CLAY: Ian, how does the 30% or 40% of people that are committed to left-wing ideals and have decided to make the mask their rallying cry, their social justice projection out into the world…? How do they become aware that masks didn’t work or at this point, given all the data, are you convinced those people are going to go to their graves 30 or 40 years from now still convinced that masking media difference and that masks work?

MILLER: Right. I’m very concerned that it’s the latter. I think that, they kind of get their information exclusive from, as you say, kind of liberal media outlets who have kind of maintained the fiction. I think maybe the further away we get from March 2020 there might be some more intellectual honesty that creeps up and some of these people might kind of start to turn around a bit.

But I always call it the Believe in Science Crowd, with the yard signs that say “This House Believes in Science,” well, if you say you believe in science and Dr. Fauci says “I am science,” “I represent science,” you kind of have to listen to what he says, right? And so I think it’s very hard to get those people to kind of understand and accept the reality that it hasn’t mattered and hasn’t worked.

And I think there’s gonna be a certain segment of the population that just never can accept that and come back. It’s really kind of depressing to think that they’ve been lied to and misled for so long and they’re not really ever going to accept that.

BUCK: — CDC’s own databases and other places that we’re all supposed to look at as where these numbers are stored. I’m just wondering, do people, do the blue check MDs…? You’ve probably seen some of them saying, “I’m gonna triple mask forever, you know, you’re never gonna stop me,” and it’s amazing to see how many epidemiologists are apparently eight times boosted and have seven Ukraine flags in their bio.

MILLER: (laughing)

BUCK: If you spend enough time on social media, you’ll see this. But I’m wondering do they ever come at you with, “Well, look at this data set.” You know what I’m saying? Is there even an argument over your numbers? Or do they just ignore the mask numbers? Because at this point to me, I don’t understand how it’s possible for someone to have a functioning brain and think that based on the data masks actually do anything. That’s where I’m at right now.

MILLER: Yeah. Well, there’s a chart that I did that recently got posted — an article — showing mask mandates throughout the states with mask mandates and states without it over the course of the pandemic.

CLAY: Yeah, it’s fantastic.

MILLER: Yah, right and there’s no difference whatsoever. And the argument that you get from that is, “Oh, well, there’s other confounding factors.” Well, sure, except masks were the most important thing to do, it’s what we keep hearing, it’s the most important thing. All these Twitter doctors and epidemiologists, “Oh, I need to double mask, high quality masks,” all this stuff.

So if there was a benefit, it should show up at some point in any of the data sets, you know, sometimes they’ll say, “Oh, it’s cherry-picked, it’s just one example.” I say, “Yeah, okay, one example is not necessarily proof on its own, but you can go back and look and look through the book or the Substack and there’s hundreds of examples all showing the exact same results.”

So I think we can take the totality of the evidence and it’s very, very clear there is no benefit and there’s never been a benefit no matter how… You know, if you drill down into the accounting level again there’s no benefits. So, yeah, it’s really depressing to see how they kind of abdicated their responsibility to really look at the data and they just kind of appeal to their own authority.

CLAY: Do you get frustrated, Ian, in having to consistently make the same argument over and over and over again, and still have people say that you’re not correct?

MILLER: (laughing)

CLAY: I mean, does that become frustrating to you? Do you read the mentions? I mean, you’ve done incredible work over the past couple years when it comes to data these, but does it ever get truly frustrating to you? Do you feel like you’re pushing a boulder up a mountain, a Sisyphean task that’s never actually going to lead to success? I mean, how mentally do you keep it up?

MILLER: Yeah, sure. You definitely have moments where you have the 30th response with the same, you know, misleading study or chart or whatever and it can be frustrating to see that and feel like these people are never going to accept the data. But, you know, I think we have seen some success. I think there’s a lot of…

You know, obviously a lot of the states have pulled back on mandates and I don’t think it’s necessarily due to me but I think it’s kind of the broader set of the conversation moving in that direction. And hopefully, again, I think as we get further away from March 2020, there will be more willingness to engage with this data.

I think we’ve kind of seen that shift with somebody like Leana Wen, who went from being, you know, “We need to lock unvaccinated people in their homes,” to, you know, cloth masks are facial decorations in like two weeks. So, you know, hopefully as we get further away that will become an easier task.

CLAY: He’s done fantastic work. Trust me, guys. Go follow him @ianmSC. He’s author of Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates. His Substack is Unmasked. Thank you for the time, and thank you for all the work.

MILLER: Thank you, guys. Really appreciate it.

CLAY: @ianmSC. Serious. Go follow him and share some of those charts because sometimes those can be more effective in making the arguments against masks than anything else you could do. @ianmSC is his Twitter handle.