Resurfaced video of pro-mask health expert from 2018 reveals the real reason for mask mandates

A resurfaced video from 2018 reveals the real reason for mask mandates, at least from one health journalist expert who is a current advocate for mandates.

Laurie Garrett is a Pulitzer and Peabody award-winning global health journalist who also previously worked as the senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. In the video from 2018, she says that masks “almost certainly” did not help stop the spread of SARS, a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus.

Her comments are from her keynote speech before the National Academy of Medicine where she spoke about the history of pandemics and the possibility for a future pandemic.

At the end of the speech, she answers a question from the audience about alternate pathways of viral transmission and she specifically addresses the efficacy of masks.

“There’s only a couple of countries that have ever really done large-scale studies to try and figure out what might work. Japan, it may not surprise you, is one of them. In one of their large studies they basically showed that the masks, it seemed like the major efficacy of a mask is that it causes alarm in the other person and so you stay away from each other,” said Garrett.- READ MORE