As we near June 2026, it’s disturbingly apparent from social media and the real world that there are still a ridiculous number of people who are religiously masking in public.

One such post on X received an inordinate amount of attention as one man bragged about masking at the British Museum in London to keep himself healthy and avoid losing points of IQ.

As if someone wearing a mask halfway through 2026 has IQ points left to lose.

But that continued dedication to masking of any kind is not merely the result of unintelligence, or misplaced hypochondria, or even being affiliated with a specific political party.

Though, of course, all of that doesn’t hurt..

It’s a result of the concerted effort to promote masks, courtesy of the media, politicians and most importantly, research either conducted or promulgated by the CDC.

DEFENDS FIRING SPREE AT CDC, VOWS ‘NEW BLOOD’ AT AGENCY And we have some data on just how damaging that practice actually was.

Three researchers, two of whom have since gone on to bigger and better successes, Vinay Prasad and Tracey Beth Hoeg, explained in detail how committed the CDC was to promoting masks.

Their study titled, "An analysis of studies pertaining to masks in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: Characteristics and quality of all studies from 1978 to 2023," looked at the CDC’s weekly publication over 45 years, and how it covered the data and evidence on this topic.

And in case there were any remaining doubts that masks never had the slightest chance of stopping respiratory viruses, of the studies that met their inclusion criteria, all of them came after 2019.

Not one was published prior to 2019.

"77 studies, all published after 2019, met our inclusion criteria," they write.

"75/77 (97.4%) studies were from the United States alone.

All geographic regions and age groups were represented." Here’s another remarkable fact that they discovered.

Nearly 30% of the studies covered in their reference set did not have a comparative group.

BILL MAHER CALLS FOR COVID COMMISSION: THE 'POWERS THAT BE' REFUSE TO ADMIT THEY 'GOT IT WRONG' "The most common study design was observational without a comparator group 22/77 (28.6%)," they explain.

Observational studies, as a reminder, are among the least meaningful types of evidence-based research.

But that’s made even worse by the fact that a significant portion of these observational studies did not even have a comparison group.

The CDC was posting research based on observations without anything to compare it to.

And using it as proof of their position.

They also found that nearly half of this research was conducted in the community, but quite literally zero were randomized.

"The most common setting was the community (35/77;45.5%).

0/77 were randomized studies," they explained.

So zero randomized trials, and 30% of all CDC published research was an observational study with nothing to compare it to.

This is the very definition of low quality research.

Here’s where it gets good.

Only 30% of the studies, or 23/77, even attempted to test for mask effectiveness.

And just 14.3%, or 11/77, contained a "statistically significant result." Yet a whopping 75.3%, 58/77, "stated masks were effective." The CDC referenced low-quality research that was often observational in nature, with no comparisons and zero randomized trials.

And yet 75.3% of the time, that low-quality research claimed masks were effective at stopping COVID.

And incredibly, 71% of the studies "used causal language" to sell their work; basically stating that their research showed that masks cause COVID to spread less frequently, despite there being no scientific justification for such a statement.

That right there is the formula for how to reach the year 2026 with people still wearing masks.