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The state of the face mask debate is rather as if Galileo had published his account of the heliocentric universe and then included a paragraph at the end telling the reader to ignore all the evidence because the Church had declared that everything revolved around the Earth. In the absence of better-quality work – and we must ask why that research has not been done – some of the claims for face masks look much more like magical thinking than anything that demonstrates the sort of casual connection that might be recognizable as science. If the UK’s Health Security Agency and its chosen experts cannot identify a clear, evidence-based benefit from face masks in the community, who am I to disagree?