When handing out Notices of Exemption on the street last Saturday, a retired nurse repeated to me the overused justification for mask wearing: “Masks stop people from spreading COVID because they block our spit.”

At first, this spit-protection theory sounds valid enough; but give it two minutes of investigation and it quickly loses its credibility.

In a recent interview, Denis Rancourt, who holds a PhD in physics, addresses the spitball argument quite simply: “The large droplets drop to the floor immediately and are not breathed in. So they’re not part of the transmission mechanism. “

In other words, unless you’re spitting directly up somebody’s nose (with a straw), the spitball reducing potential of a mask isn’t all that valuable.

Rancourt explains “how difficult it is to actually infect someone when you’re just trying to put something like a fluid… bearing the virus into their eye or into their nose. It’s hard to do this. That’s what the studies show.

“But if you take a fine aerosol and you breathe it in deeply, that’s where the infection starts and that’s where the virus has evolved to be most effective. So, by breathing in aerosols laden with these viruses, you’re going to be infected.”

Therefore, while the media and many doctors like to recite this theoretical story about how masks stop spit-laden COVID, in reality, spitballs appear incidental. And it’s well recognized that fine aersol particles go right through masks and even find their away around the edges of respirators.

“The most recent randomized controlled trial [published] this year,” says Rancourt, “…could find no evidence that masks, hand-washing and distancing, in terms of reducing the risk of these types of diseases, were of any use. [They] didn’t help. So, there’s this dissonance between what the science actually tells you when you measure correctly, and what the health authorities tell you to do.”

So what’s going on here? Is this some scheme by masks companies to make billions? Rancourt, suggests far more malevolent intentions:

“They want you to be convinced that you’re in this dangerous environment and that if you follow their directives, you’ll be safe. Their purpose is to control your life and to give you directives, and you’re going to accept that. That’s part of how they convince you that you absolutely need the state to save your life.”

And, I might add, to convince you that you absolutely need a COVID vaccine. Possibly one every three months, since the immunity isn’t expected to last long.

Rancourt is a former professor from the University of Ottawa and currently serves as scientific advisor for The Ontario Civil Liberties Association. You can listen to his full interview with Dr. Mercola and read his (banned and censored) review paper Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to Covid-19 Social Policy.