Tour de France mandates masks, lockdowns

Tour de France organizers will mandate face masks, physical distancing and partial lockdowns during this year’s tournament under the pretext of COVID-19.

France reported 3,204 COVID-19 cases on Friday, reports Reuters. Tour de France riders and staff will therefore be forbidden from leaving their hotels to eat, must practice physical distancing, and everyone at the rider’s paddock will be forced to wear a face mask. Riders will be forbidden from taking pictures with fans or giving autographs.

"For all the team members: Respect a confinement - Limit the interactions outside the race bubble. No eating out. Respect social distancing at the hotel," reads the Tour de Force’s protocol.

"Do not get too close to the spectators - Social distancing, no selfies, no autograph."

The race will kick off from Bilbao, Spain on June 29th.

Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which organizes the Tour de France, did not respond to an inquiry from Frontline News about why riders and staff are prohibited from eating outside their hotels.

Neither did the sports organization respond to our inquiry about the mask requirement, which comes despite overwhelming scientific evidence that they are at best unnecessary.

A meta-analysis published earlier this year by the Cochrane Institute — considered the “gold standard of evidence-based reviews” — concluded that surgical masks and even N95 or P2 respirators offer little protection against COVID-19, if at all.

Researchers reviewed 78 global studies involving over 600,000 people. Significantly, the studies they looked at were randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, which are considered to be high-quality research and the scientific optimum.

The study’s conclusion has already been known for two years to many who refused to wear face masks. While low-quality studies by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that masks offer as much as an 80% reduction in infection rates, both RCT studies conducted in 2021 on mask efficacy showed different findings. One from Bangladesh found that masks provide an 11% infection decrease for older people and no impact on younger people, and one from Denmark showed that masks have no effect on infections at all.

A more recent study by German researchers found that face masks may cause stillbirths, along with neurological and bodily harm to children.

Face coverings create pockets of carbon dioxide for the wearer, according to the study. The CO2 reaches dangerous levels when the mask is worn for more than five minutes.

For context, pregnant mammals chronically exposed to 0.3% CO2 — a level considered toxic — experienced “irreversible neuron damage” in their offspring, along with reduced spatial performance and impacted insulin function. US Navy submarines with female crews limit carbon dioxide exposure levels to 0.8% CO2 based on animal studies showing an increased risk of stillbirths. 

Wearing a mask for more than five minutes creates a buildup of 1.41% to 3.2% CO2.

The researchers also found that adolescent mammals who were chronically exposed to 0.3% CO2 experienced “neuron destruction,” meaning less brain activity, more anxiety and impaired learning and memory function. When they inhaled over 0.5%, they experienced testicular toxicity.

“Circumstantial evidence exists that extended mask use may be related to current observations of stillbirths and to reduced verbal motor and overall cognitive performance in children born during the pandemic,” the researchers concluded. “A need exists to reconsider mask mandates.”