It wasn't that long ago when health experts and government officials told us that we had proven, clear-cut tools to stop the spread of COVID. Force everyone towear a mask, and get everybody vaccinated.

Anthony Fauci, in a White House briefing in early 2022, said, "We believe we can get there because we have the tools with vaccines, with boosts, with masks, with tests, and with antivirals."

Rochelle Walensky, then head of theCDC, said something similar in 2021: "What I really want to emphasize in this moment is that we havethe tools we need to address the Omicron variant. And those tools include what we have been saying…"You really do need to get vaccinated...you need to practice all of those prevention measures, including wearing a mask in public indoor settings."

During a Senate hearing in 2022, she repeated that phrasing: "Our ability to manage thisvirustoday is in large part due to the tools we have, vaccines, tests, treatments, and masks."

There was, of course, no proof that masks or vaccine uptake would prevent COVID infection or transmission, and plenty of data demonstrating the opposite. But politicians and their public health advisors committed down the path of masks and vaccinations because backing down would mean admitting they were wrong.

But boy oh boy were they wrong, as research about the rapid spread of COVID indicated.

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 11: Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. The committee will hear testimony about the federal response to COVID-19 and new, emerging variants. (Photo by Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

Perhaps the simplest way to indicate how useless our COVID policies were at preventing viral spread is to examine how many people got COVID. There are many data points demonstrating this failure, in fact, they've been compiled intoseveral books.

But one team of researchers accidentally disproved COVID mandates by turning their efforts to examining how widespread COVID infections had been in Denmark during a period of extremely restrictive policies attempting to stop the spread of the then-dominant Omicron variant.

This study looked at seroprevalence, essentially, how many people had COVID antibodies as a result of infection between November 2021 and March 2022. During this time period, Denmark had mask mandates, extraordinarily high vaccine uptake, and one of European government's most favored policies, vaccine passports.

Source: The Latest & Most Breaking News With OutKick