Scientific evidence demonstrates that wearing a MAGA hat protects your health and the health of those around you MORE than wearing a mask — both in terms of medical protection, AND as a symbol for raising awareness.
But I was told Mask Mandates led to a related fall in infections?!
“So do we see this in any of the global data?
Let's have a look... Nothing here to show masks have made a difference...
I've desperately tried to find a data point to prove any data movement in the right direction after a mask mandate or an increase in use. I simply find NONE”
“In the 34 states whose hapless citizens still endure stringent mask mandates, the average number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 residents is 308. In the 16 states run by “Neanderthals,” the average death rate per 100,000 residents is 156. This is consistent with a new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that suggests statewide mask mandates have produced no significant decrease in COVID-19 death rates. This reality is buried beneath a specious summary and five paragraphs of bureaucratic argle-bargle. Readers who survive the slog to paragraph six will find that mask mandates are “associated” with minuscule decreases in “death growth rates.””
“Surveys showed mask usage reached about 80% by midsummer last year and has remained consistent since then. During that period, however, the number of daily positive cases rose and fell precipitously.
Many epidemiologists have noted the coronavirus, in a second major wave, is following the bell-shaped pattern of epidemics predicted by Farr's Law in 1840, regardless of mitigation efforts.”
Keep digging through this crap and eventually you always find the poison of their own faulty theoretical model underlying the data, and everything above it being stacked layers of recommendations, “may be”s, “is considered”s, and “associated with”s.
For example, the CDC uses a study to make the claim “Mask mandates are associated with reductions in COVID-19 case and hospitalization growth rates”
“...projected the number of averted COVID-19 cases with the mandates for face mask use in public by comparing actual cumulative daily cases with daily cases predicted by the model if none of the states had enacted the public face cover mandate at the time they did..”
Face masks, lies, damn lies, and public health officials: “A growing body of evidence”
“A vile new mantra is on the lips of every public health official and politician in the global campaign to force universal masking on the general public: “there is a growing body of evidence”.
This propagandistic phrase is a vector designed to achieve five main goals:
Give the false impression that a balance of evidence now proves that masks
reduce the transmission of COVID-19
Falsely assimilate commentary made in scientific venues with “evidence”
Hide the fact that a decade’s worth of policy-grade evidence proves the opposite: that masks are ineffective with viral respiratory diseases
Hide the fact that there is now direct observational proof that cloth masks do not prevent exhalation of clouds of suspended aerosol particles; above, below and through the masks
Deter attention away from the considerable known harms and risks due to face masks, applied to entire populations
The said harms and risks include that a cloth mask becomes a culture medium for a large variety of bacterial pathogens, and a collector of viral pathogens; given the hot and humid environment and the constant source, where home fabrics are hydrophilic whereas medical masks are hydrophobic.
In short, I argue: op-eds are not “evidence”, irrelevance does not help, and more bias does not remove bias. Their mantra of “a growing body of evidence” is a self-serving contrivance that impedes good science and threatens public safety.
I prove that there is no policy-grade evidence to support forced masking on the general population, and that all the latest-decade’s policy-grade evidence points to the opposite: NOT recommending forced masking of the general population. Therefore, the politicians and health authorities are acting without legitimacy and recklessly.”
Twenty Reasons Mandatory Face Masks are Unsafe, Ineffective and Immoral
Cavities: New York dentists are reporting that half their patients are suffering decaying teeth, receding gum lines and seriously sour breath from wearing masks. “We’re seeing inflammation in people’s gums that have been healthy forever, and cavities in people who have never had them before,” Dr. Rob Ramondi told FOX News.
Facial Deformities: Masking children triggers mouth breathing which as been shown to cause “long, narrow faces, narrow mouths, high palatal vaults, dental malocclusion, gummy smiles, and many other unattractive facial features,” according to the Journal of General Dentistry.
Acne Vulgaris: Moisture and germs collecting in the mask cause “facial skin lesions, irritant dermatitis… or worsening acne” (according to Public Health Ontario) which stresses the immune system, can lead to permanent scarring and has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts (according to the Journal of Dermatologic Clinics). Children also develop impetigo, a bacterial infection that produces red sores and can lead to kidney damage (according to the Mayo Clinic).
Increased Risk of COVID-19: “Mask use by the general public could be associated with a theoretical elevated risk of COVID-19 through… self-contamination,” states Public Health Ontario in Wearing Masks in Public and COVID-19. “By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain,” theorizes nationally recognized board-certified neurosurgeon, Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD (in an article at The Centre for Research on Globalization).
Bacterial Pneumonia: At an Oklahoma Press Conference, Dr. James Meehan, MD testified: “Reports coming from my colleagues all over the world are suggesting that the bacterial pneumonias are on the rise” as a result of moisture collecting in face masks.
Immune Suppressing: Masks are often worn by criminals trying to hide their identity while perpetuating an offence (theft, violence, rape, murder, etc.). They produce subconscious anxiety and fear. Fear and anxiety activate the fight-or-flight nervous system which down-regulates the immune system, as shown in a study by the American Psychological Association.
Germophobia: Masks create an irrational fear of germs and a false sense of protection from disease, leading to antisocial (or even hostile) behaviour towards those not wearing a mask. (See the paper in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders titled “COVID-19, obsessive-compulsive disorder and invisible life forms that threaten the self”).
Toxic: Many (if not most) masks and face coverings (including cloth) are made with toxic and carcinogenic chemicals including fire retardant, fibreglass, lead, NFE, phthalates, polyfluorinated chemicals and formaldehyde that will outgas and be inhaled by the wearer. (See “5 main hazardous chemicals in clothing from China named” by Fashion United).
Psychologically Harmful: “I believe the real threat right now is what we’re doing to sabotage the mental, emotional and physical health of… our children, whose development is dependent on social interactions, physical contact and facial expressions,” writes Dr. Joseph Mercola of Mercola.com. “Between mask wearing and social distancing, I fear the impact on children in particular may be long-term, if not permanent.”
Six Proofs Masks Do Not Reduce Infections
Insubstantial: A CDC-funded review on masking in May 2020 came to the conclusion: “Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza… None of the household studies reported a significant reduction in secondary laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the face mask group.” If masks can’t stop the regular flu, how can they stop SAR-CoV-2?
Unreasonable: “Evidence that masking as a source [of] control results in any material reduction in transmission was scant, anecdotal, and, in the overall, lacking… [and mandatory masking] is the exact opposite of being reasonable,” ruled a hospital arbitrator in a dispute between The Ontario Nurses’ Association and the Toronto Academic Health Science Network.
Ineffective: “Oral masks in healthy individuals are ineffective against the spread of viral infections,” write Belgian medical doctors in an open letter published in The American Institute of Stress, September 24, 2020.
Unsanitary: “It has never been shown that wearing surgical face masks decreases postoperative wound infections,” writes Göran Tunevall, M.D. in the World Journal of Surgery. “On the contrary, a 50% decrease [in bacterial infection] has been reported after omitting face masks.”
No Protection: “There were 17 eligible studies.… None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask ⁄ respirator use and protection against influenza infection,” concludes a research review in the journal Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses.
Unproven: Dutch Minister for Medical Care, Tamara van Ark, asserted that “from a medical perspective there is no proven effectiveness of masks” after a review by the National Institute for Health on July 29, 2020 (according to Reuters). Five Ways Forced Masking is Immoral
Reckless: “By making mask-wearing recommendations and policies for the general public, or by expressly condoning the practice, governments have both ignored the scientific evidence and done the opposite of following the precautionary principle,” writes Denis Rancourt, PhD in his 2020 paper Masks Don’t Work.
Manipulative: Dr. Andreas Voss, member of the World Health Organization expert team and head of microbiology at a Dutch hospital in Nijmegen, on July 24, 2020, told I Am Expat that masks were made mandatory “not because of scientific evidence, but because of political pressure and public opinion.”
Fear-Mongering: “In fact, there is no study to even suggest that it makes any sense for healthy individuals to wear masks in public,” write Drs. Karina Reiss, Phd and Dr. Sucharit Bakdi, MD in Corona, False Alarm? “One might suspect that the only political reason for enforcing the measure is to foster fear in the population.”
Totalitarian: “If you look at the history of totalitarian regimes… they all do the same thing, which is they try to crush culture, and crush any evidence of self-expression…” explains Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in an interview regarding face masks. “And what is the ultimate vector for self-expression? It’s your facial expressions…. [Yet] we’ve all been told to put on the burqa and be obedient.”
Virtue-Signalling: “Masks are utterly useless,” testified Dr. Roger Hodkinson, a pathologist, certified with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, at a city council meeting. “…masks are simply virtue-signalling… It’s utterly ridiculous seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people — I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense — walking around like lemmings, obeying without any knowledge base, to put the mask on their face.”
Start with ‘A year ago if your kid wanted to go sleepover at their sick buddy’s house and they tried to tell you their Spider-Man pajamas mask would keep them safe from getting sick, you’d have laughed in their face...’
(reframing from a common-sense narrative)
Then move on to the Sept 26, 2020 Mask Facts by The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. It’s a good ‘non-biased’ starting point from a long-respected group, that presents the studies used and a couple great graphs
Then show them some ‘maskne’ images and say ‘Obviously SOMETHING’S going on here...’
(attention-getting visual)
Then show them the rest of the studies and tell them the ‘plain-speech’ explanations included...
(logic & reason)
Tell them this is why ‘so many people everywhere are beginning to think this was a bad idea to just blindly believe some government official, whether it’s Trump’s guy or not. Everybody’s looking to find out the truth once and for all.’
(appeal to crowd conformity)
and leave them with:
‘Why can’t anybody convince us with science that shows why all of this preexisting research was wrong? Why do they just keep saying ‘because we say so” like we’re kindergarteners, especially when they keep contradicting themselves?’
(challenging question)
Good luck. Remember to stay cool and ‘open-minded’. YOU won’t convince them, they have to see it for themselves. Your being fair and practical and calm will help give them ‘space’ to think for themselves. If you get angry or partisan, they’ll dig in with oppositional defiance.
That snot-soaked face diaper on your face doesn’t protect you from the CCP virus anymore than wearing a Biden hat can protect you from the deadly effects of communism. In both cases, wearing it INCREASES your chances of death.
Maskers foist their own insistence as “science”, making nebulous claims that ’muh masks somehow prevent asymptomatic people from spreading muh corona via droplets expelled during breathing, talking, and coughing, by ‘trapping’ these droplets in the mask’.
THEY CANNOT SATISFACTORILY ADDRESS THESE MASKING COUNTERARGUMENTS:
Arguments range from common sense/logical to validated evidence/scientific data, from philosophical to practical and demonstrated by historical records. Some involve known measurements, some involve inferences from data, and some involve deductions from the real-world application of observed behavior and phenomena
Cloth masks have never historically been considered an effective option for stopping viruses except by the desperate, ignorant, or scared.
If an extra barrier around our breathing orifices reduced viral infections we would have evolved one either naturally or behaviorally (examples: natural saliva destroys viruses, most human cultures evolved to favor boiled and/or fermented drinks which long before germ theory was discovered)
If virus particles collect in the mask, the last thing you’d want is it to be resting against your lips all day.
Viruses are massively smaller than the filtration provided by any mask, including medical masks. It’s like using a chain-link fence to block mosquitoes, on the theory that some of the mosquitoes might be caught up and carried over in droplets from the lawn sprinkler.
Expelled air doesn’t just disappear when you breathe it into a mask. The only thing you’re going to change is the direction and perhaps the velocity of it’s spread. Rather than directly out and down, it is cast upwards and backwards through the gaps in the mask/face barrier, which extends the amount of time the virus is airborne, likely allows it to disperse over a greater area, creates ‘clouds’ at face level, and prevents a person from being able to choose the safest direction when talking or coughing.
The best disease entry point for airborne viruses is the eyes, which have far less natural antiviral defenses than the mouth and nose. The mask gaps direct a stream of particles up and into the eyes.
Infectious particles collecting in a mask barrier leads to rebreathing contamination that would otherwise be expelled out into an environment where UV rays would destroy the virus, and more likely infection along a nasal brain nerve pathway — increasing a mask-wearer’s risk of infection.
Increased personal risk of infection directly translates into greater community risk, so anything that exposes the individual de facto exposes the community (rather than the idea that one is taking on some personal risk to protect others). The biggest thing any person can do to protect others is to protect themselves.
Governments have a spectacularly poor record of misinterpreting science and mismanaging public health policy, often with disasterous consequences. Every bureaucratic effort surrounding Covid has been marked by incompetence and error. Why should mask mandates be an exception to this trend?
Health care is an individual responsibility and a matter of personal body autonomy and choice. Individuals have a right to make their OWN decisions. The ‘public health’ should not allow government to violate the rights of healthy people.
Mask mandates do not correlate with reductions in cases, infections, or deaths anywhere in the world, irregardless of compliance. In short, there is no good evidence that they actually work (claims to support that they do can be shown to rest upon presupposition, theoretical modeling, and extremely weak correlation).
There exists decades of valid scientific research about mask efficacy, virtually all of which goes against the ideas undergirding mask mandates. No new studies disproving or overriding this existing science has been done.
Even if masks were shown to give some benefit (and there are a few limited circumstances in which they can), easily observable behaviors surrounding the way they are actually donned, worn, stored, and handled in real-world settings clearly shows that actual practice negates and undermines any potential benefit (and studies show this is true even among highly trained medical professionals.
Asymptomatic people are not contagious* as demonstrated in a study of prevalence of infection following the release of restrictions late half of May in Wuhan. All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated. No new symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000, 95% CI 0.270–0.339/10,000) were identified. There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases.https://www.aier.org/article/asymptomatic-spread-revisited/
MASKERS CANNOT PRODUCE A SINGLE CONCLUSIVE PIECE OF EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THEIR CLAIM — THEY JUST APPEAL TO THEIR AUTHORITY, CITE THEIR OWN MANDATES, AND REFER TO STUDIES THAT USE THEIR OWN ASSUMPTIONS AS FOUNDATIONAL INPUTS.
”It’s true because we think it is, based on a statement we put out that says so!”
Dr. Jim Meehan: An Evidence Based Scientific Analysis of Why Masks are Ineffective, Unnecessary, and Harmful
Key Points
Decades of the highest-level scientific evidence (meta-analyses of multiple randomized controlled trials) overwhelmingly conclude that medical masks are ineffective at preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, including SAR-CoV-2.
Those arguing for masks are relying on low-level evidence (observational retrospective trials and mechanistic theories), none of which are powered to counter the evidence, arguments, and risks of mask mandates.
The majority of the population is at very low to almost no risk of severe or lethal disease from CoVID-19. Children are at an extraordinarily low risk of dying from CoVID-19. Based on CDC published data, 99.99815% of children that contract CoVID-19 survive.
Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among children in schools and daycares is very rare.
Masks worn properly are well documented to cause harm to their wearers. Masks worn improperly, re-used, or contaminated are dangerous.
Any reasonable risk to benefit analysis of medical masks concludes that the risks overwhelmingly outweigh the benefits.
Children are at imminent risk of harm from mask mandates.
Outline
Evidence Based Medicine: How we (should) make decisions in science and medicine
Masks are Ineffective
a. Mixed Messages from the Experts
b. The Evidence Against Masks
c. The Evidence For Masks
Masks are Unnecessary
a. Fear and Politics are Subverting Science and Reason
b. Masking Children in Schools is Unnecessary - So Says The Science
Masks are Harmful
17 Ways that Masks Can Cause Harm
Masking School Children is Ineffective, Unnecessary, and Harmful
a. Mandatory masks in school are a ‘major threat’ to children's’ health, doctors warn
b. Forcing Children to Wear Masks in Schools is Unnecessary
c. Forcing Children to Wear Masks for Long Periods Risks Causing Them Physical Harm
d. Forcing Children to Wear Masks for Long Periods Risks Causing Them Mental and Psychological Harm
In actual practice, widespread wearing of cloth masks makes EVERYONE LESS SAFE.
“Cloth masks exhibit very low filter efficiency. Thus, even masks that fit well against the face will not prevent inhalation of small particles by the wearer or emission of small particles from the wearer... the number of cloth layers needed to achieve acceptable efficiency made them difficult to breathe through and caused leakage around the mask. We found no well-designed studies of cloth masks as source control in household or healthcare settings.
In sum, given the paucity of information about their performance as source control in real-world settings, along with the extremely low efficiency of cloth masks as filters and their poor fit, there is no evidence to support their use by the public or healthcare workers to control the emission of particles from the wearer.
...Cloth masks are ineffective as source control and PPE, surgical masks have some role to play in preventing emissions from infected patients, and respirators are the best choice for protecting healthcare and other frontline workers, but not recommended for source control. These recommendations apply to pandemic and non-pandemic situations.
Leaving aside the fact that they are ineffective, telling the public to wear cloth or surgical masks could be interpreted by some to mean that people are safe to stop isolating at home. It's too late now for anything but stopping as much person-to-person interaction as possible.
Masks may confuse that message and give people a false sense of security.”
Proper mask usage (even surgical masks), to be effective AT ALL, requires CONSTANT vigilance and discipline — changing out the mask every time it becomes dirty (1-2 hrs. Outside of a hospital, probably even less time in hot sweaty conditions), no repeated use once removed, sterile storage conditions (no pockets, desk drawers, or glove boxes), proper donning technique EVERY time, NO hand contact whatsoever, and proper fit with NO GAP. Even medical professionals cannot maintain that level of control for more than a few hours at a time (again, this is proven in scientific studies).
Watch anyone in a mask for 60 seconds or so, and you’ll notice they CONSTANTLY touch their mask, make contact with the inside, pull the mask down or up, turn it inside out or facing upwards, etc. Almost nobody washes their mask between every use, or even once a day. They stuff it in their pants pockets or on their unwashed car dash, or it falls between the seats or onto the floor and then they put it back on their face again. What do you think the effect of that is? (Hint: ‘Maskne’ or mask-associated acne is a stark visual clue of what’s happening)
Not only does it make the mask ineffective for protection, it actually SPREADS MORE DISEASE THAN IF THEY HAD TAKEN NO ACTION! Now they are breathing through an invisible scab of trapped residue and bacteria, and holding it in constant contact with their lips and mouth. They talk louder and more forcefully (due to false sense of safety and muffling effects), which causes a “jet” of droplet particles to be expelled from the top gap (improper fit) high into the air, where those particles are then spread to a wider area and spend more time in the air than they would have if they had been expelled horizontally (again, scientifically demonstrated). Because the individual is more exposed to infection (by Covid19 as well as other diseases), they increase the chances of infecting others, thereby INCREASING THE DANGER TO BOTH THEMSELVES AND THE COMMUNITY.
The only possible “benefit” of masks is as a visual reminder that risk is present, but no effect from this has been scientifically proven, instead it seems like masks prompt people to “feel safe” and take risks they otherwise wouldn’t or shouldn’t— less social distance, more talking, less handwashing, more face touching — the very things that are the top risk factors.
The science shows that mask-wearing is bound to fail everyone. It’s foolish to assume that people will be perfect with the way they use masks when studies prove they can’t, yet that is what mask mandates assume
Stay safe and healthy, and remember that your mask introduces a new vector for infection to guard against!
In theory, people are perfectly spherical interchangeable flow rate measurements.
In reality, the mask makes your face get itchy, and you reach up and adjust it, depositing infectious particles onto either your face or the mask; and if you hadn’t been wearing a mask, you wouldn’t have done it..
Wearing a mask causes the wearer to bring their hands to their face more often, thus increasing the overall risk of contamination and infection (alongside other factors for risk and contamination, such as improper storage, cleaning, donning, mask-to-mouth contact, opportunistic infections, false sense of safety, etc., which are present even in trained test populations like nurses).
This overall increased risk to the individual subsequently increases the risk that they pose to others (by virtue of being sick).
So a cloth mask increases both the risk to the individual and the risk to the group, if you believe science.
Cloth masks are nothing but a virtue signaling device, a sign of conformity despite increased risks.
“"There was a study in 2015 looking at medical students. And medical students wearing surgical masks touch their faces on average 23 times. We know a major way that you can get respiratory diseases like coronavirus is by touching a surface and then touching your face."
Masks also can give the wearer a "false sense of security" and can encourage people to be too close to each other, said Adams...”
“Masks have been assumed to be effective in obstructing forward travel of viral particles. Considering those positioned next to or behind a mask wearer, there have been farther transmission of virus-laden fluid particles from masked individuals than from unmasked individuals, by means of “several leakage jets, including intense backward and downwards jets that may present major hazards,” and a “potentially dangerous leakage jet of up to several meters.” (8) All masks were thought to reduce forward airflow by 90% or more over wearing no mask. However, Schlieren imaging showed that both surgical masks and cloth masks had farther brow jets (unfiltered upward airflow past eyebrows) than not wearing any mask at all, 182 mm and 203 mm respectively, vs none discernible with no mask. Backward unfiltered airflow was found to be strong with all masks compared to not masking.”
“Masks and respirators do not work. There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles. Furthermore, the relevant known physics and biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work. It would be a paradox if masks and respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective-dose is smaller than one aerosol particle. The present paper about masks illustrates the degree to which governments, the mainstream media, and institutional propagandists can decide to operate in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests. Such recklessness is also certainly the case with the current global lockdown of over 1 billion people, an unprecedented experiment in medical and political history.”
“The study found that cloth mask wearers had higher rates of infection than even the standard practice control group of health workers, and the filtration provided by cloth masks was poor compared to surgical masks...
An analysis by mask use showed ILI (RR=6.64, 95% CI 1.45 to 28.65) and laboratory-confirmed virus (RR=1.72, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.94) were significantly higher in the cloth masks group compared with the medical masks group. Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.
Conclusions This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.“
Feb 29, 2020 ““Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” the surgeon general, Jerome M. Adams, said in a tweet on Saturday morning. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
...Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday that it was critical that masks remain available for doctors and nurses who were caring for those affected by the virus and for people tending to loved ones with the illness.
“There is no role for these masks in the community,” he said. “These masks need to be prioritized for health care professionals that as part of their job are taking care of individuals.”
...“Should you wear a mask if you’re healthy?” she asked.
“No,” Dr. Redfield said.”
March 2, 2020 “Most people don’t know how to use face masks correctly, and a rush to buy masks could prevent the people who need them most — health care providers — from getting them, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a scholar at the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health...
The CDC said last month it doesn’t recommend people use face masks, making the announcement on the same day that first case of person-to-person transmission of coronavirus was reported in the U.S. The CDC recommendation on masks stands, a spokesman told MarketWatch Wednesday, even with the first reported case of a COVID-19 infection in an individual in California who had not been to China or been exposed to a person diagnosed with the virus.
“The virus is not spreading in the general community,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a Jan. 30 briefing. “We don’t routinely recommend the use of face masks by the public to prevent respiratory illness. And we certainly are not recommending that at this time for this new virus.”
HHS Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday, “Our advice remains as it has been that the average American does not need a N95 mask. These are really more for health care providers.”
...Adalja applauded the CDC’s recommendation on face masks. “Even during H1N1 [flu epidemic], there was no recommendation to wear face masks,” he said. They “end up creating a false sense of security and most people don’t wear them appropriately,” he said.
People who are not in the medical field who wear the masks often come in contact with germs when they lift the mask up to eat or slip their fingers under the mask to blow their nose, he said.
Panic-driven demand for face masks, Adalja said, is particularly worrisome because it could have “a negative supply shock” effect on hospital personnel who need these masks more than the general public.
Like the surgeon general, Adalja said, “the best ways [for the general public] to protect themselves are the basic hygienic measures.” That includes washing your hands regularly and covering sneezes and coughs. But if you are “sick and need to go out you should wear a mask.”
Instead of wearing face masks, the general public should “be vigilant to the symptoms and signs of this novel coronavirus, that is, a fever and cough, and if you have those symptoms, please call your health-care provider,” Messonnier said last month.
“We want our actions to be evidence-based and appropriate to the current circumstance,” she said, which she said did not justify the use of face masks for people who have not been directly exposed to the virus...
Like the CDC, the World Health Organization advises people to wear a mask only if they are displaying symptoms of coronavirus or “taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.”
In a separate update last month, the WHO gave instructions for how to appropriately wear and dispose of face masks. WHO also noted, “However, the use of a mask alone is insufficient to provide the adequate level of protection and other equally relevant measures should be adopted.””
April 2020
“CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies), especially in areas of significant community-based transmission”
“What of masks? Do they work? Well, you cannot make a mesh aperture down to a micron. Forget the notion of marbles being too big to go through a strainer. So, modern masks jumble a whole lot of very thin fibres into a space and draw the air through them. Because the passages available to flow are so narrow and so twisted, two things happen. Firstly, there is considerable resistance to flow and you have to suck quite hard to get your air. Secondly, the little particles, barrelling along the passages, bash into the walls. This leads to mechanical entrapment and all sorts of surface interactions that stick the particle to the wall. The bigger the particle, the more likely it is to come upon the corners and get trapped. This is the reason why they rate masks as trapping 95% of particles -- it has to be statistical. Because of the resistance to air flow, the masks tend to seal all around the face while sucking -- except where the nose tents them up. Intuitively, it would seem that about 90% of the inflow would go down this space. Not good. (Speaking in a racially insensitive manner, many Orientals are better off because the bridge of their nose is lower). You want a better than 10% improvement when you wear a mask, so this is not good enough. When you exhale, the same thing happens, and you blow a jet of air into your eyes and mist up your glasses. The turbulence around your eyes also encourages free floating droplets in the atmosphere to rattle around and perhaps become trapped in your moist eyes.”
“neither the masks nor the lockdown measures every really stopped COVID-19 in its tracks, did they? Nope, the virus just kept right on virusing, as highly-contagious respiratory viruses are prone to do. You can lock down and delay the inevitable, but as soon as you peek your nose out the virus will be waiting. You can mask up ‘till the cows come home, but even the CDC now admits that, with or without masks, 15 minutes of close contact with an infected person will spread the virus. And given the fact that it has ALWAYS taken 15 minutes of close contact with an infected person to spread the virus, that means masks are generally useless.
But yes, if what they said was true, if COVID-19 could have been eliminated or even severely curbed with a few weeks of mask-wearing, even I would have happily put up with it. Because, indeed, they would have been right about mask-wearing being a “small inconvenience” if we had a foreseeable future endgame and could see actual results behind the practice.
No cheating though! Farr’s Law being what it is, the numbers were going to come down anyway when a certain threshold of infectivity was met. Thankfully, with coronavirus, that threshold seems to be somewhere between 15 and 25 percent. New York and New Jersey are prime examples. Anyone who thinks masks somehow did the trick in those places have clearly never heard of herd immunity. Even California’s cases (yes, I know this is a #casedemic, not a pandemic at this point) are on the way down, but the climb toward the July-August peak happened long after masks were mandated statewide in mid-June. If anything, early July should have been the virus’ swan-song in California, but it was just ramping up. Almost anywhere universal masking has been implemented, from Peru to Columbia to Greece to the UK, has been followed by significant case spikes. As a prime example, this graph that shows the trend since the U.K. made face masks mandatory indoors is nothing short of stunning.
Call me skeptical, but in order to put a face muzzle on me and have me at least mildly compliant about it, you’d have to show me some actual successes, where mask use was implemented and the virus almost immediately went down. In fact, if the “experts” who have suddenly, after years of science proving otherwise, deemed that forced public masking can indeed stop an airborne respiratory virus - if those “experts” could point to actual, timely successes, it’s hard to imagine most everyone not being on board for that ride. Frankly, if mask-wearing did stop the disease in its tracks, as we were promised months ago, you can bet your house the mask-loving media would have been shouting the examples from the rooftops.”
Masks are overall pointless unless you are a professional, then they are ~meh.
Their filtering efficiency is minuscule as cloth masks.
People touch their masks constantly and grow more reckless.
Viruses accumulate on and in the mask, causing people to be exposed to diseases for longer time where otherwise they wouldn't be.
Using them requires proficiency and even medical professionals have a relatively high chance to fail using them and getting infected anyway. Even they can't maintain multiple hours of proper hygiene necessary.
Statistically it takes 15 minutes with an infected person in close proximity to get infected regardless of masks (implying that they don't make a difference).
So even for the slight benefit you may get, the downsides nullify that. And that's not taking into account things like inconvenience, allergies, breathing issues and infringements on constitutional rights and liberties. Unless you are very dedicated and manage to be incredibly meticulous (aka you already lost at using cloth masks) and wear them as if your life depends on it (which it realistically doesn't in ~99.99%+ of cases, and you'd know when you are in a risk group (very old & riddled with comorbidities)), there is no benefit.
Vented N-95 - expels contamination directly into environment
Surgical - reduces critical medical supplies, requires training to be effective, otherwise increases risk, studies show even trained professionals can’t maintain proper hygiene more than a few hours
Cloth - not effective at all, creates face-level plumes of disease particles and a jet of infection directly into the eyes
Bandana - inneffective barrier, but at least it can be worn loosely to reduce direct lip and skin surface contact with contaminated mask
Respirators/Gas Masks - Scary, introduce other health risks when used long-term
“Our universal use of unscientific face coverings is therefore closer to medieval superstition than it is to science, but many powerful institutions have too much political capital invested in the mask narrative at this point, so the dogma is perpetuated.
The narrative says that if cases go down it’s because masks succeeded. It says that if cases go up it’s because masks succeeded in preventing more cases. The narrative simply assumes rather than proves that masks work, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary...
History does not bode well for times that politics meddles with science. Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a leader in disease surveillance methods and infectious disease outbreaks, describes the current COVID scientific environment this way: “After 300 years, the Age of Enlightenment has ended.”
In the end, it will be the loss of credibility in our scientific institutions, and the unnecessary division they have sowed among us, for which masks will be remembered.“
I almost ran over a moron last summer in California on a really busy street. He was riding his fucking bike with a full gas mask on like it was WW1. I know for a fact you can't see shit when you're wearing one. Especially peripherally.
THERE IS NOT A SINGLE SCIENTIFIC STUDY THAT SHOWS DEMONSTRABLE EVIDENCE THAT MASKS WORK TO PROTECT FROM VIRAL INFECTION, AND MULTIPLE SCIENTIFICALLY VALID STUDIES THAT DEMONSTRATE CLEARLY THAT THEY DON’T (AND USUALLY INCREASE OVERALL RISK).
All the ‘visualizations’, ‘recommendations’, ‘guidelines’, ‘opinions’, ‘consensus’, and ‘models’ in the world can’t make up for the fact that science has REAL STANDARDS that can be evaluated INDEPENDENTLY by anyone with a willingness to learn and understand. And you’ll notice that amongst the hundreds of thousands of media hours spent spreading mask mandates, THEY’VE NEVER SPENT A SINGLE MINUTE SHOWING ANY SCIENTIFIC PROOF.
They tried to fake it a few weeks ago with a study ‘proving’ that masks would reduce case numbers by a certain amount, but it turns out the study is based on a model that assumes that masks protect by a certain amount (based on a separate set of measurements), and then extrapolates the reduction based on that model, NOT real-world data from real people wearing real masks.
ABOUT THE ‘RECENT STUDIES SHOW MASKS “PROTECT PEOPLE”’
Note how this article references “recent studies” that have “proven” that masks would “protect people” from asymptomatic spread.
What they don’t tell you is that the idea of masks working is anassumptionin these studies, not a scientific finding.
The referenced studies simply assume that wearing masks will reduce transmission along a modeled prediction, and then conduct the research with that prediction as a factor of a larger research hypothesis. They are not testing whether that assumption is true within the study.
Scientific studies that DO directly test the effect of mask wearing upon transmission show that widespread wearing of cloth masks INCREASE overall risk of transmission.
Imagine a traffic safety study that includes a component for which child car seat crash test data is used to project a 25% reduction in fatalities during crashes for children in car seats. Then that 25% is used to as an estimate within the larger study, which calculates many component factors and finds that speed limits, heavier vehicles, cell phone signal-blockers, patrolman, use of seat belts, and car seats, all taken together, would drop the amount of road accidents 30% and reduce highway fatalities 40%.
That hypothetical study wouldn’t prove anything about car seats, because it just uses a derived estimate and assumes it to be true in arriving at a conclusion that ‘proves’ something else. If actual research on car seats showed that parents failed to properly install the car seat 90% of the time, the assumed 25% reduction is moot, because part of its derived value was based on the assumption that the seats would be properly installed.
That is one of the major problems with all mask use that these researchers ignore: Virtually NOBODY, not even trained medical professionals, can manage to ‘properly’ don and wear the masks for any significant amount of time, and ANY improper use of the mask immediately negates ANY benefit, and introduces new risks.
DIRECT FROM THE ‘META-STUDY’ SHOWS THE BEST CASE FOR MASKS IS A TERRIBLY WEAK ONE
It’s based on Mathematical Models of statistical models
“We analysed data for subgroup effects by virus type, intervention (different distances or face mask types), and setting (health care vs non-health care). Among the studies assessing physical distancing measures to prevent viral transmission, the intervention varied (eg, direct physical contact [0 m], 1 m, or 2 m). We, therefore, analysed the effect of distance on the size of the associations by random-effects univariate meta-regressions, using restricted maximum likelihood, and we present mean effects and 95% CIs. We calculated tests for interaction using a minimum of 10 000 Monte Carlo random permutations to avoid spurious findings.30 We formally assessed the credibility of potential effect-modifiers using GRADE guidance.21
We did two sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of our findings. First, we used Bayesian meta-analyses to reinterpret the included studies considering priors derived from the effect point estimate and variance from a meta-analysis of ten randomised trials evaluating face mask use versus no face mask use to prevent influenza-like illness in health-care workers.31
Second, we used Bayesian meta-analyses to reinterpret the efficacy of N95 respirators versus medical masks on preventing influenza-like illness after seasonal viral (mostly influenza) infection.13
For these sensitivity analyses, we used hybrid Metropolis-Hastings and Gibbs sampling, a 10 000 sample burn-in, 40 000 Markov chain Monte Carlo samples, and we tested non-informative and sceptical priors (eg, four time variance)32, 33 to inform mean estimates of effect, 95% credibility intervals (CrIs), and posterior distributions. We used non-informative hyperpriors to estimate statistical heterogeneity. Model convergence was confirmed in all cases with good mixing in visual inspection of trace plots, autocorrelation plots, histograms, and kernel density estimates in all scenarios. Parameters were blocked, leading to acceptance of approximately 50% and efficiency greater than 1% in all cases (typically about 40%). We did analyses using Stata version 14.3...”
Might, Could, May, Suggest... Any word other than ‘proves’
“These data also suggest that wearing face masks protects people (both health-care workers and the general public) against infection by these coronaviruses, and that eye protection could confer additional benefit. However, none of these interventions afforded complete protection from infection, and their optimum role might need risk assessment and several contextual considerations. No randomised trials were identified for these interventions in COVID-19, SARS, or MERS...
Previous data from randomised trials are mainly for common respiratory viruses such as seasonal influenza, with a systematic review concluding low certainty of evidence for extrapolating these findings to COVID-19. Further, previous syntheses of available randomised controlled trials have not accounted for cluster effects in analyses, leading to substantial imprecision in treatment effect estimates. In between-study and within-study comparisons, we noted a larger effect of N95 or similar respirators compared with other masks. This finding is inconsistent with conclusions of a review of four randomised trials, in which low certainty of evidence for no larger effect was suggested. However, in that review, the CIs were wide so a meaningful protective effect could not be excluded. We harmonised these findings with Bayesian approaches, using indirect data from randomised trials to inform posterior estimates. Despite this step, our findings continued to support the ideas not only that masks in general are associated with a large reduction in risk of infection from SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV but also that N95 or similar respirators might be associated with a larger degree of protection from viral infection than disposable medical masks or reusable multilayer (12–16-layer) cotton masks.Nevertheless, in view of the limitations of these data, we did not rate the certainty of effect as high. Our findings accord with those of a cluster randomised trial showing a potential benefit of continuous N95 respirator use over medical masks against seasonal viral infections...
Social Justice Consensus, discussed as ‘science’
“Our unadjusted analyses might, at first impression, suggest use of face masks in the community setting to be less effective than in the health-care setting, but after accounting for differential N95 respirator use between health-care and non-health-care settings, we did not detect any striking differences in effectiveness of face mask use between settings. The credibility of effect-modification across settings was, therefore, low.”
Wearing face masks was also acceptable and feasible. Policy makers at all levels should, therefore, strive to address equity implications for groups with currently limited access to face masks and eye protection. One concern is that face mask use en masse could divert supplies from people at highest risk for infection. Health-care workers are increasingly being asked to ration and reuse PPE,, leading to calls for government-directed repurposing of manufacturing capacity to overcome mask shortages and finding solutions for mask use by the general public. In this respect, some of the masks studied in our review were reusable 12–16-layer cotton or gauze masks., , , At the moment, although there is consensus that SARS-CoV-2 mainly spreads through large droplets and contact, debate continues about the role of aerosol,, , , , , , , , but our meta-analysis provides evidence (albeit of low certainty) that respirators might have a stronger protective effect than surgical masks. Biological plausibility would be supported by data for aerosolised SARS-CoV-2, , , and preclinical data showing seasonal coronavirus RNA detection in fine aerosols during tidal breathing, albeit, RNA detection does not necessarily imply replication and infection-competent virus.
A yardstick that can’t even measure that eye-pro and respirators work better
Nevertheless, our findings suggest it plausible that even in the absence of aerosolisation, respirators might be simply more effective than masks at preventing infection. At present, there is no data to support viable virus in the air outside of aerosol generating procedures from available hospital studies. Other factors such as super-spreading events, the subtype of health-care setting (eg, emergency room, intensive care unit, medical wards, dialysis centre), if aerosolising procedures are done, and environmental factors such as ventilation, might all affect the degree of protection afforded by personal protection strategies, but we did not identify robust data to inform these aspects.”
CIVIL RIGHTS — MASKS ARE A MANDATED RELIGIOUS BELIEF
“At the heart of the debate is a system of anti-discrimination laws enacted by federal, state and local governments. The entire United States is covered by the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination by privately owned places of public accommodation on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. Places of “public accommodation” include hotels, restaurants, theaters, banks, health clubs and stores. Nonprofit organizations such as churches are generally exempt from the law.
The right of public accommodation is also guaranteed to disabled citizens under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination by private businesses based on disability...
In California, you also can’t discriminate based on someone’s unconventional dress.“
EVEN LAWS ABOUT POLITICAL SPEECH ARE HAZARDOUS - SIGNAGE COMPARISON
"Generally, all signs need to be treated the same way, regardless of their content," said Beth Haroules, senior staff attorney for the NYCLU. "So political signs likely can’t be held to a different standard than signs that are not overtly political. If there are restrictions made based on content, there must be a compelling state interest and there must be other outlets available to express the restricted speech."
I just carry a drink or snack everywhere I go and if anyone gives me shit I just point out that you can’t fucking eat with a mask on and if it’s ok at restaurants then why not here?
Baseless counter-evidentiary unscientific mandates and petty tyrant’s dictates are universally and mercilessly enforced.
These fly directly in the face of every liberal value of the enlightenment, every requirement of sound policy-making, our laws, and our rights.
Trump and Barr better get addressing and fixing this travesty soon, because every day more and more people are adopting the Soviet attitude of ‘mini-dictator’ and the ISIS-style willingness to push down the boot.
I’m all about patience (I’ve pressed ‘pedes on this site to remain calm and approach the situation unemotionally), but it’s getting harder by the day not to start smashing commie faces when they gleefully use their situational power to enforce ‘mask rules’ as soon as they mark me as a conservative, including telling me how to adjust it on my face to their liking, performing little ‘security checks’, slow-walking transactions, demanding ID checks, etc.
They do this as soon as they have you trapped, stuck in an airport, or needing gas, or halfway through a purchase they know you can’t easily go elsewhere to obtain. Like I said, I’m pretty laid back, but I imagine there are many others well-past their breaking point.
If this is not addressed pretty soon it’s going to turn into a real public safety issue and a big optics problem for our side, because the rage is like that of seeing your your kid get creeped on by a pervert — and the more you know about any of the subjects involved — Masks, Covid, Life under Communism, Democrat attack strategies, Constitutional law, management decision-making, leftist personality defects, mental conditioning, risk management, public health methodology, whatever — the more enraged it makes you feel.
And you can’t avoid it, it seems like it happens everywhere.
”Because we said so, just trust us, it’s the consensus”
First a demeaning ‘safety’ lecture, followed by ‘because it’s the rule’ and beyond that a never ending recursive “following recommendations/guidelines” justification.
They can never refute multiple scientific studies that clearly show widespread masks are MORE dangerous for all parties with any new research or even clear criticism of the studies and reasoned logic.
Society is in deep shit. Deep shit. And it looks less and less likely by the day that there's any good exit strategy except watering the tree of liberty. No one wants that outcome.
Posts like this need to be saved in a sidebar or something. I love these big information dumps and if everyone had readily access to them it may help redpill some.
“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask... wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection that people think...”
“Respiratory etiquette is often listed as a preventive measure for respiratory infections. However, there is a lack of scientific evidence to support this measure."
"In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks"
"The effect of hand hygiene combined with face masks on laboratory-confirmed influenza was not statistically significant "
"There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza."
"Finally, although our review focused on nonpharmaceutical measures to be taken during influenza pandemics, the findings could also apply to severe seasonal influenza epidemics. Evidence from RCTs of hand hygiene or face masks did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza, and limited evidence was available on other environmental measures."
“The letter criticizes the lack of a valid scientific basis for the WHO’s recommendation and expresses OCLA’s concerns about serious harms to individuals and societies stemming from the recommendation and from government impositions of face masks on the general public.”
“This propagandistic phrase is a vector designed to achieve five main goals:
Give the false impression that a balance of evidence now proves that masks reduce the transmission of COVID-19
Falsely assimilate commentary made in scientific venues with "evidence"
Hide the fact that a decade's worth of policy-grade evidence proves the opposite: that masks are ineffective with viral respiratory diseases
Hide the fact that there is now direct observational proof that cloth masks do not prevent exhalation of clouds of suspended aerosol particles; above, below and through the masks
Deter attention away from the considerable known harms and risks due to face masks, applied to entire populations
The said harms and risks include that a cloth mask becomes a culture medium for a large variety of bacterial pathogens, and a collector of viral pathogens; given the hot and humid environment and the constant source, where home fabrics are hydrophilic whereas medical masks are hydrophobic.
In short, I argue: op-eds are not "evidence", irrelevance does not help, and more bias does not remove bias. Their mantra of "a growing body of evidence" is a self-serving contrivance that impedes good science and threatens public safety.
I prove that there is no policy-grade evidence to support forced masking on the general population, and that all the latest-decade's policy-grade evidence points to the opposite: NOT recommending forced masking of the general population. Therefore, the politicians and health authorities are acting without legitimacy and recklessly.”
WHY TRUMP DIDN’T FIGHT THE MASK BATTLE POLITICALLY:
The legitimate political calculation attempted removing the power of the mask to become a potent and widespread symbol of the public’s acceptance and capitulation to leftist authoritarian dictates and consensus expertise (It is still a neomarxist symbol, but far less potent).
By negating the media’s attempt to create a dichotomous choice, President Trump removed the media’s incentive to gaslight the public into rejecting the actual science, and he deftly sidestepped what would otherwise likely be a highly visual indicator of political defeat that would hamstring further trust and messaging.
In doing so, he removes the strong institutional political resistance against citizens who choose to fight the mask battle, and maintains a neutral, rather indeterminate position that can still insist on people’s right to decide for themselves, without risking another interagency PR debacle.
Because idiots believe masks work — it makes intuitive sense, and the scientific reasoning that shows they don’t is ‘complicated’, ‘subtle’, and requires analysis.
The argument is also quickly ”lost” in the face of media-pushed qualified experts such as Fauci that Trump can’t easily fire and can be used to drum up a huge scandal. Trump isn’t a medical doctor, after all.
The leftist coup plotters have tried to use all methods possible to leverage positions that can ‘override’ presidential authority — special counsel, ‘whistleblowers’, interagencies, etc. — and epidemiologists are in that position during a pandemic.
Our federal system also places these types of decisions in the hands of state authorities, which creates a long delay before a president can take forceful corrective action.
‘3-D chess’, or just basic warfighting strategy, dictates that you fight where the enemy position is weakest and your own is strongest. Otherwise you avoid the exchange.
Great work buddy and thanks for your effort. I will use this in the future when it inevitably and repeatedly comes to these mask wearing debates online. I also learned a lot as well - it's good to have an extended version of all of this information.
This post hasn't gotten enough attention. Ty for all your research, here...it's very valuable and backs up what I innately feel about the subject. Should be stickied somewhere for everyone to see. Again, ty!
”If masks don't work, then why do surgeons wear them?"
“I'm a surgeon that has performed over 10,000 surgical procedures wearing a surgical mask. However, that fact alone doesn't really qualify me as an expert on the matter. More importantly, I am a former editor of a medical journal. I know how to read the medical literature, distinguish good science from bad, and fact from fiction. Believe me, the medical literature is filled with bad fiction masquerading as medical science. It is very easy to be deceived by bad science.
Although surgeons do wear masks to prevent their respiratory droplets from contaminating the surgical field and the exposed internal tissues of our surgical patients, that is about as far as the analogy extends
If a surgeon were sick, especially with a viral infection, they would not perform surgery as they know the virus would NOT be stopped by their surgical mask.”
This is amazing! Thank you for all your hard work in assembling this! Hopefully I can get a good case together to convince my husband. He thinks I have “extreme and unreasonable” covid opinions; I think masks do more harm than good, lockdowns are ruining people’s lives, businesses and our economy, and that it’s basically the flu. We are taking vitamin d and zinc, and have hcq in the house. There is nothing to fear. I will never take a vaccine, nor allow my kids to get it. But, hey, he has worked as a wall st pharma analyst and has lots of friends in medical frills that are “concerned”, he has some asthma and we are fat 50 somethings.
The facts are on your side. The figures are in, we have almost a year of data, and it shows clearly: Covid didn’t kill anyone who wasn’t going to die anyway.
“...not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.
These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.
This comes as a shock to many people. How is it that the data lie so far from our perception?
To answer that question, Briand shifted her focus to the deaths per causes ranging from 2014 to 2020. There is a sudden increase in deaths in 2020 due to COVID-19. This is no surprise because COVID-19 emerged in the U.S. in early 2020, and thus COVID-19-related deaths increased drastically afterward.
Analysis of deaths per cause in 2018 revealed that the pattern of seasonal increase in the total number of deaths is a result of the rise in deaths by all causes, with the top three being heart disease, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia.
“This is true every year. Every year in the U.S. when we observe the seasonal ups and downs, we have an increase of deaths due to all causes,” Briand pointed out.
When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths.
However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.”
Worth a read (this is a John Hopkins Newsletter describing the study):
Japan was hyped as an ‘example of masking working’ early on, but none of those citing Japan even attempted to disambiguate masks from any other cultural habits or other factors that might account for the lower incidence.
But one can easily use logic to rule out masks as the decisive factor: If it was masks making the difference, we would see similarities (and particularly improvement after mandates) in other high compliance countries such as Singapore, which is not the case.
Scientific evidence demonstrates that wearing a MAGA hat protects your health and the health of those around you MORE than wearing a mask — both in terms of medical protection, AND as a symbol for raising awareness.
https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/masks-dont-work-covid-a-review-of-science-relevant-to-covide-19-social-policy
https://www.sott.net/article/434796-The-Science-is-Conclusive-Masks-and-Respirators-do-NOT-Prevent-Transmission-of-Viruses
https://www.technocracy.news/blaylock-face-masks-pose-serious-risks-to-the-healthy/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/smart-society-stupid-people
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-science-of-mask-wearing-hasnt-changed-so-why-have-our-expectations/
So why aren’t you required to wear one to go buy a bagel?
COMPILATION OF JOURNALS, STUDIES, AGENCIES ON USE OF MASKS FOR VIRUS CONTROL:
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/13Xt6pN_VASGOd3abMafH2Jj3Y2MMnj9NYF512KJLJ2M/mobilebasic
But I was told Mask Mandates led to a related fall in infections?!
“So do we see this in any of the global data? Let's have a look... Nothing here to show masks have made a difference...
I've desperately tried to find a data point to prove any data movement in the right direction after a mask mandate or an increase in use. I simply find NONE”
https://mobile.twitter.com/CovidSenseBloke/status/1306277076442525697
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1306277076442525697.html
“In the 34 states whose hapless citizens still endure stringent mask mandates, the average number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 residents is 308. In the 16 states run by “Neanderthals,” the average death rate per 100,000 residents is 156. This is consistent with a new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that suggests statewide mask mandates have produced no significant decrease in COVID-19 death rates. This reality is buried beneath a specious summary and five paragraphs of bureaucratic argle-bargle. Readers who survive the slog to paragraph six will find that mask mandates are “associated” with minuscule decreases in “death growth rates.””
https://spectator.org/biden-covid-neanderthal-thinking/
“Surveys showed mask usage reached about 80% by midsummer last year and has remained consistent since then. During that period, however, the number of daily positive cases rose and fell precipitously.
Many epidemiologists have noted the coronavirus, in a second major wave, is following the bell-shaped pattern of epidemics predicted by Farr's Law in 1840, regardless of mitigation efforts.”
https://www.wnd.com/2021/03/government-data-shows-masks-no-impact-covid-spread/
Keep digging through this crap and eventually you always find the poison of their own faulty theoretical model underlying the data, and everything above it being stacked layers of recommendations, “may be”s, “is considered”s, and “associated with”s.
For example, the CDC uses a study to make the claim “Mask mandates are associated with reductions in COVID-19 case and hospitalization growth rates”
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm
Go to read that study and you find...
“...projected the number of averted COVID-19 cases with the mandates for face mask use in public by comparing actual cumulative daily cases with daily cases predicted by the model if none of the states had enacted the public face cover mandate at the time they did..”
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818
Sept 26, 2020 Mask Facts by Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
A good ‘non-biased’ starting point that presents the studies used, with a couple great graphs
https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts/
Face masks, lies, damn lies, and public health officials: “A growing body of evidence”
“A vile new mantra is on the lips of every public health official and politician in the global campaign to force universal masking on the general public: “there is a growing body of evidence”.
This propagandistic phrase is a vector designed to achieve five main goals:
The said harms and risks include that a cloth mask becomes a culture medium for a large variety of bacterial pathogens, and a collector of viral pathogens; given the hot and humid environment and the constant source, where home fabrics are hydrophilic whereas medical masks are hydrophobic.
In short, I argue: op-eds are not “evidence”, irrelevance does not help, and more bias does not remove bias. Their mantra of “a growing body of evidence” is a self-serving contrivance that impedes good science and threatens public safety. I prove that there is no policy-grade evidence to support forced masking on the general population, and that all the latest-decade’s policy-grade evidence points to the opposite: NOT recommending forced masking of the general population. Therefore, the politicians and health authorities are acting without legitimacy and recklessly.”
https://www.killingontario.com/mirror/growing-body-of-evidence-mantra-is-a-body-of-lies-eh.pdf
Twenty Reasons Mandatory Face Masks are Unsafe, Ineffective and Immoral
https://patriots.win/p/12hRZemtMW/twenty-reasons-mandatory-face-ma/c/
Twenty Reasons Mandatory Face Masks are Unsafe, Ineffective and Immoral
Cavities: New York dentists are reporting that half their patients are suffering decaying teeth, receding gum lines and seriously sour breath from wearing masks. “We’re seeing inflammation in people’s gums that have been healthy forever, and cavities in people who have never had them before,” Dr. Rob Ramondi told FOX News.
Facial Deformities: Masking children triggers mouth breathing which as been shown to cause “long, narrow faces, narrow mouths, high palatal vaults, dental malocclusion, gummy smiles, and many other unattractive facial features,” according to the Journal of General Dentistry.
Acne Vulgaris: Moisture and germs collecting in the mask cause “facial skin lesions, irritant dermatitis… or worsening acne” (according to Public Health Ontario) which stresses the immune system, can lead to permanent scarring and has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts (according to the Journal of Dermatologic Clinics). Children also develop impetigo, a bacterial infection that produces red sores and can lead to kidney damage (according to the Mayo Clinic).
Increased Risk of COVID-19: “Mask use by the general public could be associated with a theoretical elevated risk of COVID-19 through… self-contamination,” states Public Health Ontario in Wearing Masks in Public and COVID-19. “By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain,” theorizes nationally recognized board-certified neurosurgeon, Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD (in an article at The Centre for Research on Globalization).
Bacterial Pneumonia: At an Oklahoma Press Conference, Dr. James Meehan, MD testified: “Reports coming from my colleagues all over the world are suggesting that the bacterial pneumonias are on the rise” as a result of moisture collecting in face masks.
Immune Suppressing: Masks are often worn by criminals trying to hide their identity while perpetuating an offence (theft, violence, rape, murder, etc.). They produce subconscious anxiety and fear. Fear and anxiety activate the fight-or-flight nervous system which down-regulates the immune system, as shown in a study by the American Psychological Association.
Germophobia: Masks create an irrational fear of germs and a false sense of protection from disease, leading to antisocial (or even hostile) behaviour towards those not wearing a mask. (See the paper in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders titled “COVID-19, obsessive-compulsive disorder and invisible life forms that threaten the self”).
Toxic: Many (if not most) masks and face coverings (including cloth) are made with toxic and carcinogenic chemicals including fire retardant, fibreglass, lead, NFE, phthalates, polyfluorinated chemicals and formaldehyde that will outgas and be inhaled by the wearer. (See “5 main hazardous chemicals in clothing from China named” by Fashion United).
Psychologically Harmful: “I believe the real threat right now is what we’re doing to sabotage the mental, emotional and physical health of… our children, whose development is dependent on social interactions, physical contact and facial expressions,” writes Dr. Joseph Mercola of Mercola.com. “Between mask wearing and social distancing, I fear the impact on children in particular may be long-term, if not permanent.”
Six Proofs Masks Do Not Reduce Infections
Insubstantial: A CDC-funded review on masking in May 2020 came to the conclusion: “Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza… None of the household studies reported a significant reduction in secondary laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the face mask group.” If masks can’t stop the regular flu, how can they stop SAR-CoV-2?
Unreasonable: “Evidence that masking as a source [of] control results in any material reduction in transmission was scant, anecdotal, and, in the overall, lacking… [and mandatory masking] is the exact opposite of being reasonable,” ruled a hospital arbitrator in a dispute between The Ontario Nurses’ Association and the Toronto Academic Health Science Network.
Ineffective: “Oral masks in healthy individuals are ineffective against the spread of viral infections,” write Belgian medical doctors in an open letter published in The American Institute of Stress, September 24, 2020.
Unsanitary: “It has never been shown that wearing surgical face masks decreases postoperative wound infections,” writes Göran Tunevall, M.D. in the World Journal of Surgery. “On the contrary, a 50% decrease [in bacterial infection] has been reported after omitting face masks.”
No Protection: “There were 17 eligible studies.… None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask ⁄ respirator use and protection against influenza infection,” concludes a research review in the journal Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses.
Unproven: Dutch Minister for Medical Care, Tamara van Ark, asserted that “from a medical perspective there is no proven effectiveness of masks” after a review by the National Institute for Health on July 29, 2020 (according to Reuters). Five Ways Forced Masking is Immoral
Reckless: “By making mask-wearing recommendations and policies for the general public, or by expressly condoning the practice, governments have both ignored the scientific evidence and done the opposite of following the precautionary principle,” writes Denis Rancourt, PhD in his 2020 paper Masks Don’t Work.
Manipulative: Dr. Andreas Voss, member of the World Health Organization expert team and head of microbiology at a Dutch hospital in Nijmegen, on July 24, 2020, told I Am Expat that masks were made mandatory “not because of scientific evidence, but because of political pressure and public opinion.”
Fear-Mongering: “In fact, there is no study to even suggest that it makes any sense for healthy individuals to wear masks in public,” write Drs. Karina Reiss, Phd and Dr. Sucharit Bakdi, MD in Corona, False Alarm? “One might suspect that the only political reason for enforcing the measure is to foster fear in the population.”
Totalitarian: “If you look at the history of totalitarian regimes… they all do the same thing, which is they try to crush culture, and crush any evidence of self-expression…” explains Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in an interview regarding face masks. “And what is the ultimate vector for self-expression? It’s your facial expressions…. [Yet] we’ve all been told to put on the burqa and be obedient.”
Virtue-Signalling: “Masks are utterly useless,” testified Dr. Roger Hodkinson, a pathologist, certified with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, at a city council meeting. “…masks are simply virtue-signalling… It’s utterly ridiculous seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people — I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense — walking around like lemmings, obeying without any knowledge base, to put the mask on their face.”
Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-reasons-mandatory-face-masks-are-unsafe-ineffective-and-
BLUEPRINT FOR A MASK CONVERSATION
Start with ‘A year ago if your kid wanted to go sleepover at their sick buddy’s house and they tried to tell you their Spider-Man pajamas mask would keep them safe from getting sick, you’d have laughed in their face...’
(reframing from a common-sense narrative)
Then move on to the Sept 26, 2020 Mask Facts by The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. It’s a good ‘non-biased’ starting point from a long-respected group, that presents the studies used and a couple great graphs
https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts/
(appeal to authority)
Then show them some ‘maskne’ images and say ‘Obviously SOMETHING’S going on here...’
(attention-getting visual)
Then show them the rest of the studies and tell them the ‘plain-speech’ explanations included...
(logic & reason)
Tell them this is why ‘so many people everywhere are beginning to think this was a bad idea to just blindly believe some government official, whether it’s Trump’s guy or not. Everybody’s looking to find out the truth once and for all.’
(appeal to crowd conformity)
and leave them with:
‘Why can’t anybody convince us with science that shows why all of this preexisting research was wrong? Why do they just keep saying ‘because we say so” like we’re kindergarteners, especially when they keep contradicting themselves?’
(challenging question)
Good luck. Remember to stay cool and ‘open-minded’. YOU won’t convince them, they have to see it for themselves. Your being fair and practical and calm will help give them ‘space’ to think for themselves. If you get angry or partisan, they’ll dig in with oppositional defiance.
Relevant:
TAKE OFF THAT FACE DIAPER!
That snot-soaked face diaper on your face doesn’t protect you from the CCP virus anymore than wearing a Biden hat can protect you from the deadly effects of communism. In both cases, wearing it INCREASES your chances of death.
Maskers foist their own insistence as “science”, making nebulous claims that ’muh masks somehow prevent asymptomatic people from spreading muh corona via droplets expelled during breathing, talking, and coughing, by ‘trapping’ these droplets in the mask’.
THEY CANNOT SATISFACTORILY ADDRESS THESE MASKING COUNTERARGUMENTS:
Arguments range from common sense/logical to validated evidence/scientific data, from philosophical to practical and demonstrated by historical records. Some involve known measurements, some involve inferences from data, and some involve deductions from the real-world application of observed behavior and phenomena
Cloth masks have never historically been considered an effective option for stopping viruses except by the desperate, ignorant, or scared.
If an extra barrier around our breathing orifices reduced viral infections we would have evolved one either naturally or behaviorally (examples: natural saliva destroys viruses, most human cultures evolved to favor boiled and/or fermented drinks which long before germ theory was discovered)
If virus particles collect in the mask, the last thing you’d want is it to be resting against your lips all day.
Viruses are massively smaller than the filtration provided by any mask, including medical masks. It’s like using a chain-link fence to block mosquitoes, on the theory that some of the mosquitoes might be caught up and carried over in droplets from the lawn sprinkler.
Expelled air doesn’t just disappear when you breathe it into a mask. The only thing you’re going to change is the direction and perhaps the velocity of it’s spread. Rather than directly out and down, it is cast upwards and backwards through the gaps in the mask/face barrier, which extends the amount of time the virus is airborne, likely allows it to disperse over a greater area, creates ‘clouds’ at face level, and prevents a person from being able to choose the safest direction when talking or coughing.
The best disease entry point for airborne viruses is the eyes, which have far less natural antiviral defenses than the mouth and nose. The mask gaps direct a stream of particles up and into the eyes.
Infectious particles collecting in a mask barrier leads to rebreathing contamination that would otherwise be expelled out into an environment where UV rays would destroy the virus, and more likely infection along a nasal brain nerve pathway — increasing a mask-wearer’s risk of infection.
Increased personal risk of infection directly translates into greater community risk, so anything that exposes the individual de facto exposes the community (rather than the idea that one is taking on some personal risk to protect others). The biggest thing any person can do to protect others is to protect themselves.
Governments have a spectacularly poor record of misinterpreting science and mismanaging public health policy, often with disasterous consequences. Every bureaucratic effort surrounding Covid has been marked by incompetence and error. Why should mask mandates be an exception to this trend?
Health care is an individual responsibility and a matter of personal body autonomy and choice. Individuals have a right to make their OWN decisions. The ‘public health’ should not allow government to violate the rights of healthy people.
Mask mandates do not correlate with reductions in cases, infections, or deaths anywhere in the world, irregardless of compliance. In short, there is no good evidence that they actually work (claims to support that they do can be shown to rest upon presupposition, theoretical modeling, and extremely weak correlation).
There exists decades of valid scientific research about mask efficacy, virtually all of which goes against the ideas undergirding mask mandates. No new studies disproving or overriding this existing science has been done.
Even if masks were shown to give some benefit (and there are a few limited circumstances in which they can), easily observable behaviors surrounding the way they are actually donned, worn, stored, and handled in real-world settings clearly shows that actual practice negates and undermines any potential benefit (and studies show this is true even among highly trained medical professionals.
Asymptomatic people are not contagious* as demonstrated in a study of prevalence of infection following the release of restrictions late half of May in Wuhan. All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated. No new symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000, 95% CI 0.270–0.339/10,000) were identified. There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases. https://www.aier.org/article/asymptomatic-spread-revisited/
MASKERS CANNOT PRODUCE A SINGLE CONCLUSIVE PIECE OF EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THEIR CLAIM — THEY JUST APPEAL TO THEIR AUTHORITY, CITE THEIR OWN MANDATES, AND REFER TO STUDIES THAT USE THEIR OWN ASSUMPTIONS AS FOUNDATIONAL INPUTS.
”It’s true because we think it is, based on a statement we put out that says so!”
Materials to educate you and and others about your rights, the laws that protect them, and how you can defend for them and fight for your freedom!
https://www.thehealthyamerican.org/documents
Dr. Jim Meehan: An Evidence Based Scientific Analysis of Why Masks are Ineffective, Unnecessary, and Harmful
Key Points
Decades of the highest-level scientific evidence (meta-analyses of multiple randomized controlled trials) overwhelmingly conclude that medical masks are ineffective at preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, including SAR-CoV-2.
Those arguing for masks are relying on low-level evidence (observational retrospective trials and mechanistic theories), none of which are powered to counter the evidence, arguments, and risks of mask mandates.
The majority of the population is at very low to almost no risk of severe or lethal disease from CoVID-19. Children are at an extraordinarily low risk of dying from CoVID-19. Based on CDC published data, 99.99815% of children that contract CoVID-19 survive.
Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among children in schools and daycares is very rare.
Masks worn properly are well documented to cause harm to their wearers. Masks worn improperly, re-used, or contaminated are dangerous.
Any reasonable risk to benefit analysis of medical masks concludes that the risks overwhelmingly outweigh the benefits.
Children are at imminent risk of harm from mask mandates.
Outline
Evidence Based Medicine: How we (should) make decisions in science and medicine
Masks are Ineffective
a. Mixed Messages from the Experts
b. The Evidence Against Masks
c. The Evidence For Masks
Masks are Unnecessary
a. Fear and Politics are Subverting Science and Reason
b. Masking Children in Schools is Unnecessary - So Says The Science
Masks are Harmful
17 Ways that Masks Can Cause Harm
Masking School Children is Ineffective, Unnecessary, and Harmful
a. Mandatory masks in school are a ‘major threat’ to children's’ health, doctors warn
b. Forcing Children to Wear Masks in Schools is Unnecessary
c. Forcing Children to Wear Masks for Long Periods Risks Causing Them Physical Harm
d. Forcing Children to Wear Masks for Long Periods Risks Causing Them Mental and Psychological Harm
https://www.meehanmd.com/blog/2020-10-10-an-evidence-based-scientific-analysis-of-why-masks-are-ineffective-unnecessary-and-harmful/
https://archive.is/wip/FO1oe
Anyone archive this link? I really need it!!
There’s an archived link already provided
Keep reading idiot....LOL! Thanks!
In actual practice, widespread wearing of cloth masks makes EVERYONE LESS SAFE.
“Cloth masks exhibit very low filter efficiency. Thus, even masks that fit well against the face will not prevent inhalation of small particles by the wearer or emission of small particles from the wearer... the number of cloth layers needed to achieve acceptable efficiency made them difficult to breathe through and caused leakage around the mask. We found no well-designed studies of cloth masks as source control in household or healthcare settings.
In sum, given the paucity of information about their performance as source control in real-world settings, along with the extremely low efficiency of cloth masks as filters and their poor fit, there is no evidence to support their use by the public or healthcare workers to control the emission of particles from the wearer.
...Cloth masks are ineffective as source control and PPE, surgical masks have some role to play in preventing emissions from infected patients, and respirators are the best choice for protecting healthcare and other frontline workers, but not recommended for source control. These recommendations apply to pandemic and non-pandemic situations.
Leaving aside the fact that they are ineffective, telling the public to wear cloth or surgical masks could be interpreted by some to mean that people are safe to stop isolating at home. It's too late now for anything but stopping as much person-to-person interaction as possible.
Masks may confuse that message and give people a false sense of security.”
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data
Proper mask usage (even surgical masks), to be effective AT ALL, requires CONSTANT vigilance and discipline — changing out the mask every time it becomes dirty (1-2 hrs. Outside of a hospital, probably even less time in hot sweaty conditions), no repeated use once removed, sterile storage conditions (no pockets, desk drawers, or glove boxes), proper donning technique EVERY time, NO hand contact whatsoever, and proper fit with NO GAP. Even medical professionals cannot maintain that level of control for more than a few hours at a time (again, this is proven in scientific studies).
Watch anyone in a mask for 60 seconds or so, and you’ll notice they CONSTANTLY touch their mask, make contact with the inside, pull the mask down or up, turn it inside out or facing upwards, etc. Almost nobody washes their mask between every use, or even once a day. They stuff it in their pants pockets or on their unwashed car dash, or it falls between the seats or onto the floor and then they put it back on their face again. What do you think the effect of that is? (Hint: ‘Maskne’ or mask-associated acne is a stark visual clue of what’s happening)
Not only does it make the mask ineffective for protection, it actually SPREADS MORE DISEASE THAN IF THEY HAD TAKEN NO ACTION! Now they are breathing through an invisible scab of trapped residue and bacteria, and holding it in constant contact with their lips and mouth. They talk louder and more forcefully (due to false sense of safety and muffling effects), which causes a “jet” of droplet particles to be expelled from the top gap (improper fit) high into the air, where those particles are then spread to a wider area and spend more time in the air than they would have if they had been expelled horizontally (again, scientifically demonstrated). Because the individual is more exposed to infection (by Covid19 as well as other diseases), they increase the chances of infecting others, thereby INCREASING THE DANGER TO BOTH THEMSELVES AND THE COMMUNITY.
The only possible “benefit” of masks is as a visual reminder that risk is present, but no effect from this has been scientifically proven, instead it seems like masks prompt people to “feel safe” and take risks they otherwise wouldn’t or shouldn’t— less social distance, more talking, less handwashing, more face touching — the very things that are the top risk factors.
The science shows that mask-wearing is bound to fail everyone. It’s foolish to assume that people will be perfect with the way they use masks when studies prove they can’t, yet that is what mask mandates assume
Stay safe and healthy, and remember that your mask introduces a new vector for infection to guard against!
DIRTY REALITIES OF FACE MASK WEARING RISKS
In theory, people are perfectly spherical interchangeable flow rate measurements.
In reality, the mask makes your face get itchy, and you reach up and adjust it, depositing infectious particles onto either your face or the mask; and if you hadn’t been wearing a mask, you wouldn’t have done it..
Wearing a mask causes the wearer to bring their hands to their face more often, thus increasing the overall risk of contamination and infection (alongside other factors for risk and contamination, such as improper storage, cleaning, donning, mask-to-mouth contact, opportunistic infections, false sense of safety, etc., which are present even in trained test populations like nurses).
This overall increased risk to the individual subsequently increases the risk that they pose to others (by virtue of being sick).
So a cloth mask increases both the risk to the individual and the risk to the group, if you believe science.
Cloth masks are nothing but a virtue signaling device, a sign of conformity despite increased risks.
“"There was a study in 2015 looking at medical students. And medical students wearing surgical masks touch their faces on average 23 times. We know a major way that you can get respiratory diseases like coronavirus is by touching a surface and then touching your face."
Masks also can give the wearer a "false sense of security" and can encourage people to be too close to each other, said Adams...”
https://www.newsmax.com/us/surgeon-general-adams-masks/2020/03/31/id/960679/
I can't seem to find where it shows that masks cause you to force out more particles that hang higher/longer in the air.
“Masks have been assumed to be effective in obstructing forward travel of viral particles. Considering those positioned next to or behind a mask wearer, there have been farther transmission of virus-laden fluid particles from masked individuals than from unmasked individuals, by means of “several leakage jets, including intense backward and downwards jets that may present major hazards,” and a “potentially dangerous leakage jet of up to several meters.” (8) All masks were thought to reduce forward airflow by 90% or more over wearing no mask. However, Schlieren imaging showed that both surgical masks and cloth masks had farther brow jets (unfiltered upward airflow past eyebrows) than not wearing any mask at all, 182 mm and 203 mm respectively, vs none discernible with no mask. Backward unfiltered airflow was found to be strong with all masks compared to not masking.”
https://www.primarydoctor.org/masks-not-effect
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2005/2005.10720.pdf
See also:
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-05-01/the-scientists-in-scotland-hoping-to-discover-whether-masks-help-prevent-spread-of-coronavirus-if-they-make-it-worse
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0016018
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0050845
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2007800
CLOTH MASKS ARE A DANGEROUS WAY TO VIRTUE SIGNAL:
“Masks and respirators do not work. There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles. Furthermore, the relevant known physics and biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work. It would be a paradox if masks and respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective-dose is smaller than one aerosol particle. The present paper about masks illustrates the degree to which governments, the mainstream media, and institutional propagandists can decide to operate in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests. Such recklessness is also certainly the case with the current global lockdown of over 1 billion people, an unprecedented experiment in medical and political history.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340570735_Masks_Don't_Work_A_review_of_science_relevant_to_COVID-19_social_policy/
“The study found that cloth mask wearers had higher rates of infection than even the standard practice control group of health workers, and the filtration provided by cloth masks was poor compared to surgical masks...
An analysis by mask use showed ILI (RR=6.64, 95% CI 1.45 to 28.65) and laboratory-confirmed virus (RR=1.72, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.94) were significantly higher in the cloth masks group compared with the medical masks group. Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.
Conclusions This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.“
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577
Feb 29, 2020 ““Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” the surgeon general, Jerome M. Adams, said in a tweet on Saturday morning. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
...Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday that it was critical that masks remain available for doctors and nurses who were caring for those affected by the virus and for people tending to loved ones with the illness.
“There is no role for these masks in the community,” he said. “These masks need to be prioritized for health care professionals that as part of their job are taking care of individuals.”
...“Should you wear a mask if you’re healthy?” she asked. “No,” Dr. Redfield said.”
https://alexpresents.com/2020/02/29/surgeon-general-urges-the-public-to-stop-buying-face-masks/
March 2, 2020 “Most people don’t know how to use face masks correctly, and a rush to buy masks could prevent the people who need them most — health care providers — from getting them, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a scholar at the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health...
The CDC said last month it doesn’t recommend people use face masks, making the announcement on the same day that first case of person-to-person transmission of coronavirus was reported in the U.S. The CDC recommendation on masks stands, a spokesman told MarketWatch Wednesday, even with the first reported case of a COVID-19 infection in an individual in California who had not been to China or been exposed to a person diagnosed with the virus.
“The virus is not spreading in the general community,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a Jan. 30 briefing. “We don’t routinely recommend the use of face masks by the public to prevent respiratory illness. And we certainly are not recommending that at this time for this new virus.”
HHS Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday, “Our advice remains as it has been that the average American does not need a N95 mask. These are really more for health care providers.”
...Adalja applauded the CDC’s recommendation on face masks. “Even during H1N1 [flu epidemic], there was no recommendation to wear face masks,” he said. They “end up creating a false sense of security and most people don’t wear them appropriately,” he said.
People who are not in the medical field who wear the masks often come in contact with germs when they lift the mask up to eat or slip their fingers under the mask to blow their nose, he said.
Panic-driven demand for face masks, Adalja said, is particularly worrisome because it could have “a negative supply shock” effect on hospital personnel who need these masks more than the general public.
Like the surgeon general, Adalja said, “the best ways [for the general public] to protect themselves are the basic hygienic measures.” That includes washing your hands regularly and covering sneezes and coughs. But if you are “sick and need to go out you should wear a mask.”
Instead of wearing face masks, the general public should “be vigilant to the symptoms and signs of this novel coronavirus, that is, a fever and cough, and if you have those symptoms, please call your health-care provider,” Messonnier said last month.
“We want our actions to be evidence-based and appropriate to the current circumstance,” she said, which she said did not justify the use of face masks for people who have not been directly exposed to the virus...
Like the CDC, the World Health Organization advises people to wear a mask only if they are displaying symptoms of coronavirus or “taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.”
In a separate update last month, the WHO gave instructions for how to appropriately wear and dispose of face masks. WHO also noted, “However, the use of a mask alone is insufficient to provide the adequate level of protection and other equally relevant measures should be adopted.””
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cdc-says-americans-dont-have-to-wear-facemasks-because-of-coronavirus-2020-01-30
April 2020 “CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies), especially in areas of significant community-based transmission”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html
“What of masks? Do they work? Well, you cannot make a mesh aperture down to a micron. Forget the notion of marbles being too big to go through a strainer. So, modern masks jumble a whole lot of very thin fibres into a space and draw the air through them. Because the passages available to flow are so narrow and so twisted, two things happen. Firstly, there is considerable resistance to flow and you have to suck quite hard to get your air. Secondly, the little particles, barrelling along the passages, bash into the walls. This leads to mechanical entrapment and all sorts of surface interactions that stick the particle to the wall. The bigger the particle, the more likely it is to come upon the corners and get trapped. This is the reason why they rate masks as trapping 95% of particles -- it has to be statistical. Because of the resistance to air flow, the masks tend to seal all around the face while sucking -- except where the nose tents them up. Intuitively, it would seem that about 90% of the inflow would go down this space. Not good. (Speaking in a racially insensitive manner, many Orientals are better off because the bridge of their nose is lower). You want a better than 10% improvement when you wear a mask, so this is not good enough. When you exhale, the same thing happens, and you blow a jet of air into your eyes and mist up your glasses. The turbulence around your eyes also encourages free floating droplets in the atmosphere to rattle around and perhaps become trapped in your moist eyes.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/do_medical_masks_work.html
NO, MASKS HAVEN’T HELPED REDUCE CASES
“neither the masks nor the lockdown measures every really stopped COVID-19 in its tracks, did they? Nope, the virus just kept right on virusing, as highly-contagious respiratory viruses are prone to do. You can lock down and delay the inevitable, but as soon as you peek your nose out the virus will be waiting. You can mask up ‘till the cows come home, but even the CDC now admits that, with or without masks, 15 minutes of close contact with an infected person will spread the virus. And given the fact that it has ALWAYS taken 15 minutes of close contact with an infected person to spread the virus, that means masks are generally useless.
But yes, if what they said was true, if COVID-19 could have been eliminated or even severely curbed with a few weeks of mask-wearing, even I would have happily put up with it. Because, indeed, they would have been right about mask-wearing being a “small inconvenience” if we had a foreseeable future endgame and could see actual results behind the practice.
No cheating though! Farr’s Law being what it is, the numbers were going to come down anyway when a certain threshold of infectivity was met. Thankfully, with coronavirus, that threshold seems to be somewhere between 15 and 25 percent. New York and New Jersey are prime examples. Anyone who thinks masks somehow did the trick in those places have clearly never heard of herd immunity. Even California’s cases (yes, I know this is a #casedemic, not a pandemic at this point) are on the way down, but the climb toward the July-August peak happened long after masks were mandated statewide in mid-June. If anything, early July should have been the virus’ swan-song in California, but it was just ramping up. Almost anywhere universal masking has been implemented, from Peru to Columbia to Greece to the UK, has been followed by significant case spikes. As a prime example, this graph that shows the trend since the U.K. made face masks mandatory indoors is nothing short of stunning.
Call me skeptical, but in order to put a face muzzle on me and have me at least mildly compliant about it, you’d have to show me some actual successes, where mask use was implemented and the virus almost immediately went down. In fact, if the “experts” who have suddenly, after years of science proving otherwise, deemed that forced public masking can indeed stop an airborne respiratory virus - if those “experts” could point to actual, timely successes, it’s hard to imagine most everyone not being on board for that ride. Frankly, if mask-wearing did stop the disease in its tracks, as we were promised months ago, you can bet your house the mask-loving media would have been shouting the examples from the rooftops.”
https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2020/09/14/if-masks-work-why-dont-they-work-n2576139
MODS???? Why isn't this stickied? TLDR?
Well, let me try:
So even for the slight benefit you may get, the downsides nullify that. And that's not taking into account things like inconvenience, allergies, breathing issues and infringements on constitutional rights and liberties. Unless you are very dedicated and manage to be incredibly meticulous (aka you already lost at using cloth masks) and wear them as if your life depends on it (which it realistically doesn't in ~99.99%+ of cases, and you'd know when you are in a risk group (very old & riddled with comorbidities)), there is no benefit.
And that's what Science has to offer so far.
Various mask types AND THEIR RISKS
Vented N-95 - expels contamination directly into environment
Surgical - reduces critical medical supplies, requires training to be effective, otherwise increases risk, studies show even trained professionals can’t maintain proper hygiene more than a few hours
Cloth - not effective at all, creates face-level plumes of disease particles and a jet of infection directly into the eyes
Bandana - inneffective barrier, but at least it can be worn loosely to reduce direct lip and skin surface contact with contaminated mask
Respirators/Gas Masks - Scary, introduce other health risks when used long-term
MASKS ARE MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITION
“Our universal use of unscientific face coverings is therefore closer to medieval superstition than it is to science, but many powerful institutions have too much political capital invested in the mask narrative at this point, so the dogma is perpetuated.
The narrative says that if cases go down it’s because masks succeeded. It says that if cases go up it’s because masks succeeded in preventing more cases. The narrative simply assumes rather than proves that masks work, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary...
History does not bode well for times that politics meddles with science. Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a leader in disease surveillance methods and infectious disease outbreaks, describes the current COVID scientific environment this way: “After 300 years, the Age of Enlightenment has ended.”
In the end, it will be the loss of credibility in our scientific institutions, and the unnecessary division they have sowed among us, for which masks will be remembered.“
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/29/these-12-graphs-show-mask-mandates-do-nothing-to-stop-covid/
I almost ran over a moron last summer in California on a really busy street. He was riding his fucking bike with a full gas mask on like it was WW1. I know for a fact you can't see shit when you're wearing one. Especially peripherally.
THERE IS NOT A SINGLE SCIENTIFIC STUDY THAT SHOWS DEMONSTRABLE EVIDENCE THAT MASKS WORK TO PROTECT FROM VIRAL INFECTION, AND MULTIPLE SCIENTIFICALLY VALID STUDIES THAT DEMONSTRATE CLEARLY THAT THEY DON’T (AND USUALLY INCREASE OVERALL RISK).
All the ‘visualizations’, ‘recommendations’, ‘guidelines’, ‘opinions’, ‘consensus’, and ‘models’ in the world can’t make up for the fact that science has REAL STANDARDS that can be evaluated INDEPENDENTLY by anyone with a willingness to learn and understand. And you’ll notice that amongst the hundreds of thousands of media hours spent spreading mask mandates, THEY’VE NEVER SPENT A SINGLE MINUTE SHOWING ANY SCIENTIFIC PROOF.
They tried to fake it a few weeks ago with a study ‘proving’ that masks would reduce case numbers by a certain amount, but it turns out the study is based on a model that assumes that masks protect by a certain amount (based on a separate set of measurements), and then extrapolates the reduction based on that model, NOT real-world data from real people wearing real masks.
ABOUT THE ‘RECENT STUDIES SHOW MASKS “PROTECT PEOPLE”’
Note how this article references “recent studies” that have “proven” that masks would “protect people” from asymptomatic spread.
What they don’t tell you is that the idea of masks working is an assumption in these studies, not a scientific finding.
The referenced studies simply assume that wearing masks will reduce transmission along a modeled prediction, and then conduct the research with that prediction as a factor of a larger research hypothesis. They are not testing whether that assumption is true within the study.
Scientific studies that DO directly test the effect of mask wearing upon transmission show that widespread wearing of cloth masks INCREASE overall risk of transmission.
https://www.primarydoctor.org/masks-not-effect
Imagine a traffic safety study that includes a component for which child car seat crash test data is used to project a 25% reduction in fatalities during crashes for children in car seats. Then that 25% is used to as an estimate within the larger study, which calculates many component factors and finds that speed limits, heavier vehicles, cell phone signal-blockers, patrolman, use of seat belts, and car seats, all taken together, would drop the amount of road accidents 30% and reduce highway fatalities 40%.
That hypothetical study wouldn’t prove anything about car seats, because it just uses a derived estimate and assumes it to be true in arriving at a conclusion that ‘proves’ something else. If actual research on car seats showed that parents failed to properly install the car seat 90% of the time, the assumed 25% reduction is moot, because part of its derived value was based on the assumption that the seats would be properly installed.
That is one of the major problems with all mask use that these researchers ignore: Virtually NOBODY, not even trained medical professionals, can manage to ‘properly’ don and wear the masks for any significant amount of time, and ANY improper use of the mask immediately negates ANY benefit, and introduces new risks.
DIRECT FROM THE ‘META-STUDY’ SHOWS THE BEST CASE FOR MASKS IS A TERRIBLY WEAK ONE
It’s based on Mathematical Models of statistical models
“We analysed data for subgroup effects by virus type, intervention (different distances or face mask types), and setting (health care vs non-health care). Among the studies assessing physical distancing measures to prevent viral transmission, the intervention varied (eg, direct physical contact [0 m], 1 m, or 2 m). We, therefore, analysed the effect of distance on the size of the associations by random-effects univariate meta-regressions, using restricted maximum likelihood, and we present mean effects and 95% CIs. We calculated tests for interaction using a minimum of 10 000 Monte Carlo random permutations to avoid spurious findings.30 We formally assessed the credibility of potential effect-modifiers using GRADE guidance.21
We did two sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of our findings. First, we used Bayesian meta-analyses to reinterpret the included studies considering priors derived from the effect point estimate and variance from a meta-analysis of ten randomised trials evaluating face mask use versus no face mask use to prevent influenza-like illness in health-care workers.31
Second, we used Bayesian meta-analyses to reinterpret the efficacy of N95 respirators versus medical masks on preventing influenza-like illness after seasonal viral (mostly influenza) infection.13
For these sensitivity analyses, we used hybrid Metropolis-Hastings and Gibbs sampling, a 10 000 sample burn-in, 40 000 Markov chain Monte Carlo samples, and we tested non-informative and sceptical priors (eg, four time variance)32, 33 to inform mean estimates of effect, 95% credibility intervals (CrIs), and posterior distributions. We used non-informative hyperpriors to estimate statistical heterogeneity. Model convergence was confirmed in all cases with good mixing in visual inspection of trace plots, autocorrelation plots, histograms, and kernel density estimates in all scenarios. Parameters were blocked, leading to acceptance of approximately 50% and efficiency greater than 1% in all cases (typically about 40%). We did analyses using Stata version 14.3...”
Might, Could, May, Suggest... Any word other than ‘proves’
“These data also suggest that wearing face masks protects people (both health-care workers and the general public) against infection by these coronaviruses, and that eye protection could confer additional benefit. However, none of these interventions afforded complete protection from infection, and their optimum role might need risk assessment and several contextual considerations. No randomised trials were identified for these interventions in COVID-19, SARS, or MERS...
Previous data from randomised trials are mainly for common respiratory viruses such as seasonal influenza, with a systematic review concluding low certainty of evidence for extrapolating these findings to COVID-19. Further, previous syntheses of available randomised controlled trials have not accounted for cluster effects in analyses, leading to substantial imprecision in treatment effect estimates. In between-study and within-study comparisons, we noted a larger effect of N95 or similar respirators compared with other masks. This finding is inconsistent with conclusions of a review of four randomised trials, in which low certainty of evidence for no larger effect was suggested. However, in that review, the CIs were wide so a meaningful protective effect could not be excluded. We harmonised these findings with Bayesian approaches, using indirect data from randomised trials to inform posterior estimates. Despite this step, our findings continued to support the ideas not only that masks in general are associated with a large reduction in risk of infection from SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV but also that N95 or similar respirators might be associated with a larger degree of protection from viral infection than disposable medical masks or reusable multilayer (12–16-layer) cotton masks. Nevertheless, in view of the limitations of these data, we did not rate the certainty of effect as high. Our findings accord with those of a cluster randomised trial showing a potential benefit of continuous N95 respirator use over medical masks against seasonal viral infections...
Social Justice Consensus, discussed as ‘science’
“Our unadjusted analyses might, at first impression, suggest use of face masks in the community setting to be less effective than in the health-care setting, but after accounting for differential N95 respirator use between health-care and non-health-care settings, we did not detect any striking differences in effectiveness of face mask use between settings. The credibility of effect-modification across settings was, therefore, low.”
Wearing face masks was also acceptable and feasible. Policy makers at all levels should, therefore, strive to address equity implications for groups with currently limited access to face masks and eye protection. One concern is that face mask use en masse could divert supplies from people at highest risk for infection. Health-care workers are increasingly being asked to ration and reuse PPE,, leading to calls for government-directed repurposing of manufacturing capacity to overcome mask shortages and finding solutions for mask use by the general public. In this respect, some of the masks studied in our review were reusable 12–16-layer cotton or gauze masks., , , At the moment, although there is consensus that SARS-CoV-2 mainly spreads through large droplets and contact, debate continues about the role of aerosol,, , , , , , , , but our meta-analysis provides evidence (albeit of low certainty) that respirators might have a stronger protective effect than surgical masks. Biological plausibility would be supported by data for aerosolised SARS-CoV-2, , , and preclinical data showing seasonal coronavirus RNA detection in fine aerosols during tidal breathing, albeit, RNA detection does not necessarily imply replication and infection-competent virus.
A yardstick that can’t even measure that eye-pro and respirators work better
Nevertheless, our findings suggest it plausible that even in the absence of aerosolisation, respirators might be simply more effective than masks at preventing infection. At present, there is no data to support viable virus in the air outside of aerosol generating procedures from available hospital studies. Other factors such as super-spreading events, the subtype of health-care setting (eg, emergency room, intensive care unit, medical wards, dialysis centre), if aerosolising procedures are done, and environmental factors such as ventilation, might all affect the degree of protection afforded by personal protection strategies, but we did not identify robust data to inform these aspects.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext
CIVIL RIGHTS — MASKS ARE A MANDATED RELIGIOUS BELIEF
“At the heart of the debate is a system of anti-discrimination laws enacted by federal, state and local governments. The entire United States is covered by the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination by privately owned places of public accommodation on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. Places of “public accommodation” include hotels, restaurants, theaters, banks, health clubs and stores. Nonprofit organizations such as churches are generally exempt from the law.
The right of public accommodation is also guaranteed to disabled citizens under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination by private businesses based on disability...
In California, you also can’t discriminate based on someone’s unconventional dress.“
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-service-can-a-business-refuse-service-to-someone-because-of-appearance
EVEN LAWS ABOUT POLITICAL SPEECH ARE HAZARDOUS - SIGNAGE COMPARISON
"Generally, all signs need to be treated the same way, regardless of their content," said Beth Haroules, senior staff attorney for the NYCLU. "So political signs likely can’t be held to a different standard than signs that are not overtly political. If there are restrictions made based on content, there must be a compelling state interest and there must be other outlets available to express the restricted speech."
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/towns-cant-restrict-political-yard-signs-supreme-court-has-ruled/article_94b84b53-975e-5d55-ae8f-322ab80ecf0b.html
I just carry a drink or snack everywhere I go and if anyone gives me shit I just point out that you can’t fucking eat with a mask on and if it’s ok at restaurants then why not here?
Baseless counter-evidentiary unscientific mandates and petty tyrant’s dictates are universally and mercilessly enforced.
These fly directly in the face of every liberal value of the enlightenment, every requirement of sound policy-making, our laws, and our rights.
Trump and Barr better get addressing and fixing this travesty soon, because every day more and more people are adopting the Soviet attitude of ‘mini-dictator’ and the ISIS-style willingness to push down the boot.
I’m all about patience (I’ve pressed ‘pedes on this site to remain calm and approach the situation unemotionally), but it’s getting harder by the day not to start smashing commie faces when they gleefully use their situational power to enforce ‘mask rules’ as soon as they mark me as a conservative, including telling me how to adjust it on my face to their liking, performing little ‘security checks’, slow-walking transactions, demanding ID checks, etc.
They do this as soon as they have you trapped, stuck in an airport, or needing gas, or halfway through a purchase they know you can’t easily go elsewhere to obtain. Like I said, I’m pretty laid back, but I imagine there are many others well-past their breaking point.
If this is not addressed pretty soon it’s going to turn into a real public safety issue and a big optics problem for our side, because the rage is like that of seeing your your kid get creeped on by a pervert — and the more you know about any of the subjects involved — Masks, Covid, Life under Communism, Democrat attack strategies, Constitutional law, management decision-making, leftist personality defects, mental conditioning, risk management, public health methodology, whatever — the more enraged it makes you feel.
And you can’t avoid it, it seems like it happens everywhere.
”Because we said so, just trust us, it’s the consensus”
First a demeaning ‘safety’ lecture, followed by ‘because it’s the rule’ and beyond that a never ending recursive “following recommendations/guidelines” justification.
They can never refute multiple scientific studies that clearly show widespread masks are MORE dangerous for all parties with any new research or even clear criticism of the studies and reasoned logic.
I feel you 100% on this.
Society is in deep shit. Deep shit. And it looks less and less likely by the day that there's any good exit strategy except watering the tree of liberty. No one wants that outcome.
An extremely underrated post well deserving a sticky given an elaborate, thorough presentation of supporting evidence in the comments.
Thank you, OP.
But the governor said...and the TV told me...
Posts like this need to be saved in a sidebar or something. I love these big information dumps and if everyone had readily access to them it may help redpill some.
VIDEO
The Truth About Masks | COVID-19 Facts From The Frontline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_b0AhqvAVw
FAUCI:
“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask... wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection that people think...”
https://streamable.com/oml2rf
THE CDC:
“Respiratory etiquette is often listed as a preventive measure for respiratory infections. However, there is a lack of scientific evidence to support this measure." "In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks"
"The effect of hand hygiene combined with face masks on laboratory-confirmed influenza was not statistically significant "
"There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza."
"Finally, although our review focused on nonpharmaceutical measures to be taken during influenza pandemics, the findings could also apply to severe seasonal influenza epidemics. Evidence from RCTs of hand hygiene or face masks did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza, and limited evidence was available on other environmental measures."
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
DOCTOR’S PLEAS
“The letter criticizes the lack of a valid scientific basis for the WHO’s recommendation and expresses OCLA’s concerns about serious harms to individuals and societies stemming from the recommendation and from government impositions of face masks on the general public.”
http://ocla.ca/ocla-letter-who/
Tulsa Doctors lawsuit
https://mobile.twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1303808076127047682
Dr. Ted Noel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_iQM5x9wF8
“This propagandistic phrase is a vector designed to achieve five main goals:
Give the false impression that a balance of evidence now proves that masks reduce the transmission of COVID-19
Falsely assimilate commentary made in scientific venues with "evidence"
Hide the fact that a decade's worth of policy-grade evidence proves the opposite: that masks are ineffective with viral respiratory diseases
Hide the fact that there is now direct observational proof that cloth masks do not prevent exhalation of clouds of suspended aerosol particles; above, below and through the masks
Deter attention away from the considerable known harms and risks due to face masks, applied to entire populations
The said harms and risks include that a cloth mask becomes a culture medium for a large variety of bacterial pathogens, and a collector of viral pathogens; given the hot and humid environment and the constant source, where home fabrics are hydrophilic whereas medical masks are hydrophobic.
In short, I argue: op-eds are not "evidence", irrelevance does not help, and more bias does not remove bias. Their mantra of "a growing body of evidence" is a self-serving contrivance that impedes good science and threatens public safety.
I prove that there is no policy-grade evidence to support forced masking on the general population, and that all the latest-decade's policy-grade evidence points to the opposite: NOT recommending forced masking of the general population. Therefore, the politicians and health authorities are acting without legitimacy and recklessly.”
https://www.sott.net/article/439705-Facemasks-Lies-Damn-Lies-And-Public-Health-Officials-A-Growing-Body-of-Evidence
Must be more condensed for that. I made a shorter TL;DR attempt somewhere above.
WHY TRUMP DIDN’T FIGHT THE MASK BATTLE POLITICALLY:
The legitimate political calculation attempted removing the power of the mask to become a potent and widespread symbol of the public’s acceptance and capitulation to leftist authoritarian dictates and consensus expertise (It is still a neomarxist symbol, but far less potent).
By negating the media’s attempt to create a dichotomous choice, President Trump removed the media’s incentive to gaslight the public into rejecting the actual science, and he deftly sidestepped what would otherwise likely be a highly visual indicator of political defeat that would hamstring further trust and messaging.
In doing so, he removes the strong institutional political resistance against citizens who choose to fight the mask battle, and maintains a neutral, rather indeterminate position that can still insist on people’s right to decide for themselves, without risking another interagency PR debacle.
BUT WHY?
Because idiots believe masks work — it makes intuitive sense, and the scientific reasoning that shows they don’t is ‘complicated’, ‘subtle’, and requires analysis.
The argument is also quickly ”lost” in the face of media-pushed qualified experts such as Fauci that Trump can’t easily fire and can be used to drum up a huge scandal. Trump isn’t a medical doctor, after all.
The leftist coup plotters have tried to use all methods possible to leverage positions that can ‘override’ presidential authority — special counsel, ‘whistleblowers’, interagencies, etc. — and epidemiologists are in that position during a pandemic.
Our federal system also places these types of decisions in the hands of state authorities, which creates a long delay before a president can take forceful corrective action.
‘3-D chess’, or just basic warfighting strategy, dictates that you fight where the enemy position is weakest and your own is strongest. Otherwise you avoid the exchange.
Great work buddy and thanks for your effort. I will use this in the future when it inevitably and repeatedly comes to these mask wearing debates online. I also learned a lot as well - it's good to have an extended version of all of this information.
https://thedonald.win/p/Gv6GK2om/dont-be-a-slave-to-tyrants/c/
This post hasn't gotten enough attention. Ty for all your research, here...it's very valuable and backs up what I innately feel about the subject. Should be stickied somewhere for everyone to see. Again, ty!
GAH DAMN brocacho. Great work, im just going through your history giving up doots. Youre doing the lords work you patriot!
Thanks ‘pede! We fight united!
”If masks don't work, then why do surgeons wear them?"
“I'm a surgeon that has performed over 10,000 surgical procedures wearing a surgical mask. However, that fact alone doesn't really qualify me as an expert on the matter. More importantly, I am a former editor of a medical journal. I know how to read the medical literature, distinguish good science from bad, and fact from fiction. Believe me, the medical literature is filled with bad fiction masquerading as medical science. It is very easy to be deceived by bad science.
Although surgeons do wear masks to prevent their respiratory droplets from contaminating the surgical field and the exposed internal tissues of our surgical patients, that is about as far as the analogy extends
If a surgeon were sick, especially with a viral infection, they would not perform surgery as they know the virus would NOT be stopped by their surgical mask.”
https://www.meehanmd.com/blog/2020-07-22-if-masks-dont-work-then-why-do-surgeons-wear-them/
https://archive.is/E3HyB
I. FUCKING. LOVE. YOU!!!
Thank you for assembling this.
My apologies for being so late to the post.
This is amazing! Thank you for all your hard work in assembling this! Hopefully I can get a good case together to convince my husband. He thinks I have “extreme and unreasonable” covid opinions; I think masks do more harm than good, lockdowns are ruining people’s lives, businesses and our economy, and that it’s basically the flu. We are taking vitamin d and zinc, and have hcq in the house. There is nothing to fear. I will never take a vaccine, nor allow my kids to get it. But, hey, he has worked as a wall st pharma analyst and has lots of friends in medical frills that are “concerned”, he has some asthma and we are fat 50 somethings.
The facts are on your side. The figures are in, we have almost a year of data, and it shows clearly: Covid didn’t kill anyone who wasn’t going to die anyway.
“...not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.
These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.
This comes as a shock to many people. How is it that the data lie so far from our perception?
To answer that question, Briand shifted her focus to the deaths per causes ranging from 2014 to 2020. There is a sudden increase in deaths in 2020 due to COVID-19. This is no surprise because COVID-19 emerged in the U.S. in early 2020, and thus COVID-19-related deaths increased drastically afterward.
Analysis of deaths per cause in 2018 revealed that the pattern of seasonal increase in the total number of deaths is a result of the rise in deaths by all causes, with the top three being heart disease, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia.
“This is true every year. Every year in the U.S. when we observe the seasonal ups and downs, we have an increase of deaths due to all causes,” Briand pointed out. When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths.
However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.”
Worth a read (this is a John Hopkins Newsletter describing the study):
https://archive.vn/ruV3q
This is great research, huge news, and highly relevant! So why do you think they would delete it?
https://notthebee.com/article/a-few-days-ago-johns-hopkins-published-a-study-saying-corona-is-nbd-they-then-deleted-it-read-it-here-in-its-entirety
John Hopkins deletion tweet: https://archive.vn/vkmJd
And the numbers demonstrate that even in the cases with comorbidities, the Chynavirus was not the most significant factor contributing to death:
https://thedonald.win/p/HEJCOHgY/heres-how-the-statistical-logic-/
GREAT BIG LIST OF CCP VIRUS RESEARCH:
https://patriots.win/p/11SJtECDyT/coronaviruswin-for-finding-good-/
Is there an argument for mask? Since the only country that seems to be wearing mask and working is Japan. At least that is the argument.
Japan was hyped as an ‘example of masking working’ early on, but none of those citing Japan even attempted to disambiguate masks from any other cultural habits or other factors that might account for the lower incidence.
But one can easily use logic to rule out masks as the decisive factor: If it was masks making the difference, we would see similarities (and particularly improvement after mandates) in other high compliance countries such as Singapore, which is not the case.
https://mobile.twitter.com/CovidSenseBloke/status/1306277076442525697
The case for masks is well summarized by The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts/