If you are looking for the scientific rationale behind universal mask-wearing, you certainly won’t find it now that the issue has become as political as guns, abortion, and taxes. We are now at a point where Canada’s chief public health officer is calling on people to wear masks when engaging in sexual activities and 19-month-old babies are being forced to wear them on airplanes.
There is no rational thought in a political cult. But what did the governmental and scientific literature say on the issue before it became political?
On April 3, already several weeks into the unprecedented lockdown over coronavirus, but before the big media push for universal masking, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued guidance for respiratory protection for workers exposed to people with the virus. It stated clearly what governments had said all along about other forms of airborne contamination, such as smoke inhalation — “Surgical masks and eye protection (e.g., face shields, goggles) were provided as an interim measure to protect against splashes and large droplets (note: surgical masks are not respirators and do not provide protection against aerosol-generating procedures).”
In other words, they knew that because the virions of coronavirus are roughly 100 nanometers, 1/1000 the width of a hair and 1/30 the size of surgical mask filtrations (about 3.0 microns or 3,000 nanometers), surgical masks (not to mention cloth ones) do not help.
This would explain why experience has shown that all of the places with universal mask orders in place for months, such as Japan, Hong Kong, Israel, France, Peru, Philippines, Hawaii, California, and Miami, failed to stave off the spread of the infection. Surgical masks could possibly stop large droplets from those coughing with very evident symptoms, but would not stop the flow of aerosolized airborne particles, certainly not from asymptomatic individuals.
This is why the CDC, as late as May, was citing the 10 randomized controlled trials that showed “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.”
The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford also summarized six international studies which “showed that masks alone have no significant effect in interrupting the spread of ILI or influenza in the general population, nor in healthcare workers.”
When Dr. Fauci spoke so assertively against universal mask-wearing early on in the epidemic, it was clearly based on this knowledge. “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,“ infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told “60 Minutes” on March 8. He went on to explain that masks can only block large droplets, they give a false sense of security, and they cause people to get more germs on their hands by fiddling with it. Those facts don’t change with time.
Several weeks later, Surgeon General Jerome Adams punctuated this point about the counterproductivity of wearing masks in public. Appearing on “Fox & Friends” on March 31, Adams said that based on a study that shows medical students who wear masks touch their faces 23 times more often, one has to assume that “wearing a mask improperly can actually increase your risk of getting disease.”
Ever since then, we have all seen how people leave masks in their pockets or cars for days and continuously put it on and off as needed without washing their hands. It’s inconceivable that this is not serving as a bacteria trap, if not downright helping spread the virus on our hands.
A 2015 randomized clinical trial from the University of South Wales testing the effectiveness of cloth masks among health care workers in Hanoi found that the poor filtration becomes a conduit for moisture retention. Researchers found a high rate of infection among those workers presumably because “their reuse and poor filtration may explain the increased risk of infection.” Can you imagine how much worse this is in a non-health-care setting where reuse and cross-contamination are rampant?
This is why before mask-wearing became a cult in Canada, Quebec’s public health director Horacio Arruda told the Montreal Gazette that masks are counterproductive. Arruda’s guidance as given in the article states that masks “get saturated with moisture from the mouth and nose after about 20 minutes. Once they’re wet, they no longer form a barrier against viruses trying to come through or exit.” This renders the daylong mask wearing in businesses, stores, and schools, as opposed to the short onetime use in clinical settings, a complete hazard to spread of bacteria and pathogens.
Nothing about the biology of the virus or our discovery of it has changed in the past few months that would lead us to believe that masks are somehow more effective against it than they are against the spread of other respiratory viruses. What has changed is the politics.
Governments could no longer control our lives through wholesale lockdowns, because it was logistically untenable, so they created the mask mandate as a way of permanently controlling our movement. They wisely did this on the heels of the full-scale lockdown when people were grateful just to be back in business under any conditions and were desperately willing to do anything to stave off a shutdown.
If you are looking for the scientific rationale behind universal mask-wearing, you certainly won’t find it now that the issue has become as political as guns, abortion, and taxes. We are now at a point where Canada’s chief public health officer is calling on people to wear masks when engaging in sexual activities and 19-month-old babies are being forced to wear them on airplanes. There is no rational thought in a political cult. But what did the governmental and scientific literature say on the issue before it became political?
On April 3, already several weeks into the unprecedented lockdown over coronavirus, but before the big media push for universal masking, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued guidance for respiratory protection for workers exposed to people with the virus.
It stated clearly what governments had said all along about other forms of airborne contamination, such as smoke inhalation — “Surgical masks and eye protection (e.g., face shields, goggles) were provided as an interim measure to protect against splashes and large droplets (note: surgical masks are not respirators and do not provide protection against aerosol-generating procedures).”
In other words, they knew that because the virions of coronavirus are roughly 100 nanometers, 1/1000 the width of a hair and 1/30 the size of surgical mask filtrations (about 3.0 microns or 3,000 nanometers), surgical masks (not to mention cloth ones) do not help.
This would explain why experience has shown that all of the places with universal mask orders in place for months, such as Japan, Hong Kong, Israel, France, Peru, Philippines, Hawaii, California, and Miami, failed to stave off the spread of the infection.
Surgical masks could possibly stop large droplets from those coughing with very evident symptoms, but would not stop the flow of aerosolized airborne particles, certainly not from asymptomatic individuals.
This is why the CDC, as late as May, was citing the 10 randomized controlled trials that showed “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.” The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford also summarized six international studies which “showed that masks alone have no significant effect in interrupting the spread of ILI or influenza in the general population, nor in healthcare workers.”
Dr. Jeffery Klausner, an infectious disease doctor at UCLA, described mask-wearing in early February as all psychological, not physiological. He told the Los Angeles Times that “fear spreads a lot faster than the virus” and that a mask only “makes you feel better.” What is so dangerous about this is that, as Fauci and others originally warned when they were actually speaking from a modicum of scientific grounding, is that many immunocompromised people will go to dangerous places thinking the mask protects them.
I’ve seen countless friends and neighbors who are concerned about their heart conditions and diabetes blissfully walk around indoors thinking the mask is their shield.
This is why Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell warned that because scientific evidence for mask-wearing to prevent COVID-19 is “astonishingly weak,” it is “very dangerous” to believe that face masks on their own could control the spread of the disease rather than hand washing or, in the case of those who are seriously ill, staying away from indoor gatherings. He would know, because his country barely has any cases left, and almost nobody in Sweden wears a mask.
The Dutch government made the prudent decision of only requiring masks on public transit when people are really close to each other for a limited period of time. With such scant evidence of the effectiveness of mask-wearing, how can we disrupt lives of children in school, businessmen in offices, and even people walking outdoors in some countries and states? “From a medical point of view, there is no evidence of a medical effect of wearing face masks, so we decided not to impose a national obligation,” said Netherlands Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark in August.
The Danish supposedly commissioned a randomized clinical trial to study mask effectiveness specifically as it relates to protecting against SARS-CoV-2, but despite promises of imminent release weeks ago, the study has not been published. Henning Bundgaard, chief physician at Denmark’s Rigshospitale, noted, “All these countries recommending face masks haven’t made their decisions based on new studies.”It doesn’t appear that anyone else is interested in finding out the truth.
Even in England, where there is more mask-wearing than in some of the other northern European countries, Public Health England concluded, “There is weak evidence from epidemiological and modelling studies that mask wearing in the community may contribute to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and that early intervention may result in a lower peak infection rate.”
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Please do read the entire article at The Blaze — it’s worth it — or, at least the finale: “Many principles in life are inviolable and do not change with time. We used to understand that mask-wearing was a novelty of Halloween. Now, our passivity has allowed our entire country to become a Halloween nightmare masquerade every day, with no end in sight.”
AMEN!
This isn’t exactly true. McAfee wore a thong for a mask and was arrested, so apparently there are some sort of rules still. but the idea of wearing a bandana over your face that you have been using for blowing your nose ought not to work either, but seems to.
Anyone who has ever had training to use respirators, supplied air, or other filtration systems knew that this mask nonsense was all a ruse. I have been called all sorts of names and told that I just wanted people to die because I refuse to wear a cloth or paper mask. While the virus is certainly and obviously real, the mandatory mask policies are simply a feel good measure that can cause more harm than any good they could possibly bring.
Huh? By definition an asymptomatic individual can’t have a disease, therefore can’t spread a virion, which is why before the Marxist COVID-19 ‘pantasy’ operation came into existence, we were taught that ONLY coughing and sneezing causes diseases, and in fact this is what the CDC still says for all respiratory-related virions, except for COVID-19, thereby once again proving the non-existence of COVID-19.
Presymptomatic and asymptomatic can’t exhale intact virions because those relatively few virions are immediately destroyed by mucus. Mucus’ salt content is at least seven times less than that of a virus, whereby the virus explodes through its uncontrolled intake of mucus’ water.
As the New England Journal of Medicine let slip out, one must be symptomatic in order to spread a virion:
“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”
And the reason it can take up to 30 minutes for a symptomatic to pass on a virion is because the infected hasn’t coughed or sneezed for 30 minutes.
At my blog, read the articles…
‘House of Cards: The Collapse of the ‘Collapse’ of the USSR’
‘Playing Hide And Seek In Yugoslavia’
Then read the article, ‘The Marxist Co-Option Of History And The Use Of The Scissors Strategy To Manipulate History Towards The Goal Of Marxist Liberation’
Solution
The West will form new political parties where candidates are vetted for Marxist ideology/blackmail, the use of the polygraph to be an important tool for such vetting. Then the West can finally liberate the globe of vanguard Communism.
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
JaKo
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Please do read the entire article at The Blaze — it’s worth it — or, at least the finale:
“Many principles in life are inviolable and do not change with time. We used to understand that mask-wearing was a novelty of Halloween. Now, our passivity has allowed our entire country to become a Halloween nightmare masquerade every day, with no end in sight.”
AMEN!
Reply
Andy Rowlands
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Is it my imagination, or is a large part of this article duplicated about halfway down?
Reply
judy Ryan
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Yes
yes
Reply
Tom O
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This isn’t exactly true. McAfee wore a thong for a mask and was arrested, so apparently there are some sort of rules still. but the idea of wearing a bandana over your face that you have been using for blowing your nose ought not to work either, but seems to.
Reply
Joel Walbert
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Who needs facts when the sheeple believe literally anything but facts
Reply
Steven
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Anyone who has ever had training to use respirators, supplied air, or other filtration systems knew that this mask nonsense was all a ruse. I have been called all sorts of names and told that I just wanted people to die because I refuse to wear a cloth or paper mask. While the virus is certainly and obviously real, the mandatory mask policies are simply a feel good measure that can cause more harm than any good they could possibly bring.
Reply
Dean Michael Jackson
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“…certainly not from asymptomatic individuals.”
Huh? By definition an asymptomatic individual can’t have a disease, therefore can’t spread a virion, which is why before the Marxist COVID-19 ‘pantasy’ operation came into existence, we were taught that ONLY coughing and sneezing causes diseases, and in fact this is what the CDC still says for all respiratory-related virions, except for COVID-19, thereby once again proving the non-existence of COVID-19.
Presymptomatic and asymptomatic can’t exhale intact virions because those relatively few virions are immediately destroyed by mucus. Mucus’ salt content is at least seven times less than that of a virus, whereby the virus explodes through its uncontrolled intake of mucus’ water.
As the New England Journal of Medicine let slip out, one must be symptomatic in order to spread a virion:
“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372
And the reason it can take up to 30 minutes for a symptomatic to pass on a virion is because the infected hasn’t coughed or sneezed for 30 minutes.
At my blog, read the articles…
‘House of Cards: The Collapse of the ‘Collapse’ of the USSR’
‘Playing Hide And Seek In Yugoslavia’
Then read the article, ‘The Marxist Co-Option Of History And The Use Of The Scissors Strategy To Manipulate History Towards The Goal Of Marxist Liberation’
Solution
The West will form new political parties where candidates are vetted for Marxist ideology/blackmail, the use of the polygraph to be an important tool for such vetting. Then the West can finally liberate the globe of vanguard Communism.
My blog…
https://djdnotice.blogspot.com/2018/09/d-notice-articles-article-55-7418.html
Reply