A new scientific review raises additional questions over the science behind the mask mandates imposed on the population for years. The new scientific review by 12 researchers from leading universities found little support for the claims that masks reduced Covid exposures. My interest in the story, as usual, focuses on free speech. Numerous experts were suspended or banned for challenging these very claims and the media labeled any such critics as dangerous or fringe figures. Regardless of your ultimate conclusions on the efficacy of masks, there was clearly a scientific basis to challenge the mask policies. Yet, many people were routinely censored on Twitter and other platforms for daring to challenge the official position on masks.
The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.
The closing of schools and businesses was also challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
Masks became a major social and political dividing line in politics and the media. Maskless people were chased from stores and denounced in Congress. Then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have.”
However, the new publication reaffirms earlier studies and states that “a new scientific review suggests that widespread masking may have done little to nothing to curb the transmission of COVID.” It added that “wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (nine studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (six studies; 13,919 people).”
It also found little evidence of a difference from wearing better masks and that “wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (five studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (five studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (three studies; 7799 people).”
Again, I expect that these studies will be debated for years. That is a good thing. There are questions raised over the types of studies used and whether randomized studies are sufficient. The point is only that there were countervailing indicators on mask efficacy and a basis to question the mandates. Yet, there was no real debate because of the censorship supported by many Democratic leaders in social media. To question such mandates was declared a public health threat.
The head of the World Health Organization even supported censorship to combat what he called an “infodemic.”
A lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University).
Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections. Even raising the lab theory on the origin of Covid 19 (a theory now treated as plausible) was denounced as a conspiracy theory. The science and health reporter for the New York Times, Apoorva Mandavilli, even denounced the theory as “racist.”
In the meantime, California has moved to potentially strip doctors of their licenses for spreading dissenting views on Covid.
The latest review will not conclusively answer the scientific questions around mask efficacy, but it should answer any lingering questions over the harm of censorship. We never had a serious debate because of the government-corporate-media alliance to snuff out dissenting views on pandemic policies. The result may have been avoidable emotional, economic, and social harm to the population as a whole.
I read the study and the result was inconclusive! “Our confidence in these results is generally low”, “The results might change when further evidence becomes available. Relatively low numbers of people followed the guidance about wearing masks or about hand hygiene, which may have affected the results of the studies. ” In other words, the study was poorly done and a waist of time and effort!” I’ll continue to wear my N95 mask. Their have been other studies in hospitals not included in this study that rejects their conclusions.
The study wasn’t poorly done, the mask wearing was poorly done. That’s why masks are ineffective. Anyone with eyeballs could go to a major store and quickly run out of fingers counting the number of masks improperly worn or fiddled with regularly by the wearers.
If you wear masks properly and want to collect all the exhaled viral and bacterial material in a net a quarter inch from your breathing holes, knock yourself out. Just make sure your vitamin load is greater than your mask’s viral load.
The infection fatality rate by age:
0.0003% at 0–19 years
0.002% at 20–29 years,
0.011% at 30–39 years,
0.035% at 40–49 years,
0.123% at 50–59 years,
0.506% at 60–69 years.
For reference the flu is 0.1%. For people under 40 bicycles were more dangerous than Covid.
I was a respiratory nurse for many years. Put on an N95 mask, then spray the air around you with air freshener. If you can smell it, then your
N95 is no better than the cheaper blue masks. I think the masks helped ,but in the way you may not think. A person with respiratory problems
of any kind cannot tolerate wearing masks – they feel like they are suffocating. When masks were mandatory, sick people stayed home. Usually at my church, the frequent coughing makes me wonder if TB is rampant in the congregation. While masks were worn, virtually
no coughing was noted and no sick kids. Having been coughed on a million times in my hospital career, even the cheap masks must
work some, but I also wore eye protection – kind of need both if you are really serious. Best thing to do is try to maintain some distance
between you and others.
Trust the science! and don’t forget the monthly booster!
UpstateFarmer was right about the survival rate of COVID. I was born in the late 50s and we had viruses that hit us in the late 60s and we never shut down or went into mass panic. I believe this was all designed to get Trump out. I researched COVID early on and found it came from China. I saw many doctors from various areas say HQC. Ivermectin, and Zinc will kill it in a few days for low cost and these doctors were banned from the internet in a week. We were told to use masks and then not to, and then flip flops on masks. I found masks by doctors or nurses are only used shortly and then discarded because they are unsafe so I did not wear them.
When the COVID vaccines came out I researched them and said to myself no way will I take them. First Big Pharma is making them in China where the virus came from. Second Big Pharma has a “they are at no fault” if you take the vaccine. Third I checked on how vaccines are made and they usually take 5 years and are made from a small part of the virus and testing, but these were made from mRNA in 1 year and it was not clear if there was any testing. Fourth the Doctor that came up with mRNA technology said that it was not ready for humans. Fifth the government, corporations, MSM all were pushing these vaccines unlike any previous vaccine Citizens but the southern border was open and no vaccines were given to anyone crossing and let into the country so the question was why force it on Citizens but not illegals that maybe infected with many more diseases?
Anyone who did a little research came to the same conclusions you did. The information was out there and easy to get to.
The left is impervious to common sense, facts and science. The experts were censored. That is leftist politics always remains behind the times.
Quotes from Jay Bhattacharya. For those who don’t know he is an expert from Stanford. He is one of the best epidemiologists in the world.
“I suppose that if we had had an open and honest debate in 2020, 2021 about school openings, so many of our kids wouldn’t have missed a year and a half or more of school, wouldn’t have had the learning loss, wouldn’t have had the lifelong harm done to them that we did with these lockdown policies.”
“And I actually have to say it’s not just Big Tech. This was done at the behest of government actors. I know this from a lawsuit that I’ve been involved with from the Missouri and Louisiana Attorneys General Offices against the Biden administration. We’ve documented a concerted effort by government agencies to tell Big Tech what to censor and, in some cases, even who to censor on the COVID debate. Americans were denied debate very, very unfairly by the federal government.”
“We would have won that debate in 2020 and 2021, had we been allowed to present the science openly, but Big Tech played a malign role in suppressing that debate from happening”.
“It’s the fault of public health authorities that rang this bell of panic and fear,”
“And then next, I think the leadership of public health in the United States needs to apologize to Americans for the mistakes it made, for dividing people with vaccine mandates that were useless — absolutely discriminatory, in the case of these vaccine passports — for closing schools, and so much else. And I think in many cases we need new leadership in public health to actually start to restore the trust that Americans need to have in public health in order to remain healthy.”
One can listen to his words or read more of what he said at: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/wrongly-censored-scientist-presses-covid-19-truth-commission-expose?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter
“…gvernment-corporate-media alliance to snuff out dissenting views “. aka fascism, literally the very definition
OT,
New memos unmask secret deal between US, Britain to hide COVID vaccine adverse events
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/judicial-watch-president-says-us-was-engaged-secret-deal-hide-info
There never was evidence that loosely worn, porous masks, prevented the transmission of a sub micron virus. The masks were to illicit fear, divide us, and remind us of the terror we were required to be gripped by.
I like the masks
It points out the Karens
Once an Ostrich always a
There is no test
There is no cure
But now your chest hurts and its just a matter of time
Silly euthanized fools
Quick get a booster
I agree we never had a debate. Discussion of ideas leads to good choices. We did not have that discussion. Having no discussion leads to autocratic governance. We have plenty of the latter. This was never about SCIENCE. This was about how can we control the population? How can we, the ruling class, make the citizens obey without question? How can we the ruling class, convince citizens that loss of freedom is to their benefit? How can we as the ruling class convince people that Free Speech is Dangerous? No my friends this is about how much power the government can exert over WE THE PEOPLE and some of us People are ready, willing and able to jump on the first train car to the showers!!!
Hello… The only effective tool to reduce “COVID” spreading is stop using PCR kits. Anything else is just circus.
They said, “Trust the science,” but not the scientists who disagreed. They pressured researchers not to publish, doctors not to speak out, and parents to shut up or they’d be investigated by the FBI for domestic terrorism.
Trust the science? Science is about investigating, asking questions, and trusting nothing. We are still making new discoveries about topics that were considered “settled science” decades ago.
Children too young to understand masking hygiene were walking around schools with snot and germs on their fabric masks. They’d switch masks. Drop it on the bathroom floor and put it back on. I had food delivered by someone wearing a mask that looked like it had been over a greasy stove and not cleaned for a year.
Surgical masks are designed to catch saliva and other droplets from a surgeon or OR nurse, preventing these fluids from contaminating the surgical site. They are not close fitting. They do not filter all exhalations. People’s breath comes out the edges.
A mask that actually filtered out viruses would require pores too small to breathe through. That would require a positive pressure suit used in a BSL4 lab.
When Covid came out, I supported masking. It was believed that it spread through droplets, and masks can catch heavy droplets. It’s like holding a handkerchief in front of your face when you cough. It turned out Covid spread far easier than that, and masks did far less than I’d hoped.
The study referenced in this post looked at how real people, in the general public, fared with masking. Real people wear masks below their noses, use cloth masks that don’t do anything, never clean masks, touch their masks with dirty hands, and otherwise act like ordinary people instead of those in a lab. In real life scenarios, people don’t change or clean masks, and they don’t all wear N95s. Even in the best possible conditions, masks do far less than promised. That’s why doctors and nurses, highly trained on bio safety and hygiene, and who discard and replace masks all day, all got Covid multiple times.
As for the vaccine, they work best on stable viruses without a high rate of mutation. The vaccine was very effective at preventing the original, wild strain of SARS-CoV2. However, the way the virus replicates creates variants. Naturally acquired or vaccine induced immunity quickly selected for variants that could evade it. As people sickened and recovered from the new variants, even newer variants were naturally selected that could evade the latest immunity. The vaccine protected people from the harshest original strain, and became outdated. There was no scientific basis to mandate an outdated vaccine that would cause side effects without benefit. This is why double vaccinated and triple boosted healthcare workers still got Covid.
People who voiced constitutional objections to the mandates were fired and labeled fringe lunatics. It is alleged that NY unvaccinated teachers were not only fired, but given a problem code attached to their fingerprints, sent to the FBI. Unless removed, they will not pass a background check to get a new job. We lost faithful military service members, who were not at risk for disease, but were at high risk for developing myocarditis from the vaccine. They lost their careers and pension.
This was all unjust. The next time someone sanctimoniously tells you not to question the s wince, remind them that scientists recommended cigarettes, cocaine, asbestos, radiation, and mandatory vaccines and masking.
As a mother, I vaccinate my kid against major diseases. However, I have always opposed vaccination mandates. Some of my fellow parents didn’t understand, because they had no issue with any of the required vaccines. I told them, one day, a new vaccine might be added to the required schedule that you do not feel comfortable with. Perhaps you’d prefer to give it a few years to learn the side effects in the general population. You will have given away your right to object. CA is considering mandating the Covid vaccine for all students for the coming school year. Many parents are adamant against giving it to low risk kids, in light of all the side effects. However, they gave away their right to object when they allowed vaccines to be mandated in the first place.
Addition detail on masking was the virus particle shedding gray was known to occur when any trapped droplets would dry out
Karen S: it’s clear that you wish you had a scientific background and education, and maybe that you started some kind of medical science program, like lab tech, but didn’t finish. Yet, you consider yourself quallified to expound about scientific matters you heard from your alt-right sources. Now, you consider yourself quaified to discuss scientific studies and the validity of results. Karen S: you’re not qualified to rationally discuss scientific matters because you don’t have the education or knowledge. All you do is parrot something you heard on alt-right media, which, as we now know from the Smartmatic lawsuit, deliberately spreads lies, and keeps doing it to prevent viewers from switching to other alt-right channels, all to keep up ad revenue. The biggest reason some alt-right media keep pushing lies is for confirmation bias–provide affirmation to people like you who believe lies–to give you some anchor for your beliefs. That’s exactly what Turley does, too. Preaching distrust of science came about because the fat hog you worship and voted for was made a fool of by public health doctors with proven track records of success in combatting illnesses like AIDS, and who wouldn’t go along with his recommendation for the quack “cure” known as Hydroxychloroquine, something you have also promoted because you are a true believer–science be damned. This distrust of science is political, not logical or scientific and it’s relatively new. Back in the 1950s people would have done anything to keep their kids from getting polio, and eagerly welcomed the Salk vaccine, which saved lives. When you speak of waiting “a few years” to immunize children until you find out about “side effects”, you show that you don’t even understand the process for vaccine approval, and that you believe all of the garbage about side effects being worse than the disease itself, and/or that scientists are lying about side effects. Side effects are studied and taken into consideration when recommending vaccines, and it’s only when the benefits substantially outweigh the risks that vaccines and/or medications are approved. The COVID vaccine has been on the market for years now and millions of doses have been administered, which is what stopped the daily records of deaths and new infections. Yet, you still don’t believe it’s safe. Distrust of medical science may well be what brings us down as a country. The 1918 flu epidemic killed 1/3 of the world’s population. COVID might have done the same but for masks, shutting down schools for in-person learning, closing down large crowd events, limiting and banning of overseas travel and quarantining. Yet, disciples like you believe that none of these measures made any difference–why? Because of alt-right media. You are immune to facts, you believe what you hear on alt-right media because they’ve told you that you’re smarter than the scientists who are lying to you, and that’s what’s really scary.
Gigi,
I’ve come to know you as a liar, a despicable & Evil person!
*******
Watch The Vax Drop In “Effectiveness” As They Keep Pushing
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Dec 13, 2022
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Watch as Dr. Fauci keeps pushing vaccine as Alex Jones is proved right that the shots will never end.
https://banned.video/watch?id=6398e1ed285552204c186c66
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/fauci-takes-heat-after-casting-doubt-efficacy-covid-vaccines
Gigi,
You don’t have to remain ignorant or Evil when it comes to the US Govt/Pharma Medical Tyranny/Experiments of vaccine or mRNA jabs Industry.
If you’re not lazy you can listen to at least the 1st 3 hours of the Infowars Alex Jones Show 2/17/2023.
In an hour or so it’ll be posted at Banned.Video commercial free, saving you time. Just have a note pad handy so you can copy the CV19 & CV19 Fauci/Biden mRNA research papers location & you can view much of the real research for yourself.
On the full commercial show the mid 2nd hour had some stuff I’m interested & I’m going back to finish my notes on locations.
Have a nice weekend.
“I hope you choke on your own spit !”
Rih ram…
“What did you say ?”
Rih red rih ram.
“…a chain-link fence to stop mosquitos…”
“The virus that causes COVID-19 is about 0.1 micrometer in diameter. (A micrometer (µm) is one one-thousandth of a millimeter.) The holes in woven cloth are visible to the naked eye and may be five to 200 micrometers in diameter. It is counter-intuitive that cloth can be useful in this setting — it’s been compared to putting up a chain-link fence to stop mosquitoes. However, that analogy is wrong in many ways.”
– The Conversation.com
Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study
Medical professionals, isolated environment, and virtually exhaustible capital.
That said, the physics and social dynamics are even less hospitable to the trans/sci authoritarian cause.
Hospitals and doctors offices retain the misguided mask mandates. It’d be nice for employees, especially employees, but also patients to get rid of the mandates which are gone from everywhere else.
It is far worse than anyone realizes. Democrats in Congress, DHS, FBI, DOJ, CIA, MSM,…they all hate Americans and despise the US Constitution.
JOE ROGAN: Has anything been surprising to you?
MATT TAIBBI: Going into it, I thought that the relationship between these security agencies like the FBI and DHS, and companies like Twitter and Facebook was a little less formal. I thought maybe they had an advisory role. What we find is that it is very formalized.
They have a really intense structure that they’ve worked out over a period of years, where they have regular meetings, they have a system where the DHS handles censorship requests that come up from the states and the FBI handles the international ones, and they all flood all these companies. It is a big bureaucracy. I don’t think we expected to see that.
JOE ROGAN: It is very bizarre to me that they would openly call for censorship in emails. Private transmissions — but ones that are easily duplicated, you can send them to other people, it can easily get out. They’re so comfortable with the idea that the government should be involved in this censorship of what turns out to be true information, especially in the case of the Hunter Biden laptop… that they would send it in emails.
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, I think that shows you the mentality. They really, genuinely felt that they were impregnable and they don’t have anyone to answer to. A normal person doesn’t put incriminating things in emails because we all have the expectation that someday it might come out. These folks didn’t act that way.
I was especially shocked by an email from a staffer for Adam Schiff, the [Democratic] California Congressman, where they are just outright saying, “We would like you to suspend the accounts of this journalist and anybody who retweets information about this committee.” This is a member of Congress, right?
Professor Turley Writes:
“My interest in the story, as usual, focuses on free speech”.
…………………………………………
One gets the sneaking suspicion that Turley means, “Free speech for anti-science skeptics.
The idea being that anti-science skeptics are a group we should, in all fairness, listen to. Because they were ‘right’ to question mask mandates, according the linked Fox News story.
Though one is left to wonder if that study Fox News highlights is really accepted by the science community. It seems it might have been a national news story had scientific peers embraced it.
Yet Professor Turley would have us believe this study confirms that face masks were just a big joke on the country. This narrative conveniently gives intellectual cover to anyone questioning science.
You label them anti-science because they have the temerity to disagree with the Democratic Party line. They are, in fact, scientists using data and scientific training to posit a different path. You Marxists are all the same, generation after generation. Disagreement shall not be tolerated.
Regarding Above:
This commenter imagines that Scientists conspire with Democrats to jerk people around with needless mandates as a form of Marxist control.
Regarding above:
The commenter is bitter no one sent xim a Valentines Day card, hence their needling mandated Marxist talking points to overcome unrequited love
❤️😂🏳️🌈
Those on the left are the most anti-science arround.
When actual science conflicts with their ideology it is science that must give.
Jan 2023 was -0.04C BELOW the average temp since 1979.
John Say says, “Climate Change is a hoax because January was cold this year”.
Read what I have actually written and do not put words into my mouth.
“Climate Change” is a tautology – Through the 4B year history of the earth Climate has always changed.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is a HOAX. And not just because January was cold this year.
It was not where I live. It was not in europe for which we all can be thankful as a bad winter in Europe would have been a real catastrophy. Regardless the warm winter in Europe and in parts of the US is WEATHER, it is also natural variability.
Just as Droughts and forest fires and floods, and all the other nonsense that the high priests of warmendom use to try to terrify people are NONE of these are following any unusual pattern.
It is not just Jan 2023 that was globally cold. It is the trend line.
Jan 2023 was not colder than Jan 2022 or jan 2021. It was colder than the average global temp since 1979.
Since 1998 there has been little or no warming trend. From 1750 to the present the average warming trend has been 0.11C/decade. From 1970-1998 that trend increases 0.02-0.03 or to 0.13-0.14C/decade. But since 1998 the Trend has been 0 or possibly even barely negative. The long term trend from 1970 to the present is back to the natural rate of 0.11C/decade.
This is far far less than warmist predictions.
The earth is not cooperating with Warmists.
We are well past honest scientists making inaccurate predictions.
but
We your theory is greater than 2.5 std dev away from reality it has been FALSIFIED and it is time to rethink your hypothesis.
Failure to do so means you are engaging in a HOAX.
That the climate changes constantly is a given. A huge clue that we were dealing with a HOAX was the change from CAGW – Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming to “Climate Change”. That is the typical word games of the left.
The Climate has ALWAYS changed – constantly. One of the massive problems with the “hockey Stick” is that it should have been rejected instantly based on the claim that for 2000 years climate did NOT change. That is an obviously absurd result that REQUIRED an explanation that was never provided. We can fight over the over 3500 papers providin evidence that the MWP was GLOBAL and warmer than the present – but it was ABSURD – a HOAX to claim that we had 2000 years of unchanging climate until recently. Only a fool would buy that.
Who is man that you are mindful of him ?
The total energy consumed by humans from the begining of time is equivalent to a few days work of that of an average hurricane.
Please count this as a downvote for Anonymous.
They disagree with science.
Thank You. You have provided a rational representation for your position. The hysteria for “Global Warming” morphed into “Climate Change” when their overwrought modelled predictions failed to materialize. The current label for fear mongering is less assailable since almost nobody believes that the climate is static. Now the world looks to their most popular apologist Greta from Sweden, a self anointed Anne Frank for the Global disaster community. The teenage prophetess preaching the unabated horrors of our dystopian future on the basis of her nightmares. Perhaps she is correct and the “Sky is falling” however as you pointed out it may not be falling as catastrophically as the so called scientific alarmists have predicted.
“Though one is left to wonder if that study Fox News highlights is really accepted by the science community.”
Can we give them a call and see, or do you want to @ them? When I ask 411 how I can contact The Science Community they just laugh at me 🙁
Please do not speak for us. At least not for me. No, I don’t agree this Prof. Turley would have us believe that face masks were just a big joke on the country. But they were. On the world. Lots of companies (ergo peeps) made beaucoup money off the covid mandates. Lots of people had their lives and careers destroyed in order to keep the money flowing to Big Pharma and Big Healthcare Companies.
he speaks for no one, not even himself. He, like Gigi, are cultists, gleefully copying and pasting talking points as fed by their handlers. They are just pawns, or in this case, canon fodder, if even that
Using the term “anti-science” presumes that there is actual established “science” to oppose. Some, like you, want to believe that a scientific standard exists and questioning that standard is outside science. Your bias exudes the “Intellectual Cover” you describe.
I grew up with parents (and their colleagues) who were scientists. This was their profession, to which, unsurprisingly, they brought their humanity. Humanity comprised of fallibilty, compassion, bad hair days, annoying blind spots, and emotional decisions based on a very-human lifetime of experiences. These are scientists, all of them, so keep that in mind when defining The Science.
See, you have the freedom to sound as ridiculous as you wish. Just because you refuse to believe you’ve been fooled doesn’t change the fact that you were.
Here’s the little kicker Turley conveniently fails to discuss from this piece that came from his employer Fox “fake” News:
“However, Dr. Marc Siegel, professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, pointed out a KEY limitation: “The researchers focus primarily on randomized trials, but most of the studies that have been done on masks are population studies,” he said.
“There are very few randomized trials on masks.”
In a randomized trial, researchers place participants in different groups and observe the results in a controlled environment.
By contrast, population-based studies measure outcomes in a “real-world” setting.
In April 2020, the CDC called on all Americans — even very young children — to mask up against the coronavirus.
The study authors did admit to some limitations and a risk of bias, including the low number of people who followed mask guidance and the wide variation of outcomes.
“The results might change when further evidence becomes available,” they wrote.
Dr. Siegel said he has never supported mask mandates.”
Randomized trials are the gold standard when it comes to proving cause and effect. And, the “doctor” who is quoted is opposed to mask mandates AND is a “Fox News medical contributor”. When there is a “controlled environment”, steps are taken to be sure that masks are used correctly and consistently, critical elements that aren’t there when you don’t have a “controlled environment”. These steps ensure that the proper conclusions are valid. So, as usual, we have cherry-picked information that is incomplete that has serious limitations that are never discussed, promoted by Turley, all to feed into the culture wars Fox loves to promote. All for the disciples.
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
The Cochrane Library recently updated its 2020 systematic review of physical interventions to reduce respiratory illnesses. The update included an additional 11 randomized controlled trials, bringing the total number of RCTs included to 78
As in its 2020 review, they found no evidence to support the use of surgical face masks or N95 respirators to prevent influenza or COVID-19 infection
The relative risk reduction of using surgical masks in the general population (within hospitals and communities at large) to reduce symptoms of flu-like/COVID-like illness (not lab confirmed) was a statistically insignificant 0.95
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
“Six of the 11 new RCTs were conducted during the COVID pandemic and looked at the spread of COVID-19 specifically.
Still No Evidence to Back Surgical Mask Recommendations…
“The Cochrane investigators concluded that, while there’s ‘uncertainty about the effects of face masks’ due to trial bias and low adherence by participants, the pooled results of randomized controlled trials ‘did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.’”
Very early on with this insanity, I started looking at the studies. There are dozens of them in all kinds of settings, some very controlled in healthcare situations. If you want “settled science,” it’s this: For respiratory illnesses like flu and covid, MASKS DON’T WORK.
Gigi – It appears that 12 out of 12 studies found that masks were virtually useless. Even if the studies were not perfect, they establish a presumption as to the correctness of their conclusions. It would be “unscientific” to reject their findings. Those of you “control freaks” who defend mask mandates as being “scientific” need to explain why Sweden, which never imposed a general mask mandate, had better survival rates than most countries that did impose such mandates. [“Mask mandates were never an issue, for the simple reason that Sweden, like the other Nordic nations, does not believe that mass wearing of cloth masks does anything of significance to stop the spread of a respiratory virus – a virus that will spread until sufficient herd immunity has been achieved. Although a political change did result in vaccine mandated travel, common sense soon regained control, and the useless and divisive mandates came to a merciful end. In all, 6,000 people died in a total population of 10,000,000. That is a rate that is lower than most of the heavily locked down European nations, such as Britain, Italy and France.” https://fcpp.org/ 2022/06/21/ sweden-did-it-right-we-did-it-wrong-reprise/ ]
If there aren’t controls present to ensure that masks are: 1. used correctly–covering mouth and nose; and 2. used consistently, the results are useless.
When covid was at its supposed height, I used to love asking someone who supposedly had tested positive, what test they used to confirm their diagnosis. If they said PCR, I would then ask, what CT count did they use on their test? I would get a blank look. It amazed me how many people didn’t know or ask what their testing was.
And, like a good little disciple, you think you know as much as doctors, nurses and scientists because of some garbage you got off of alt-right news, part of whose message is to convince disciples that they’re just as smart as scientists.
If masks work, why don’t masks work?
If vaccinations work, why don’t vaccinations work?
Herd immunity works.
Herd immunity takes time.
____________________
Government has no “emergency powers” other than those which are derived from the suspension of habeas corpus; habeas corpus may only be suspended during rebellion or invasion.
The American people are free, which requires self-reliance.
Mass hysteria is not a panacea.
Private sector, non-governmental and charitable organizations may solicit funding and serve people’s individual and particular needs.
“Herd immunity works.” True. Unfortunately, CDC, WHO and other “officials” mandated herd-mentality, instead.
Excellent