Los Angeles Times Bitterly Clings to Mask Mandates and Decries “Covid Deniers”
Meanwhile, Google is obfuscating searches on the new Cochrane Study that suggests mask mandates ‘did nothing’
The “experts” have been wrong so often about their policies and assertions about the covid virus that there have been pleas for a “pandemic amnesty.”
I would like now to take a look at one of my predictions about covid, related to the use of masks that was published in the autumn of 2020.
There are numerous other rules for good mask-wearing, including laundering after use. However, how many people actually grab a clean, fresh mask every time they use one? How many people properly launder (i.e., use bleach if washing by hand).
Californians have lived with mask mandates for over 6 months now. Perhaps it is a good time to review if they are working. A group of researchers, including A.J. Kay, author of “The Curve Is Already Flat,” graphed the timing of the mask mandates and COVID-19 deaths, showing a steep rise following their implementation.
…There has been a great deal of debate if masks prevent the spread of the coronavirus. However, the real question should be, “Do the strict mask mandates work?” They don’t.
Tom Jefferson, an Oxford epidemiologist, and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The Cochrane Study, as its now known, conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries.
The conclusions, which were summed up by Jefferson in The New York Times as part of an op-ed written by Bret Stephens is that mask mandates did nothing.
The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?
“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?
“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”
So when a leading epidemiologist sums up a detailed review of a massive body of work and asserts mask mandates didn’t make a difference, the case is closed.
Not so fast. Not if you are Big Tech or Big Media, perhaps enjoying some connections to Big Pharma and/or Big Government.
In my quest to get information, I was limited in my search by this “helpful” suggestion from Google.
Then, I stumbled upon the Los Angeles Times‘ hot take on The New York Times op-ed.
In a nutshell, the author of that op-ed, Michael Hiltzik, neglects to mention the actual conclusion of the Oxford epidemiologist and bitterly clings to limited studies in his defense of mask mandates.
Among them are a study of an outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, where sailors lived and worked in close quarters, which found that masks produced a 70% reduced risk of infection.
Another study of 33,000 pupils in eight school districts in Massachusetts found an infection rate of 11.7% for unmasked and 1.7% for masked children.
During the 2021 outbreak of the Delta strain of COVID, outbreaks were 3½ times more likely in schools without masking rules compared with those with the mandates.
As an added bonus, Hilzik complains about “right-wingers” and “covid deniers” in a spectacularly elitist screed.
New research by Canadian scientists recently published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology suggests that rates for covid may be close to endemic levels. Given the adherence to mask mandates in the early stages of the pandemic, if those policies had worked, we would not have reached this stage.
Two conclusions:
1) Wear masks if you wish, but don’t expect population-level mask mandates to work against an airborne virus that may have been genetically enhanced to be extra-sticky to human respiratory tissue.
2) I was right, again.
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Comments
Granting that I have a somewhat morbid sense of humor. But I had to chuckle a bit. Earlier today on another site I saw where there is a Satanists Convention going on back east. And that they are requiring that all attendees be fully vaccinated against COVID and wear masks at all times.
It seems to be a similar stand by the LA Times.
“something, something, the mark of the beast”. 😉
Subotai Bahaduir
Attendees might consider ditching the masks, taking deep breaths, licking the door knobs, catching COVID, dying, and spending eternity in the presence of their “god.”
Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study
Medical professionals, isolated environment, virtually inexhaustible resources. Your results may vary.
That said, the physics of porta-petri dishes, viral collectors, dust clothes, CO2 rebreathers, are equally damning. Could’ve had a sealed respirator, and for granny, and baby, too.
Fourth Estate brayers. Steering engines. Caveat emptor.
They are desperate to cling to the mask and jab ideology b/c if they didn’t they would be forced to admit they were wrong the whole time. Which of course they were. No cracks allowed in the totalitarian armor of ideology. This occurred despite many of us telling them they wrong the whole time they demonized everyone who disagreed or refused to comply with their unscientific foolishness.
I am so old I remember an NEJM article which said that masks only worked in enclosed spaces where one was exposed to a WuFlu positive patient for 10 minutes. Other than that, they were only effective at possibly reducing anxiety. As soon as that paper was pulled I knew it was all bogus.
I live to the east of LA. There’s an awful lot of SIGNS about how masks are required, but 95% of people don’t even pretend to wear masks, and most of the other 5% are employees that are clearly forced to do it.
The only people pretending masks to jackshit at this point are politicians and the insane leftist doctors.
I saw pep[;e walking around with bandanas over their face — like stage coach robbers in the movies — and that was accepted as compliance with the mandate. What these power hungry bureaucrats did to the USA is criminal. And they will walk away with their fat retirements, unscathed.
I would chat with people and call it “Bandits Anonymous”.
I did the same thing. My ‘mask’ was a neck gaiter so thin I could put it over my eyes and still be able to see.
That’s how you knew there wasn’t a shred of actual science behind it.
They knew that they could not provide enough actual masks to people, and the only way a mandate could work would be if they let people slap literally ANY piece of cloth over their faces and have it be called a ‘mask’.
A mandate based on SCIENCE would have looked like, ‘You must wear a mask that is either made of A material of no less than X thickness, or of B material no less than Y thickness’. But they couldn’t do that, because they knew that they would have to justify those numbers, and it couldn’t be done.
That’s what demonstrated the whole thing was crap to begin with, when they provided no actual scientific standard and instead just screamed about WEAR THE MASK.
Better, and I did this on purpose, I used to keep an airsoft mask in my car for times that I could not avoid going into a place that required masks. That mask is very clearly a painted metal mesh with about and eighth of an inch gap between the different strands of the mesh. You can see a person’s face through the mask when they wear it. I would wear that, openly mocking their BS requirement, and nobody said a damn thing.
I bought a neck gaiter with “HEALTH THEATRE” on it, and wore it exclusively.
It didn’t stop Covid but it did stop development of young kids. Greatest medically induced disaster in history. Over at Doximity, docs are gloating over a narrowly defined study dissing IVM when the main alternative use was with zinc and Vit D rather than just an antiviral properties in the study. Then we add on the destruction of peoples’ lives and livelihood with forced lockdowns, closure of businesses and for all intent and purpose… destruction of the world before 2020 and replace it with 1984 Lite. Masks are as good as chain link fence to stop mosquitoes.
This really cements the idea that that masks are nothing more than SS armbands.
At the county council meeting where they mandated masks in my county, I took 6 specially-made masks and handed out 4 of them. They had swastikas embroidered on the front and they went to the county council members that voted for the mask mandate. They were told to wear them with pride, as they had earned them.
“In my quest to get information, I was limited in my search by this “helpful” suggestion from Google.”
The minute you see that, go DIRECTLY to duckduckgo.com or search.brave.com and get the unfiltered skinny.
I had to do that yesterday to find out exactly what Scott Adams said.
In fact, why not just go there by default and bypass the Alphabet Censors totally.
The Duckduckgo v Google polical search issue is something everyone needs to experience. Google is COMPLETELY censored.
There were no studies that policymakers relied on for the mask mandates – or any of the Wuhan virus dictats. Proof and scientific justifications were the glaring omissions from each and every illegal dictat issued from political figures and other officials. THey never cited any studies. The best they ever did was talk about hospitals being overrun, which never even happened, save 3 or 4 hospitals in New York City at the height of their hysteria (and in addition to the fact that hospitals get overrun every year that the flu is bad). Aside from that, no evidence was ever cited by anyone issuing their un-Constitutional rules emulating the Communist Chinese.
The most glaring example was that, in the very, very beginning, we had the Diamond Princess data. It was excellent data, centered around a worst case scenario and completely isolated (as it was on the sea on a ship!). It was universally ignored by policymakers as they declared house arrest for whole populations and the closure of every small business.
Even in New York, it was not as bad as that. There were multiple temporary hospitals that were hardly utilized, plus the hospital ship that mostly went to waste.
Sent by Trump! I think the ship had 0 patients and the Javits Center only ever saw 12 patients, or something like that.
They did have some nice theater with the refrigerated trailers parked all down the street for the makeshift morgue. Of course, nothing ever materialized from that, the trailers just drove off in the middle of the night, and no one ever mentioned anything about it, again.
The one piece of hard data that Cuomo offered, while issuing his crazy, illegal megalomaniac dictats, was the paper mache “Mountain of Death”, that looked like he stole it from an 11 year old’s science fair project.
We can see quite clearly now who the science deniers are, and it’s not the people they tried to say it was. If you cling to your mask in spite of all evidence, you deny the science as it stands.
Thankfully here in Florida we’re free of mask mandates, but I have to laugh at some people who are still wearing them. I see people walking alone outside in bright sunshine and warm temperatures wearing a mask. Do they think there are clouds of COVID particles that they might accidentally walk through?
The masks are security blankets for grownups.
Security blankets for DISTURBED grownups.
Our town’s local “cultural nonprofit,” that signs up traveling acts to perform in the town auditorium, were monsters about masking, showing proof of vax, etc., up until the beginning of this year, and were losing significant custom because of it. Last week I took the grandkid to hear the USAF Band of The Golden West because the teaser read “masking is optional.” Out of the entire auditorium, I saw TWO people with masks. This town was all over on masking long ago, and the tony liberal nonprofit panjandrums just were not getting the message.
What actually happened…
https://covidreason.substack.com/p/what-actually-happened-with-covid
Even if you have been vaxxed masks are purely for virtue signalling
Lost in the whole discussion of masks – and other mitigation protocols was an understanding of the “end game”.
the end game for every pandemic is for the virus to flame out/immunity is developed throughout the population. There never has been nor will there ever be another solution to a new respiratory virus. Covid is no different.
Masking (even if it did work) was never going to achieve the end game.
If masks and distancing worked, we would not need a vaccine.
If the vaccine worked, we would not need masks and distancing.