COVID Masks

Masks for stopping COVID defies science. Masking for COVID was a sham that defied the science and destroyed the credibility of the CDC and all that supported them. This was made worse by politicians mandating them, that may have made COVID worse. It divided America between the informed/skeptical, and the blind following left that ignored the science. ℹ️ Info           ~ Aristotle Sabouni Created: 2020-12-04

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Alt-Science

Left	Right
COVID Masks - people caught COVID despite no known direct contact: so it is particulate based, transmitted through surfaces, and asymptomatic spread, and Masks (and Mask mandates) save lives.	Asymptomatic spread is rare, COVID is transmitted through aerosols (not surface/particulates), that's why it spread through unknown contact. Thus masks had little positive effect and many negative ones: distracting us from more effective action and dividing America (causing infighting) between the informed/skeptical and the blind following Karen's.

Mask Lies

Masks for stopping COVID defied science, but the people least informed on what science it (skepticism and critical thinking) would berate and harass anyone that knew more than them, and chose not to wear a mask.

• Some bad studies show masks work. A few places had lower caseloads and wore masks. Tada! Of course other places wore/required masks and had higher caseloads. And the places with lower caseloads, were only temporarily lower, and spiked higher later -- it was only evidence that people go inside during the summer in the South, and wait until fall to do that in the North and West. All they proved was a cherry picking fallacy. They didn't pass reasonable scrutiny.

N95/PPE is ineffective against COVID, don't use them (Fauci 02/2020).

Truth: N95 were effective in clinical settings. Faucci lied and later claimed he only lied because "he didn't want consumers doing a run on the supply". As if that makes the lie OK.

Fauci showed contemptuous elitism towards the America Public. All he had to say, is that in short term exposure, with custom fitting and property training, N95 helps. But they do nothing for the general public. But these other things do help...

• Cloth Masks help prevent COVID (Fauci 03/2020). Truth: Cloth Masks were widely studied on Coronaviruses before COVID, and virtually all studies showed they were useless or detrimental. Fauci was privately admitting that. They were called "talismans" that gave a false sense of security. But Publicly Fauci was telling people they would help, knowing that it could make things worse, and that it caused counter-productive mandates, and division between the army of sheep (Branch COVIDians) and the informed.

Studies show Cloth Masks work.

Truth: all good studies showed no positive effects. A few studies with laughably bad methodology disagreed -- but no serious scientist gave them much credit; they existed to obfuscate and give politicians cover.

How it worked: Some bad studies claim to show through inference that masks work, because a few place had lower case loads and wore masks -- but they ignore other better reasons for fewer cases and ignore outliers that prove them wrong. Other better studies/papers contradict the efficacy (especially before the politics of COVID), and credible places call them more placebos or "talisman's" -- good for politics or confidence but little else. If the cloth masks worked against COVID, then cities, states or countries with masks mandates would outperform those that didn't. You can cherry pick places that had fewer cases and mask mandates (but it's nearly impossible to isolate it to masks as the cause and not other things), and other places that were disastrous despite mask mandates (like Belgium) which proves that they are not a prime contributor to slowing the disease. We know that most people that got COVID were mask wearers. (The CDC says >85%, but other studies show U.S. compliance is closer to 93% and we still had a second outbreak). There is a lot of evidence that masks may actually exacerbate issues: touching, talking louder, getting closer and repeating yourself, false security, moist place for virus to survive, all contribute to increased risk, not decreases.

The problem wasn't the initial ignorance/fear reaction. I give them a little more leeway in Spring of 2020.

By summer/fall of 2020 the data was well in that masks weren't working. But the far-left refused to learn and just doubled-down. OBEY! It took until April 18, 2022 before they lifted the mask mandates that were known ineffective since April 18, 2020. Two years of completely unnecessary harm and bullying.

By January of 2021 they were so committed that Heir Biden enacted the mandates on Planes, Federal Buildings and so on. As the evidence against them got stronger, they got more determined to remain ignorant and authoritarian. The censorship of "disinformation" (and the people sharing it) which was really inconvenient facts, got worse. That was the problem -- the left became a death-cult of ignorance. The more the facts proved them wrong, the more shrill they got to anyone pointing it out.

Masks didn't work

BonginoReport
Biden COVID Czar admits what we've known all along

The point is not that my cherry picking is better or worse than the other sides. The point is that real science doesn't cherry pick. If I can cherry pick examples where the hypothesis that masks help failed, then it proves that masks aren't a panacea. You don't make laws of nature/science and then say, "we're going to ignore the cases where our law doesn't work". That's not science.

California required masks earlier and harder than Texas

California had more cases, more deaths, and a worse curve than Texas early on with the mask mandates than Texas without.

Later Texas did add mask mandates, and when the second wave came, they exceeded California a little. But that's the point, if masks worked, then there would be no second wave at all.

Some states never issues mask requirements, othered only did very late.

Many of the places without mandates well outperformed places that had stricter and earlier mandates.

Iowa, South Dakota never enacted a mandate 20 states issues them very, very late Again, some of that changed in the second wave, but the second wave hit the places with mask mandates as well. And the excuse for why it hit fresh places harder was because the other places had more herd immunity (to slow the rate), not because of mandates.

There are many countries that never did mask requirements, or did it in certain locations, or never enforced it.

They had lower cases than places that required them early and hard like the UK, Germany, France, Belguim, Portugal, Spain, and so on.

Nordic Countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland), Iceland, Ireland, Japan, China were late, limited or never. Places like Belguim, Peru, Spain, Italy, all had mask mandates and dramatically underperformed places with none or lackluster mandates that weren't enforced. Belgium had mask mandates and death rates a few times ours, while we had no mandates. Later, we enacted them, and our death rates kept climbing.

2022.12.22 Biden's COVID Tzar

Finally admits the science, "there is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well"...

https://hotair.com/headlines/2022/12/22/biden-covid-czar-no-study-in-the-world-that-shows-masks-work-that-well-n519619 https://rumble.com/v21wmde-biden-covid-czar-finally-admits-the-truth-about-masks.html

2023.01.30 Cochrane Library

Did a metastudy of masks and determined that (a) they never worked well acccording to the Studies (b) the CDC had lied (exaggerated) their efficacy beyond reason, likely becuase it fit their political agenda.

https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-interventions-interrupt-or-reduce-spread-respiratory-viruses https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36715243/ https://nypost.com/2023/02/07/the-cdc-grossly-exaggerated-the-evidence-for-mask-mandates/ https://nypost.com/2023/02/14/face-masks-made-little-to-no-difference-in-preventing-covid-study/

Why?

• Remember, masks are there to prevent your sneezes or spreach spray (assuming you're asymptomatic) from spreading to other people accidentally. Only, how many people catch COVID this way at all? The answers is virtually none. In 305 observations of people that came in contact with asymptomatic but COVID positive people (not wearing masks) only one case might have caught it. (And it's just as likely they got it from a different vector).

• Even if masks did help with one factor, the question is whether the negatives of wearing a mask outweigh it. ANY of these things (and dozens of others), could defeat the theoretical benefits of wearing a mask. What are some of those factors:
  1. People that wear masks have false confidence, so participate in riskier behaviors
  2. They get closer to others in order to be heard (and false confidence)
  3. They speak louder, which projects more particles
  4. They repeat themselves more (extending exposure)
  5. They pull the masks down sometimes (defeating them), often the 3rd time they weren't understood -- so they are speaking louder and closer -- now without a mask
  6. They touch the masks, and then their face (which transmit pathogens more than not wearing them)
  7. Imagine you go into a bathroom with fecal bacteria landing on a nice moist mask to grow/spread on... yummy
     
     

So again, the honest admit what we know: in other pathogens like SARS-1 or the Flu, masks had no positive effects and some negative ones. (Which is why the CDC and WHO both recommended against them inititally). We weren’t 100% sure that SARS-2 is exactly like SARS-1 or other resperatory viruses... it’s just highly likely that it is, and mountains of evidence that it was behaving the same, should outweigh an irrational fear that it is not.

What about mask studies?

I’ve read about 2 dozen studies on the topic. The fake ones (bad science) can be classified in the following ways:

1. Single aspect like studying droplet dispersion through masks.
2. Cherry picking — they look at some countries that had better outcomes, and wore masks, and compare them to some countries that had worse and did. But they ignore many outliers, and all the factors that went into the outcomes besides masks. (These are political hit jobs)
3. Models/speculative — they project that based on either a single factor (like the single aspect), or based on really bad cherry picking, that masks may help.
   
   

None of those are real science, those are politics.

The real science studies are the ones that tried to do large scale comparisons in the real world with control groups and people wearing masks or not. All those were done long ago and take a lot of time. Those virtually all showed that cloth masks don’t work. Most show that surgical masks and others don’t help in non-clinical settings.

What some dishonest people do is link to studies that showed that N95 masks or surgical masks do help, in clinical settings, by trained personnel and project that out to the real world and non-trained people using cloth masks. Those people are either idiots, partisans, or outright dishonest.

Conclusion

My points are:

• Initially, the evidence was against cloth masks and gators
• The evidence the Mask propents had was weak studies that real scientists could see through (cherry picked data). While large observational studies show that they didn't really work in the real world — they’re a placebo at best. Often more likely to make things worse because of false confidence.
• When scientists or others complained about the weak data for Masks or stronger data against, the left bullied them, called them science deniers, censored them in the media and social media. They fired them, some places locked them up (criminalizing freedom of choice).
• They couldn't allow exceptions where it made sense. Even though math/science/logic tells you the opposite. (Fully tested, non-contagious people or those with perior immunity/vaccines) should have been free to skip masks.
• But the agenda was political, not scientific. Centralized control/conformity and ideological compliance; so they saw masks as a way to exert force, so they found or manufactured evidence to support it. It had to be one-size-fits-all or it wasn't fitting the political agenda.
• We know this because those spouting the benefits of masks are usually more political than rational. They say stupid things like:
  1. they aren’t needed if you’re burning shit down or rioting, but you aren’t safe with masks in church or school (political agenda).
  2. At the grocery store they’re 100% effective, but not at the polling booth and that's why we needed mail in voting (political agenda).
  3. Teachers can’t feel safe wearing them so shouldn’t have to teach, but that everyone else should feel confidence with them ( political agenda).

That’s politics — and it’s destroyed the credibility of Branch COVIDians that are out there pretending that masks are proven to help... when they weren't.

🗒️ Note:
Wear a mask or not. I wore one out of courtesy to the ignorance of others — unless they started demanding it. Then I got passive aggressive. I wore cheesecloth mask. A doctor of infectious diseases I met was wearing a fishnet one and explained just as effective as the cloth ones or gators. But you couldn't reason with the far-left. Just like always.

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🔗 More

COVID COVID-19 (for COrona VIrus Disease circa 2019 or SARS-CoV-2) was a pandemic/opportunity for the left to seize liberty/power from the masses.

COVID Experts Our "experts" and agencies that we poured billions into failed miserably at their charters.

Branch COVIDians COVIDiots are the enthusiastic Enforcers of any superstitious remedy they've been sold by political operatives.

COVID Lies The public was lied to. Those lies advantaged some politicians and elites, and have undermined the public trust.

🔗 Links

• Study where they admit they are "Talismans": https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmp2006372

Tags: COVID  COVID-FAIL  Branch COVIDIANS  COVID Lies