We have been hectored, harangued, and harassed into wearing masks, even though there is not one single, solitary, random controlled study that shows that they have ever worked. Not one.
But no matter. At the beginning of this pandemic, Dr. Fauci, the Oracle at Delphi to the regressive left, told 60 Minutes (on March 8), “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Nothing about the actual science regarding masks has changed one little tiny bit since then.
The governor of Connecticut, a Democrat (big surprise there) named Ned Lamont has now issued his 70th(!) executive order dealing with coronavirus. (Nothing says leadership like an endless stream of dictatorial mandates.) His latest edict mandates that anyone who leaves home without a mask is subject to a $100 fine. And get this - almost anybody in state government can hand these tickets out to miscreants like they were lottery tickets.
The Commissioner of Public Health, who has absolutely no legal enforcement powers, can fine people a C-note. So can local health directors, district health directors, municipal chief executive officers, and even public safety departments at institutions of higher education. As David Horowitz would put it, he has “e-mask-ulated” his entire population.
There might be some justification for this if masks actually worked. But they don’t. They never have, and they never will. In fact it is scientifically impossible for masks to work. If we “follow the science,” as pro-maskers yammer about incessantly, then we would cancel every mask mandate in the country today.
Here’s the actual science on masks and respiratory illness, as Daniel Horowitz writes:
"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...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."
In other words, the pores in masks are 30 times wider and bigger than the virus they’re supposed to catch. As one observer said, using a mask to protect yourself from a respiratory virus is like trying to stop a mosquito with a chain-link fence.
Here is information from the CDC, which is the Vatican of virology for anti-Trumpers. Last spring, after looking at 10 randomized controlled trials (the gold standard as far as Dr. Fauci is concerned), we have this: “[T]he 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."
If that’s not enough, how about this from The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford: “(It) 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.’”
Here’s some more from Horowitz’s article: Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell: the scientific evidence for mask-wearing to prevent COVID-19 is "astonishingly weak."
Netherlands Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark: "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."
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.”
Horowitz cites work by our own HHS, which concludes that wearing masks since they serve as bacteria traps, incubators, and transport devices for pathogens, might actually make you sick:
In June, HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funded a systemic review of all relevant randomized clinical trials (RCTs) on the effectiveness of mask-wearing in stopping respiratory infections and published the findings in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The conclusion was as clear as it is jarring to the current cult-like devotion to mask-wearing. "Review of RCTs indicates that N95 respirators and surgical masks are probably associated with similar risk for influenza-like illness and laboratory-confirmed viral infections in high- and low-risk settings."
HHS looked at eight trials with over 6,000 participants and concluded:
“Compared with no masks, surgical masks were not associated with decreased risk for clinical respiratory illness, influenza-like illness, or laboratory-confirmed viral illness in household contacts when masks were worn by household contacts, index cases, or both."
Quebec’s public health director, Horacio Arruda, said, 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."
Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious disease doctor at UCLA, said wearing masks is all psychological, not physiological, biological, or scientific. Masks “only make you feel better.”
In other words, our manic obsession with masks is a matter of political science, not actual science. It’s voodoo virology, not real virology.
This is how Horowitz concludes his article:
“We have become emasculated as a society. We have become a people who are willing to surrender every morsel of our liberty at the ever-changing and capricious whims of ‘public health officials,’ even when they are appallingly contradictory and without any evidence justifying the 180-degree U-turn ... our passivity has allowed our entire country to become a Halloween nightmare masquerade every day, with no end in sight.”
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