Wow -- what an amazing, well-written piece. Thank you for writing it and compiling all the references therein. A question in you be interested in is, though, is what is the deep 'why"? Why masks? And why has this been so persistent, when it is so obviously irrational and not supported by either short-term/small-radius data, or long-term mandates? That answer can only be found by stepping into The Matrix. Here you go: https://empathy.guru/2021/07/19/the-structural-memetics-of-masks/
Great work – thank you. Masks were not invented two years ago. It's easy to find photographs of masked surgeons from the early 20th Century. If they are so effective, why have they not been required every flu season for the past 100 years? Didn't anybody care about Grandma before 2020?
Reading this article made me think of the needless conflict surrounding mandatory masks. It's heartbreaking the frustration of mandates has resulted in innocent lives being taken. Essential workers shouldn't have to enforce something that isn't even proven to work! Not to mention masks making it easier for criminals to blend in while committing crimes like home robberies.
Yet, in Australia the police will fine and treat you with unusual and cruel force for not wearing a mask and the public has been trained by the government, elite and media to cheer on these actions against the “unclean” rule breakers. It’s so depressing.
Thank you so much for this. I just went through three published studies for my own Substack and am so disheartened by the thoughtless groupthink and complete abandonment of scientific principles that were in action up until two years ago. And I wrote about MacIntyre 2015, but didn’t know that he semi-retracted it. That makes me even sadder, since apart from Danmask that was the best RCT I could find.
Thank you for writing this. I have also been utterly confused about our policies for the last 18 months. Where rational thought, cost/benefit analysis and the like were thrown out the window in favor of a talisman (the ever effective cloth mask) that MIGHT do something.
The images from the Met Gala, political dinners, etc. only further prove how little masks matter. Only the servant class have to wear them now - the elites know they're useless. But the public still laps it up.
Excellent review of the key studies and figures in the mask psychosis. I like how you line up the 'evolving' sCiEnCe with the politics of governments that felt they had to be seen as doing something.
But how to explain nearly two years of NPI and vax madness? My default position is to blame emergent phenomena from the fear-induced mass psychosis. However, I can't not see that bad actors are squeezing dollars and power from the self-immolation of our societies and wonder if some were involved in its planning.
Superb dissection of the almost inexplicable passion for masking by scientists EVEN when the science does not support it. My brief thoughts on *follow the science* w/a most excellent video by Vinay Prassad.
Two big studies, one of which was an RCT out of India, late last summer put cloth mask efficacy against COVID @ 10%. You don't build a mask mandate campaign around 10% efficacy, people! Can you imagine the lack of trust if the mRNA vaccines were 10% effective? No one in their right mind would have taken them.
In addition, Fauci himself stated at the start of the pandemic that these types of masks are nothing more than facial decorations. FYI, he was speaking in the context of stopping the spread of a global pandemic of a respiratory virus. Why did he say that? The most likely reason is that the prior 30+ years of research on the subject had already concluded that they simply aren't effective.
But, why are they not effective? The reason is very simple. First and foremost, ANY sized droplets you come into contact with will get on the exterior of the mask and very likely on your face and even directly on your hands. Unless you immediately dispose of all masks you wear and sanitize your hands and face, then your chances of catching the virus go up astronomically to the high end of the 0% to 100% scale. It's that simple, people!
And all of the data suggests that COVID-19 has an IFR of less than .5% and most likely as low as .2%, or 2 deaths per 1,000 infections. We're at the point now where about 25% of American's have caught COVID twice in the last two years and at least 95% of the population has caught it once. The vaccines should have been STRONGLY ENCOURAGED for people over 50 with one or more comorbidities, but there should never have been mandates, causing people to lose their jobs. And the reality is that Fauci and ANY half-brained epidemiologist knew this WELL in advance of the vaccines release a year after the initial cases were reported in China. It was sitting there in the data.
The biggest misinformation of all was the selling of the vaccines as creating an immunity from catching COVID, which again the people in the KNOW knew was not true. Yet, they all collectively said NOTHING!
And the biggest travesty of all is the world's unwillingness to hold China accountable. You can spend 10 minutes on the Internet reading extremely compelling, scientific reasons about why the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab which was controlled by the CCP. And the CCP are working on merging SARS (highly transmissible) with MERS (very deadly) into a super virus that has a mortality rate of at least 33%.
Wake the hell up, America! Nothing I'm saying is extreme or conspiracy theory-based.
hey there, i would like to translate your article into german and republish it on my blog. https://blog.bastian-barucker.de Would that be okay? Greetings Bastian Barucker
A year later and I think we're experiencing at least one consequence of universal masking: colds and RSV in young children. I'm currently recovering from the worst cold I've had in years (started in my head, moved to my chest), and I absolutely contribute that to masks.
I've got a very good immune system, but wasn't able to beat this one. It's kicking my butt. Is this something you're noticing too Steve?
The CDC/NIOSH doesn't even know that it is out of field to opine about masks affecting viral spread. The key question is how masks affect droplets' evaporation rate, which falls within the field of the Physics of Fluids.
I haven't studied masks or evaporation, but I am still in field because physics. There was a paper published in Jan. 2022 in "Nature" by some physicists (Goncalves, et. al.) which looked at the impact of absorbent material on the evaporation rate of droplets.
Being in field, I know when others aren't. Even if my degree is quite rusty. A rusty physics degree means that one has to take 5 minutes to get up to speed.
Isn't it strange that NIOSH did no studies on the evaporation rate of droplets which impacted masks?
But NIOSH didn't even know that it was out of field.
I think you seem to have the political act to grind, given how much of the work was taken out of context. For example, your quote from Klompas et al (2020) with the ellipsis betrayed the worst type of quote-mining.
"We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection... In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic."
The deleted sentences provided the context."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." Klompas et al were not arguing against indoor mask usage, they were arguing against outdoor mask usage . Shame on you, where is your academic integrity?
Wow -- what an amazing, well-written piece. Thank you for writing it and compiling all the references therein. A question in you be interested in is, though, is what is the deep 'why"? Why masks? And why has this been so persistent, when it is so obviously irrational and not supported by either short-term/small-radius data, or long-term mandates? That answer can only be found by stepping into The Matrix. Here you go: https://empathy.guru/2021/07/19/the-structural-memetics-of-masks/
This is so excellent it makes me want to cry.
Great work – thank you. Masks were not invented two years ago. It's easy to find photographs of masked surgeons from the early 20th Century. If they are so effective, why have they not been required every flu season for the past 100 years? Didn't anybody care about Grandma before 2020?
Reading this article made me think of the needless conflict surrounding mandatory masks. It's heartbreaking the frustration of mandates has resulted in innocent lives being taken. Essential workers shouldn't have to enforce something that isn't even proven to work! Not to mention masks making it easier for criminals to blend in while committing crimes like home robberies.
Yet, in Australia the police will fine and treat you with unusual and cruel force for not wearing a mask and the public has been trained by the government, elite and media to cheer on these actions against the “unclean” rule breakers. It’s so depressing.
Thank you so much for this. I just went through three published studies for my own Substack and am so disheartened by the thoughtless groupthink and complete abandonment of scientific principles that were in action up until two years ago. And I wrote about MacIntyre 2015, but didn’t know that he semi-retracted it. That makes me even sadder, since apart from Danmask that was the best RCT I could find.
Thank you for writing this. I have also been utterly confused about our policies for the last 18 months. Where rational thought, cost/benefit analysis and the like were thrown out the window in favor of a talisman (the ever effective cloth mask) that MIGHT do something.
The images from the Met Gala, political dinners, etc. only further prove how little masks matter. Only the servant class have to wear them now - the elites know they're useless. But the public still laps it up.
Excellent review of the key studies and figures in the mask psychosis. I like how you line up the 'evolving' sCiEnCe with the politics of governments that felt they had to be seen as doing something.
But how to explain nearly two years of NPI and vax madness? My default position is to blame emergent phenomena from the fear-induced mass psychosis. However, I can't not see that bad actors are squeezing dollars and power from the self-immolation of our societies and wonder if some were involved in its planning.
But, getting back to your article, Great Work!
Excellent review of the madness surrounding masking. Thank you!
I found this piece better than therapy. A calm,, rational, reasoned review sure brings down the cortisol levels. Thank you.
Superb dissection of the almost inexplicable passion for masking by scientists EVEN when the science does not support it. My brief thoughts on *follow the science* w/a most excellent video by Vinay Prassad.
https://twitter.com/JaniceBrauner/status/1441256871499755524
Two big studies, one of which was an RCT out of India, late last summer put cloth mask efficacy against COVID @ 10%. You don't build a mask mandate campaign around 10% efficacy, people! Can you imagine the lack of trust if the mRNA vaccines were 10% effective? No one in their right mind would have taken them.
In addition, Fauci himself stated at the start of the pandemic that these types of masks are nothing more than facial decorations. FYI, he was speaking in the context of stopping the spread of a global pandemic of a respiratory virus. Why did he say that? The most likely reason is that the prior 30+ years of research on the subject had already concluded that they simply aren't effective.
But, why are they not effective? The reason is very simple. First and foremost, ANY sized droplets you come into contact with will get on the exterior of the mask and very likely on your face and even directly on your hands. Unless you immediately dispose of all masks you wear and sanitize your hands and face, then your chances of catching the virus go up astronomically to the high end of the 0% to 100% scale. It's that simple, people!
And all of the data suggests that COVID-19 has an IFR of less than .5% and most likely as low as .2%, or 2 deaths per 1,000 infections. We're at the point now where about 25% of American's have caught COVID twice in the last two years and at least 95% of the population has caught it once. The vaccines should have been STRONGLY ENCOURAGED for people over 50 with one or more comorbidities, but there should never have been mandates, causing people to lose their jobs. And the reality is that Fauci and ANY half-brained epidemiologist knew this WELL in advance of the vaccines release a year after the initial cases were reported in China. It was sitting there in the data.
The biggest misinformation of all was the selling of the vaccines as creating an immunity from catching COVID, which again the people in the KNOW knew was not true. Yet, they all collectively said NOTHING!
And the biggest travesty of all is the world's unwillingness to hold China accountable. You can spend 10 minutes on the Internet reading extremely compelling, scientific reasons about why the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab which was controlled by the CCP. And the CCP are working on merging SARS (highly transmissible) with MERS (very deadly) into a super virus that has a mortality rate of at least 33%.
Wake the hell up, America! Nothing I'm saying is extreme or conspiracy theory-based.
hey there, i would like to translate your article into german and republish it on my blog. https://blog.bastian-barucker.de Would that be okay? Greetings Bastian Barucker
A year later and I think we're experiencing at least one consequence of universal masking: colds and RSV in young children. I'm currently recovering from the worst cold I've had in years (started in my head, moved to my chest), and I absolutely contribute that to masks.
I've got a very good immune system, but wasn't able to beat this one. It's kicking my butt. Is this something you're noticing too Steve?
P.s. thanks for another excellent piece!
Just found this post.
The CDC/NIOSH doesn't even know that it is out of field to opine about masks affecting viral spread. The key question is how masks affect droplets' evaporation rate, which falls within the field of the Physics of Fluids.
I haven't studied masks or evaporation, but I am still in field because physics. There was a paper published in Jan. 2022 in "Nature" by some physicists (Goncalves, et. al.) which looked at the impact of absorbent material on the evaporation rate of droplets.
Being in field, I know when others aren't. Even if my degree is quite rusty. A rusty physics degree means that one has to take 5 minutes to get up to speed.
Isn't it strange that NIOSH did no studies on the evaporation rate of droplets which impacted masks?
But NIOSH didn't even know that it was out of field.
I think you seem to have the political act to grind, given how much of the work was taken out of context. For example, your quote from Klompas et al (2020) with the ellipsis betrayed the worst type of quote-mining.
"We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection... In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic."
The deleted sentences provided the context."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." Klompas et al were not arguing against indoor mask usage, they were arguing against outdoor mask usage . Shame on you, where is your academic integrity?