Posted on 03/17/2021 7:33:55 AM PDT by fireman15
Some weeks ago, Pat Frank suggested that I might consider writing an essay about the efficacy of masks and mandates to wear masks during this pandemic. I hesitated doing so at first, but March 8th I noticed another research effort on the part of the CDC to justify masks as a prophylactic strategy.[1] This effort seems very deficient in my view and so this essay resulted. What I write here is a summary of a much larger work in progress.
Lincoln Moses and Frederick Mostellar long ago suggested that public policy be organized as experiments so that we might learn of its effectiveness, or lack thereof, and avoid successive failures.[2] When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived last spring, I wrote that we didn’t need to go through successive battles with exponential processes, but that we appeared not ready to gather useful data and evidence about the effectiveness of social distancing and other advice in this battle.[3] Considering the tendency of people to don a mask against all sorts of bad air is so universal that even screen writers employ it to add realism to a disaster scene, one would think we would know something about their effectiveness.[4] We do and we don’t. While I am told by some people employed in medicine along with many amateurs that masks are essential to controlling spread of SARS-COV-2; highly reputable authorities, many of them, thousands of them, make much more modest and even opposite claims.[5]
(Excerpt) Read more at wattsupwiththat.com ...
Masks are for protection of everyone else except the wearer...................
Big Brother wants you to wear a face mask.
Be a good little robot and comply, or else.
That’s just the excuse to justify forcing you to wear one.
They’ve destroyed our country. We are in a post holocaust world now. Our infrastructure is designed for a pre-holocaust world. When was the last time you climbed into a crowded elevator? When will it be allowed again?
I can’t remember the last time I was ever in an elevator, crowded or empty...................
^
One city where a mask requirement was enforced most stringently during the Spanish Flu was San Francisco. There, the Head of Public Health, Dr. William Hassler, instituted one of the strictest mandates in the country and many of his modern-day emulators point to his efforts with approval, saying with authority that this method is how they successfully fought the Spanish Flu in San Francisco.
The truth is not quite so simple, as this excerpt from Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from The Plague of Athens to AIDS, by Samuel Kline Cohn (Oxford University Press, 2018) demonstrates...
I travel quite a bit for my job. Obviously less now but still enough.
I prefer the stairs to an elevator to go up one or two floors in a hotel.
The chain I normally use seems very relaxed on their mask enforcement. I never wear them and they never say anything
‘The entire exercise is a good example of the government and the media being completely wrong but refusing to concede.’
the primary driver of this nonsense is the medical community itself, playing out its God complex; if you really want get irritated, go on FB and read posts by young females nurses shaming people who question the efficacy of masks...
I’m an anesthetist and have worn a mask in the operating room for 18 years
I couldn’t agree with you more: masks are useless to stop viral transmission and are actually harmful
My best friend’s parents are in their 80s and both had symptoms that suggested that they had Covid. They got on an airplane and flew from Seattle to Phoenix where he picked them up and noticed immediately that they were sick. He asked them why they would fly when they were symptomatic during a “pandemic”. They said that since they were wearing masks that everyone was safe from what ever they had.
Of course they both tested positive and his dad got very sick before recovering. And my frend got very sick as well a few days after riding in the car with them and tested positive as well. Even after they tested positive his parents were still going to stores and out into the public despite having several grandkids and others who were willing to bring them whatever they needed. Again the justification was that they had the masks to protect every one else.
Lol you’re right.
The young millennial doctors and nurses really are ruining it for the rest of us. They’re not as smart as they think
Honestly, if people stayed home when sick the flu and other viruses would be minimal.
Millennials are by and large worthless...I pay little attention to their advice on any subject.
I prefer my O2 intake un-impeded. Or I might have cause to utter the phrase: “I CAIN’T BREEVE!” JS.
“Lincoln Moses and Frederick Mostellar long ago suggested that public policy be organized as experiments so that we might learn of its effectiveness, or lack thereof, and avoid successive failures.”
I was a WSO in the USAF. We had to practice for chemical/biological warfare and many of our buildings had elaborate cleaning stations. If I had ever told an inspector (possibly you?) that I’d just wear a bandana instead, I’d have been squashed like a bug!
Try to imagine this coming in over the loudspeakers:
“The airfield has come under biological attack! Put on a bandana and return to your duties!”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Despite many people knowing that I have had years of training and experience dealing with chemical and biological hazards... I typically get blank stares when I tell people this or incredulous replies even in this forum.
If the ignorance on display was not so pervasive in every area of our lives these days it would be funny. But the events of the past year prove how easily the public is misled and demonstrate that all types of what seemed to be dystopian outcomes actually are possible in the future.
If anyone can’t understand how Hitler came to power, just look around. Most people THRIVE on order. Even artificial order imposed after a false scare.
Ten years ago a friend who lived through the fire bombing in Dresden during WWII said that someone like Hitler could easily come into power here. She was ridiculed by nearly all and eventually driven from the charitable organization that we met her at. But my wife and I assured her that we believed her observation was not only true but much more likely than others realized. Our friend is now gone, but the events of the past year have confirmed her point of view.
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