Posted on 07/03/2020 5:37:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
Anytime things go from widely disputed to sudden, virtually-overnight national “scientific consensus,” it’s probably a good idea to be a wee bit skeptical. So it goes with the forced universal masking issue. We’ve obviously run quite the gamut on this, from being told not to wear them at all while the pandemic was at its peak -- and everyone and their neighbor was crowding and swapping moisture particles in Lowe’s and Walmart aisles across America -- to the now almost cultlike, lockstep message from politicians, the media and every leftist still too frightened to come out of their basement that not wearing masks in every possible setting is pretty much the equivalent to stabbing grandma in the heart.
It’s all a farce, of course -- absurd theater forced upon us by people who would have probably believed in witches a few centuries ago. Now that the Karen-caucus has managed to browbeat most Republican lawmakers and even President Trump into some degree of at least verbal submission, they apparently expect the rest of us rubes to take their word for it and follow along. They think if they condescendingly say the words “I wear the mask to protect you and you wear the mask to protect me” enough, everyone will mindlessly obey. And if you don’t, they want to use the force of law to punish you severely.
No, the ongoing, relentless, unceasing crusade to force every American to wear masks to “stop the spread” of coronavirus isn’t about to end anytime soon, if ever. Even with deaths declining, they keep the pot stirred up with panic porn about spikes in new cases and hospitalizations in southern and western states. Nevermind the fact that the so-called “surge” in hospitalizations in Texas turned out to be, as Fox News medical correspondent Dr. Marc Siegel noted, mostly people getting “elective” surgeries that had long been delayed due to coronavirus. So yeah, if you’re a dishonest media hack I guess you could call those “coronavirus-related.” However, the reality isn’t what the media panic-inducers want to convey, which is probably why you thought the hospitals were getting filled with actual, life-threatening COVID-19 cases until you read this.
As far as whether or not masking actually works to “stop the spread” of coronavirus, I can point to studies (assuming - and this is a big assumption - that Big Tech allows them to remain online), and the masking proponents can as well. We can go back and forth on the potential long-term dangers posed by non-medically trained people wearing, breathing through, touching and constantly fiddling with veritable Petri dishes for several hours a day (I’m right, they’re wrong, but whatever …). We can even debate whether forced-masking is truly an infringement on personal freedoms (it is) or discuss the validity of the view, popular among many go-along-to-get-along Christians these days, that masking is somehow the key to “loving your neighbor” (it’s not).
Does masking work? (Maybe.) How well? (Hard to say.) Is it 100 percent safe? (Doubt it. Even assuming you’re getting enough oxygen, how can breathing in your own germs all the time be ‘safe’?) Does God say one must put on a face diaper to properly “love your neighbor”? (LOL Uh, no.) Should freedom-centric societies force it on their citizens who aren’t obviously sick? (Hell no!) Certainly, we can argue over any of those issues and maybe never come to an agreement. I’ll admit it has become a politicized issue. Either position can sound convincing when considered without looking at the other side, and people generally have by-and-large made up their minds before even weighing the other side of their own view.
However, what most advocates ignore is one key observation that makes forced universal masking an insane and unnecessary policy choice in most situations, and that is this: even if masking worked, wasn’t dangerous at all and was not seen by millions as a pernicious tool of social control, I see no valid reason why we would want to stop the spread of the virus at this point.
There, I said it. The most powerful argument against universal masking is that it could in fact work to slow the spread of coronavirus. Please stay with me. I’m not saying we shouldn’t protect those who are vulnerable to the virus. Had we properly protected those in nursing homes, for example, we could have saved half the people who actually have died from this thing. Nevertheless, the facts are these: the virus is spreading at a rapid rate, but deaths have not spiked and have even decreased. The average age of those who are getting it is significantly younger than it was two months ago. And we’re not sure about this yet, but it also seems to have mutated into a weaker version that is more transmissible but less lethal than the version we saw in April.
The fact is, for all the suffering COVID-19 has caused among the elderly and immunocompromised, the actual death rate currently stands at less than half a percent and is declining rapidly as antibody studies come to light. The CDC recently estimated that 10 times the known cases have likely had the disease already and recovered. That’s probably a lowball estimate, but it equates to upwards of 10 percent of the U.S. population. As young people spread this seemingly milder version around while older folks take precautions, we’re ever closer to reaching herd immunity, which one recent study said can be attained with as little as 43 percent contracting the disease. That may still be a few months away, but in all honesty, it could be our only way out of this. They keep talking about vaccines, but no successful coronavirus vaccine has ever been produced and there’s little reason to think it will be now, nor that anything they roll out this quickly will be truly safe anyway.
So, if we aren’t overwhelming hospitals and people aren’t dying in droves, community spread is actually a good thing, especially when most cases are either mild or asymptomatic. Yes, it would take several months to get any degree of herd immunity, but that would surely be better than living forever like we've been living the past three months, no? What’s the alternative, living with this virus on the prowl for years, even decades? Masks forever? Endless, rotating shutdowns? The end of mass gatherings and sports? And if Democrats win, God forbid, an ever-encroaching police state hellbent on using this virus to torment us and our liberties until their Bolshevik dreams become a reality?
Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, also made the case during a recent Fox News appearance: “We like the fact that there’s a lot of cases in low-risk populations because that’s exactly how we are going to get herd immunity, population immunity. When low-risk people with no significant problem handling this virus, which is basically 99% of people, get this and they become immune ... they block the pathways of connectivity to more contagious, older, sicker people.”
Truly, is there any logical reason why those who are elderly, immunocompromised or even frightened about the virus couldn’t wear a mask that really protects them, like an n95, and let everyone else live their lives? Like it or not, herd immunity could be our only way out of this mess, our only way back to any sense of normalcy. The quicker that arrives, the safer those truly vulnerable to this epidemic will be.
It all makes sense if you consider that they do not believe we can think. Let's close the beaches because a some people can not think to stay out of each others faces.
BETTER: The Science is Conclusive: Masks and Respirators do NOT Prevent Transmission of Viruses — Science & Technology — Sott.net https://www.sott.net/article/434796-The-Science-is-Conclusive-Masks-and-Respirators-do-NOT-Prevent-Transmission-of-Viruses
Blaylock: Face Masks Pose Serious Risks To The Healthy
https://technocracy.news/blaylock-face-masks-pose-serious-risks-to-the-healthy/
Absolutely, positively, 100% correct!!!
And the most recent studies suggest that 20% for herd immunity is the magic number. Some do go as high as 40%, but a large number are already immune.
Let it run its friken course!!!
Exactly, and masks have almost become a religion or some kind
of talisman to those who have become infected with the fear
porn.
If you read the warning label on the box of fifty masks, you
come to realize that the mask is about as effective as the
“Thousand stitch belt” worn by Japanese Soldiers in WW2.
We teach evolution in schools and most people believe in it
That being the case why are we fighting the natural selection part? Let’s get this BS over with before our children grow up impoverished and less free than us?
“It all makes sense if you consider that they do not believe we can think. Let’s close the beaches because a some people can not think to stay out of each others faces.”
To me what is important is that good information be put out in an intelligent way, not one-size-fits all legal mandates and rules.
A brother of mine were talking about that concept - individual rights AND individual responsibility - last nite. He had heard of a a perfect example. There had been bars open for awhile in his area - recently closed again. But the bars were supposed to be be insuring some social distancing in their establishment, limiting their indoor customers. A friend of his related how he was going to go to a local bar the other nite. As he opened the door he saw the place was packed full of people, like “in the old days”, and his friend turned around and left. Likely a good choice.
And that was my point. Given enough good information we can CHOOSE to make some good choices, or, we can ignore good advice and we take the consequences.
But the governors act as if THEY are suppose to “save us” and the only way they know how to that is to make everything a rule or regulation with mandates and enforcement actions so that THEY control what we do.
They do that in part because so many sheeple WANT to be told what to do, want to NOT learn, know and decide for themselves what is best for them to do. That way when things go bad, they can blame “the government”.
“... before getting to the ridiculous claim that avoiding masks will slow spread by accelerating spread.”
No, that’s not what he said. Pandemics always burn themselves out. Until that happens, we’re in shutdown and mask hell. Do you want this hell to end? Only way out is let it run. Get it over with. Those are the facts. Mask may make some get it a couple months later. But you will still get it anyway.
Got news for you: 20-40% of all of us will test positive for it before it goes away. That’s 72,000,000 - 144,000,000 Americans. It. Will. Happen. No pandemic here has ever been “stopped” once it gets loose, and this one won’t, either. No vaccine for coronaviruses has ever worked. That’s how viral pandemics work, period.
Do you want it to end sooner or later?
Sooner = isolate the vulnerable while allowing—encouraging!—the virus to rip through the non-vulnerable. Fast!
“Why do people not accept that the masks stop droplets and the droplets spread the virus? That doesn’t seem hard to understand.”
Because even though that sounds like it should work, and bench tests sometimes say it will work, in actualllity, among real people, daily activities, it doesn’t.
‘Author spends six verbose paragraphs bitching about sociopolitical crap before getting to the ridiculous claim that avoiding masks will slow spread by accelerating spread.’
nice try; really super on your part, my compliments, but my advice would be if you’re going to summarize someone’s argument, you should probably, you know, state what that someone actually said...in this case, you state the author claimed ‘that avoiding masks will slow spread by accelerating spread...’ when what he actually referred to was accelerating generalized immunity by avoiding masking...there is nothing ‘ridiculous’ about the point he made; many people, including epidemiologists, are of the opinion that generalized immunity will be the best deterrent to these types of contagions...
as for ‘cultures’ (why not ‘countries?)beating this sickness by wearing masks, some impeccable citations would be good...
Totally bogus meme. You will NEVER, EVER have a single, bare, viral particle floating around in the air.
ALL viable viral particles start out in the salt water "soup" that is the human body. When some physical process (coughing, sneezing, talking) dislodges some of that "soup", it is in the form of a small liquid drop that is far larger than a single virus particle.
That drop probably contains a number of virus particles, as well as salt, and many other dissolved body chemicals (proteins, and much else). Most of these microdrops are well within the filterable range of masks.
As the water in the aqueous microdrop evaporates, the particle STILL contains all that salt and other chemicals, so even the dried particle is far larger that a single virus entity.
‘Totally bogus meme.’
get your hyperbole meter tuned...
‘When some physical process (coughing, sneezing, talking) dislodges some of that “soup”...
so you acknowledge that in order to propel infectious particles to someone else, it is necessary to engage in some plosive action to do so (I would quibble about ‘talking’, but...) that is rather unlikely to happen on a widespread basis in a public setting...I will concede that this is the only true justification for masking, in case I happen to be sick and then go on a coughing or sneezing jag in the store while people are standing near me, and since I concede that possibility, I am compelled to go along with masking...but compelled on my own terms, not by some lunatic governor with a bunch of lackeys making rules they don’t have authority to make...
I look forward to the day when this nonsensical notion of infecting someone by walking past them in a store aisle without a mask finally goes away...
Yes, masks stop droplets but do they kill the droplets? No, THEY HOLD THEM, so as the author said, “a veritable petri dish.” If anything, masks act as concentrators, ensuring you will be infected since virtually all masks are permiable to the virus particles.
Hospitals are always at near capacity this time of year, most of the cases are non-virus related
Also, surgeries that were delayed are finally being done.
“what he actually referred to was accelerating generalized immunity by avoiding masking“
AKA
“avoiding masks will slow spread by accelerating spread.”
Think about it.
Bkmk
No, they hold the droplets coming OUT of the mouth of the person ALREADY infected. They’re not primarily to stop the droplets entering the uninfected, but to stop the droplets exiting the infected. Same reason surgeons wear masks.
In AZ...because they may have to triage patients duo the lack resources to care for everyone”
Hogwash! ICU beds have hit 90% - which is NORMAL for an ICU. Patients put things off in April, and now they need care. So they are going in. 65% ICU beds used in April - with higher deaths from ChinaVirus - were a sign people were avoiding the hospitals to avoid the virus. 65% ICU bed use is too little for a profit. 80-90% is normal. We’re back to normal, and many of the COVID patients in ICU are asymptomatic for COVID but there for other serious issues. COVID was detected when they entered for other reasons.
For a great many people, COVID is not a serious issue. I now know several people who had it at some point in the past and recovered without knowing they ever had it. And they are 60+.
“They’re not primarily to stop the droplets entering the uninfected, but to stop the droplets exiting the infected.”
The droplets vary in size. Those stopped by most masks will hit the ground within 6 feet, often less. The ones that float around in the air are small and can go through most masks. Which is why prior to this becoming political, studies showed masks were of some use against TB and mostly worthless against flu.
And if you are not coughing or sneezing, you are not projecting much. MAYBE if you sing loudly or scream like a liberal. But if you breath thru your nose? No evidence asymptomatic people breathing thru their nose transmit anything beyond 3 feet. So stay home if you are coughing or sneezing. Breath thru your nose in public. And you are already protecting people without needing a mask!
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