Jennifer Sey on Twitter - "This is dystopian. The CDC just lowered the standard for speech in early childhood development. Instead of highlighting the harmful effects masking & social isolation have had on small children the CDC just lowered the bar. Presto! No impact!"
The Case Against Masks at School - The Atlantic - "The CDC guidance on school masking is far-reaching, recommending “universal indoor masking by all students (age 2 and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K–12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.” In contrast, many countries—the U.K., Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and others—have not taken the U.S.’s approach, and instead follow World Health Organization guidelines, which recommend against masking children ages 5 and younger, because this age group is at low risk of illness, because masks are not “in the overall interest of the child,” and because many children are unable to wear masks properly. Even for children ages 6 to 11, the WHO does not routinely recommend masks, because of the “potential impact of wearing a mask on learning and psychosocial development.” The WHO also explicitly counsels against masking children during physical activities, including running and jumping at the playground, so as not to compromise breathing. But in America about half of the country’s 53 million children remain compulsorily masked in school for the indefinite future... Many deep-blue areas such as Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles; and New York City have gone beyond CDC guidance and are masking students outdoors at recess, in part because of byzantine rules that require an unmasked “exposed” student to miss multiple days of school, even if the putative exposure is outside. Many public-health experts maintain that masks worn correctly are essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19. However, there’s reason to doubt that kids can pull off mask-wearing “correctly.” We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed. To our knowledge, the CDC has performed three studies to determine whether masking children in school reduces COVID-19 transmission... the overall takeaway from these studies—that schools with mask mandates have lower COVID-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates—is not justified by the data that have been gathered... Other studies—not randomized trials—have looked at the effects of masks in schools, and their results do not support pervasive, endless masking at school... Despite how widespread all-day masking of children in school is, the short-term and long-term consequences of this practice are not well understood, in part because no one has successfully collected large-scale systematic data and few researchers have tried. Mental and social-emotional outcomes are hard to observe and measure, and can take years to manifest. Initial data, however, are not reassuring. Recent prospective studies from Greece and Italy found evidence that masking is a barrier to speech recognition, hearing, and communication, and that masks impede children’s ability to decode facial expressions, dampening children’s perceived trustworthiness of faces. Research has also suggested that hearing-impaired children have difficulty discerning individual sounds; opaque masks, of course, prevent lip-reading. Some teachers, parents, and speech pathologists have reported that masks can make learning difficult for some of America’s most vulnerable children, including those with cognitive delays, speech and hearing issues, and autism. Masks may also hinder language and speech development—especially important for students who do not speak English at home. Masks may impede emotion recognition, even in adults, but particularly in children. This fall, when children were asked, many said that prolonged mask wearing is uncomfortable and that they dislike it. This last reason is important in considering a pivot to requiring children to wear N95 or KN95 masks, which are thought to be more effective at preventing the spread of Omicron. A few school districts, in response to the growing awareness of the ineffectiveness of cloth and surgical masks, have decided to escalate rather than scale back masking by requiring these types of medical-grade masks, which are significantly less comfortable to wear and can hinder communication more than other types of masks... N95s are not approved or sized for children, proper fit is hard to achieve even with adults, and a June 2020 study shows they have very high failure rates when taken on and off or worn for multiple hours. Though KN95s, the manufactured-in-China equivalent, are available in kids’ sizes, they also require a very tight seal to function properly, which is unrealistic for schoolchildren to maintain for multiple hours a day. Early-pandemic recommendations to mask at school, soon followed by mandates, were laid down in the absence of data. We should not repeat this mistake with a new generation of masks. Over the past 21 months, slowly and with much resistance, the layers of mythology around COVID-19 mitigation in schools have been peeled away, each time without producing the much-ballyhooed increases in COVID-19. Schools did not become hot spots when they reopened, nor when they reduced physical distancing, nor when they eliminated deep-cleaning protocols. These layers were peeled away because the evidence supporting them was weak, and they all had substantial downsides for children’s education and health... They may also point to the Omicron surge increasing children’s hospitalizations. But hospitalizations have risen among all age groups, and, even at the country’s peak, remained extremely low among children, on par with pediatric flu hospitalizations during a typical season. Imposing on millions of children an intervention that provides little discernible benefit, on the grounds that we have not yet gathered solid evidence of its negative effects, violates the most basic tenet of medicine: First, do no harm. The foundation of medical and public-health interventions should be that they work, not that we have insufficient evidence to say whether they are harmful. Continued mandatory masking of children in schools, especially now that most schoolchildren are eligible for vaccination, fails this test."
People get very upset when you take away their security blankets
Weird how so many countries and the WHO do not follow "The Science"
Of course mask fetishists keep telling us that children take well to masks so there's no harm to them
New questions about whether kids should wear masks - ""As soon as you question 'Is it a good idea to put a 2-year-old in a mask all day?' you're suddenly a psychotic, anti-vax right-winger," she says. "Which really couldn't be further from the truth."... as the omicron wave begins to peak in some parts of the U.S., some pediatricians, neuroscientists, special education teachers and parents like Dingle are talking more about the potential negative impacts of prolonged masking... Numerous scientific papers have established that it can be harder to hear and understand speech and identify facial expressions and emotions when people are wearing masks... The United States is an outlier in recommending masks from the age of 2 years old. The World Health Organization does not recommend masks for children under age 5, while the European equivalent of the CDC doesn't recommend them for children under age 12. Manfred Spitzer is a psychiatrist and a cognitive neuroscientist in Germany. He published a scientific review of evidence on how masking could impact children's development. Spitzer says the negatives of masking are particularly clear for very young children. He believes that young children's caregivers should be unmasked as well. "Kids need to train up their face recognition," he says, and they need to see full faces to learn to identify emotions as well as to learn language. "Babies were never designed just to see the upper half of the face and to infer the lower half; even adults have a hard time doing this."... Donna Smiley is an audiologist — a hearing-impairment specialist — also with ASHA. "We all use visual input to help understand the message," she says — watching a speaker's lips and mouth, which are covered by masks. "By putting on a mask, you're also making the teacher's voice less loud." CDC guidance allows for the use of masks with clear plastic when interacting with people with hearing impairments, young children, those who are deaf or hard of hearing, those receiving speech therapy, students learning to read or those learning a new language. Smiley says she's found those pose problems. "The material that it is made out of ... fogged up pretty easily." And she says that at least one study found that the plastic blocks even more sound than cloth does... For school-age children, Spitzer, the psychiatrist, is most concerned that masking interferes with nonverbal communication and emotional bonding. Gonzalez says her students who are on the autism spectrum withdraw behind masks. "They have almost started adopting the masks as their face. It's part of their identity, it's their security blanket. I almost have to be like, 'Hey, you are allowed to take it off right now.' Like, say, if they're going to run the lap at P.E. or going into lunch to sit down — they want to eat a bite, put it back on, eat a bite, put it back on"... Germany doesn't require masks for children under age 6. "When speech no longer happens, when communication is interfered with, I think if that happens for a week, that's OK," he explains. "But if that happens for half a year, that's eternity when it comes to brain development, at a very young age." He points out that COVID-19 is usually mild for young children, but it's a critical period for development... On Jan. 25, a group of physicians and scientists announced a national campaign to "restore normalcy" in children's lives by putting them first in line for the lifting of restrictions, including mask mandates, once the omicron wave has subsided. Dr. Jeanne Noble, who directs COVID-19 response for the UCSF Emergency Department at the University of California, San Francisco, is part of the coalition. "Kids don't need to be masked. Full stop. They have minuscule risk of serious illness or death from COVID," she says. She and colleagues are suggesting that especially vulnerable children continue to mask while other vaccinated children can safely go without."
Clearly the "experts" who believe children shouldn't wear masks aren't experts, and they need to lose their licenses, and we need to deny them platforms so they don't spread "dangerous" "misinformation"
Mask fetishists will just pretend that all the damage to children (actually, to people at every level of society) that will become evident over the next few decades is all due to "long covid"
The CDC’s Flawed Case for Wearing Masks in School - The Atlantic - "The approval in late October of COVID-19 vaccines for 5-to-11-year-olds was for many public-health experts an indication that mask mandates could finally be lifted. Yet with cases on the rise in much of the country, along with anxiety regarding the Omicron variant, other experts and some politicians have warned that plans to pull back on the policy should be put on hold... its director, Rochelle Walensky, marched out a stunning new statistic: Speaking as a guest on CBS’s Face the Nation, she cited a study published two days earlier, which looked at data from about 1,000 public schools in Arizona. The ones that didn’t have mask mandates, she said, were 3.5 times as likely to experience COVID outbreaks as the ones that did... the Arizona study at the center of the CDC’s back-to-school blitz turns out to have been profoundly misleading. “You can’t learn anything about the effects of school mask mandates from this study,” Jonathan Ketcham, a public-health economist at Arizona State University, told me. His view echoed the assessment of eight other experts who reviewed the research, and with whom I spoke for this article... Noah Haber, an interdisciplinary scientist and a co-author of a systematic review of COVID-19 mitigation policies, called the research “so unreliable that it probably should not have been entered into the public discourse.” This is not the only study cited by Walensky in support of masking students, but it’s among the most important, having been deployed repeatedly to justify a policy affecting millions of children—and having been widely covered in the press. The agency’s decision to trumpet the study’s dubious findings, and subsequent lack of transparency, raise questions about its commitment to science-guided policy... Even basic elements of the data set inspire some concerns. According to the paper, 782 of the 999 public, non-charter schools included in the study were in Maricopa County. In response to a public-records request, the Arizona Department of Education sent me what it said was the same list of schools that had been provided to the researchers, with 891 relevant entries for Maricopa. But closer inspection revealed that about 40 of them were virtual learning academies, about 20 were preschools, and about 90 were vocational programs associated with otherwise-listed schools. That left at most roughly 740 schools for inclusion in the study, not 782. If dozens of entries were inappropriately included in the final data set, were “outbreaks” counted for them too? Starting at the end of October, I reached out to Jehn and MMWR about the number of schools, and repeatedly asked for the list of those included in the study. I also asked about the fact that schools with mask mandates and those without mandates opened at different times. Neither the journal nor the study’s authors agreed to share the list of schools, or any other data from the study... A number of the experts interviewed for this article said the size of the effect should have caused everyone involved in preparing, publishing, and publicizing the paper to tap the brakes. Instead, they hit the gas... under the Biden administration, the agency has not always been apolitical. In May, it was revealed that the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union, had private exchanges with CDC officials prior to new school guidance being issued under Walensky’s tenure, and some of the union’s suggestions were added nearly verbatim. In September, on the same day as the Arizona study’s publication, Walensky overruled her agency’s advisory committee by endorsing the use of COVID-vaccine booster shots for teachers and other workers deemed at high risk of exposure, thereby aligning the CDC more closely with President Joe Biden’s position. Still, the publication and agency endorsement of the Arizona study is especially demoralizing. How did research with so many obvious flaws make its way through all the layers of internal technical review? And why was it promoted so aggressively by the agency’s director? I reached out to Walensky’s office to ask about the study, noting its evident limitations and outlier result. How, if at all, does this research figure into the agency’s continuing guidance for schools around the country? The CDC did not respond to my inquiries. With Biden in the White House, the CDC has promised to “follow the science” in its COVID policies. Yet the circumstances around the Arizona study seem to show the opposite. Dubious research has been cited after the fact, without transparency, in support of existing agency guidance. “Research requires trust and the ability to verify work,” Ketcham, the ASU public-health economist, told me. “That’s the heart of science. The saddest part of this is the erosion of trust.”"
Clearly the CDC represents "The Science", so everyone else needs to fall into line. Anyone asking questions is eroding trust in public health during a pandemic, which will literally cause people to die. So they should all be denied a platform since you cannot cry fire in a crowded theatre
California County Mandates Masks in Private Homes - "Santa Cruz County has imposed a sweeping indoor mask mandate for private settings including homes... California’s COVID transmission rate is higher than many states in the South, most of which have fewer pandemic restrictions, according to data from the CDC. As of November 21, California’s seven-case average was more than twice that of Florida, despite Governor Ron Desantis’ state orders banning mask and vaccine mandates. Similarly, as of November 11, California’s seven-day death rate per 1 million people was eleven times higher than Florida’s."
Scottish teenagers may have to wear face masks in class until next year - "Teenagers in Scotland could be forced to wear face coverings in classrooms until next year after the SNP capitulated to teaching unions and rejected expert advice to relax the mask mandate... It means Scottish teenagers will continue to face some of the harshest rules in society despite being at low risk of serious illness from Covid and advice that school transmission "is not a major driver of overall case numbers". Experts on an advisory group set up by the Scottish government had backed a relaxation in rules. More than 90 per cent of teachers are fully vaccinated, while case numbers among children have declined and are projected to continue falling. However, the country’s most powerful teaching union, the EIS, opposed the changes and lobbied for a delay to the proposed relaxation."
This NPR reporter asked elementary students how they feel about wearing masks and their answers were absolutely heartbreaking - "Perhaps the most depressing part of the whole exchange: Many students still expressed an eager desire to wear masks, either because they believe it protects them and others from COVID-19 or simply because it's the only way they can be allowed to go to school."
Face masks ‘doing care home residents more harm than good’ - "Face masks are doing more harm than good to the welfare of care home residents, a major social care provider has warned. The need for the current level of Covid infection control measures in homes where the vaccine has been rolled out among residents and staff is "increasingly diminishing", according to Sunrise Senior Living and Gracewell Healthcare. The group, which has 45 homes across England and one in Wales, has written to Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, warning that some of these measures are now damaging the well-being of care home residents... "For many residents, a visit from their family member has provided invaluable improvements to their well-being, but the requirement for these visitors to wear a face mask degrades the level of connection and therefore devalues the positive impacts their visits can have."
Amherst College Orders Vaccinated Students To Be Double-Masked Indoors - "Administrators will now require students to wear two masks while indoors, get tested every other week, eschew large social interactions, and generally refrain from leaving school grounds... Amherst was already requiring all students and staff to be vaccinated, and less than 1 percent of the campus had sought any sort of waiver from this requirement... Students will be required to wear not one but two masks while indoors. (If the mask is a KN95, then just one mask is allowed.) This policy actually contradicts CDC guidance, which recommends against people wearing multiple disposable masks at the same time. Unmasking is only permitted while students are within their own dormitory rooms. There is no exception for eating in the cafeterias, since the cafeterias will all be closed: Amherst is canceling dining services for the time being. Students should definitely not think about going out to eat: Visiting bars and restaurants is strictly prohibited. Indeed, students are essentially forbidden from leaving campus, except on legitimate business. Needless to say, Amherst does not want students socializing in large groups, attending parties, tailgating, or doing much of anything except sitting quietly in their rooms by themselves... Yearly tuition at Amherst costs $58,000. That's a lot of money to pay for the privilege of sitting quietly in one's room until administrators recalibrate their risk tolerance."
The people pushing the vaccines most fervently don't believe they work
US surgeon general suggests vaccinated people wear masks outdoors as an 'extra step' to protect unvaccinated
So much for the science showing that outdoor transmission is negligible
Joseph Massey on Twitter 0 "Masks don't work. Masks work. Masks work better if you wear 2 or 3. Now you can take your masks off! Wait, put them back on. OK, take them off again, because only medical-grade masks really work. Hey, science changed, take them off! Now let us lecture you about misinformation."
Virginia Governor Joins Parents’ Lawsuit Against Loudoun Schools Over Masks - "Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order saying that parents had the right to choose whether their children must wear masks at school or not. Liberal jurisdictions refused to follow it, claiming they did not have to follow executive orders. The lawsuit includes an appendix with seven executive orders from previous Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, including one that made masks mandatory in schools. No school district defied those orders, and far from claiming at the time that executive orders were optional for school systems, school officials routinely invoked them as a reason that their hands were tied... schools are taking punitive action against students who invoke their right to unmask under the EO... Youngkin’s EO went into effect last Monday, but students who invoked it that day were sent to a separate room where they did not receive in-person instruction, and one father said students were not allowed to talk at all. Eventually, LCPS began suspending students for up to 10 days for attempting to show up without a mask... a student at Stone Bridge High School received such a suspension... Stone Bridge was the same high school where a skirt-wearing student committed a rape in its girls bathroom, for which he was subsequently convicted... A school nurse wrote a letter to the board, saying, “I feel some days I am participating in child abuse” for sending kids to an “isolation room” for not wearing a mask despite “24 months of data” on the actual risk to young children from coronavirus. In Fairfax County last week, after a mother attempted to bring her two children to school without a mask for the first time in about two years, she was stopped before she could get to the front door by multiple officials–including a security guard who removed his mask to lecture a parent because he admitted he “can’t speak with this thing,” and later could not see because his mask caused his glasses to fog up."
Did Mask Mandates Work? The Data Is In ... And the Answer Is 'No' - Bloomberg - "Mask mandates are predicated on the effectiveness of “universal masking” in which everyone wears a mask to keep case numbers lower. One of the leaders in proposing universal masking, Monica Gandhi of UCSF, has unfairly been accused of being an anti-masker for talking about the limitations of her own strategy and the much greater importance of vaccination campaigns. But there’s no avoiding it: The benefits of universal masking have been difficult to quantify... It is intuitive that a barrier ought to prevent germs from being emitted into the air. But if that’s true, why isn’t there more evidence for the benefits of masking two years into the pandemic? Experts associated with The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota have laid out a more complex analysis: Given the current understanding that the virus is transmitted in fine aerosol particles, it’s likely an infectious dose could easily get through and around loose-fitting cloth or surgical masks. Many experts say only N95 respirators or similar devices are truly effective at stopping this virus — and some, such as the CIDRAP head Michael Osterholm, have been going public urging people to put less faith in cloth masks and adopt respirators such as N95s. He does not advocate universal N95 use in schools, however, where children are unlikely to be able to wear them consistently or correctly. Most of the people who were only wearing masks because of the mandate were donning the less effective masks. Those concerned enough to get an N95 aren’t going to stop because it’s not required. Future policies should focus on helping people understand their risks and making sure everyone who wants a supply of N95 masks can get one... the states with mask mandates haven’t fared significantly better than the 35 states that didn’t impose them during the omicron wave... There’s little evidence that mask mandates are the primary reason the pandemic waves eventually fall — though much of the outrage over lifting mandates is based on that assumption. Many experts acknowledge that the rise and fall of waves is a bit of a mystery, as epidemiologist Sam Scarpino explained... Megan Ranney, an emergency medicine physician and a dean at the Brown University School of Public Health, says most of her hospitalized patients were unvaccinated or they live in multi-generational homes and got the disease from younger family members who skipped the shots. She sees no problem with the idea of lifting mask mandates when the stress on hospitals has eased... In other countries, mask mandates have been imposed and lifted with little or no rancor. Last week I talked to Michael Bang Petersen, a political scientist and psychologist who has been directing a research project on pandemic behavior at Aarhus University in Denmark. There, remarkably, all restrictions were lifted this month with little controversy. Some of that is due to good communication and trust. “We can see that a clear majority of the population feel that they actually getting clear information from the authorities,” he said. And Danish authorities have a realistic goal — not minimizing all cases or eliminating the virus but preventing the healthcare system from breaking down. “I think if we look at how it is that the Danish public thinks about coronavirus, they don't think of it as an individual threat … they think of it as a societal threat,” he said. Americans are not selfish — we think about protecting society too — but we’re deeply divided about what our obligations should be. One way we might ease our tensions is by putting the role of mask mandates in perspective."
Justin Spiro, LCSW on Twitter - "Governor Hochul is “not ready” for toddlers to unmask for early intervention services. But she was ready to shed her own mask last night to party with Broadway stars. We’re way past indifference. This is downright cruelty."
Mask-wearing a ‘personal choice’ as COVID-19 measures ease: PHAC - "Canada’s deputy chief public health officer says mask-wearing is a “personal choice” and he’ll personally continue to wear a mask as the ongoing easing of COVID-19 public health measures continues. Several provinces across the country lifted their mask mandates earlier this week, while others will follow suit soon."
FUREY: Look around, Canada — other countries are ditching their mask mandates | Toronto Sun - "There doesn’t seem to be a single jurisdiction in the United States that makes people jump through this many hoops. (It should also be noted that American states have chief medical officers who have credentials typically equal to or greater than those of our health officials.)"
Presumably if you want to "follow the science", you'd look at those with greater credentials
Requiring Masks in Schools Has a Downside - The Atlantic - "Scientists have an obligation to strive for honesty. And on the question of whether kids should wear masks in schools—particularly preschools and elementary schools—here is what I conclude: The potential educational harms of mandatory-masking policies are much more firmly established, at least at this point, than their possible benefits in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools. To justify continued masking of schoolkids—with no end date in sight—we have to prove that masks benefit kids, and at what ages. States and communities that are considering masking policies just to be safe should recognize that being overly cautious has a cost, while the benefits are uncertain. For most able-bodied adults, masks in public indoor settings pose only minor inconveniences. But children—who even amid the worrisome Delta-variant surge are experiencing serious outcomes from COVID-19 at far lower rates than people in older age groups are—have different needs and vulnerabilities than adults. Early childhood is a crucial period when humans develop cultural, language, and social skills, including the ability to detect emotion on other people’s faces. Social interactions with friends, parents, and caregivers are integral to fostering children’s growth and well-being... No scientific consensus exists about the wisdom of mandatory-masking rules for schoolchildren. The World Health Organization, which recommends that children 12 and older wear masks under the same circumstances that adults do, specifically advises against masking kids age 5 and younger... In the United States, though, current CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines call for kids age 2 and up to wear a mask in indoor school or day-care settings... the prevailing wisdom in the U.S. calls for 2-to-4-year-olds to wear masks in day care for six or more hours while they are awake, but go unmasked while sleeping side by side in the same room. Shielding children from all coronavirus exposure is difficult for another practical reason: Little kids fidget with their masks. A health recommendation that takes little account of how human beings act and what they need is unlikely to be successful. For instance, a diet that told you to eat just two carrots a day would theoretically result in dramatic weight loss. In practice, such a regimen could starve you of nutrients that your body requires. Moreover, overly strict diets often result in no weight loss at all, because nobody can stick to them. Similarly, mask mandates can be challenging for little children to follow and deprive them of stimuli they need. In addition to recommending masks for young kids, CDC guidelines also urge masks for most vaccinated caregivers who work in infant day-care centers. This advice also deviates from standard practice in other nations, including the U.K. Many studies support the importance of babies seeing caregivers’ faces, and prior to the arrival of COVID-19, many American professional organizations, including the AAP, strongly agreed... K–8 schools in affluent and highly educated Palo Alto, California, require kids to mask even outdoors at recess. San Diego schools recently announced an outdoor mask mandate as well. Yet scientists have known for some time that outdoor transmission is exceedingly rare, and many experts believe that outdoor masking is misguided. When masks are required in outdoor settings, kids may experience limitations in play, exercise tolerance, and socialization. And for what gain? The benefits of mask requirements in schools might seem self-evident—they have to help contain the coronavirus, right?—but that may not be so. In Spain, masks are used in kids ages 6 and older. The authors of one study there examined the risk of viral spread at all ages. If masks provided a large benefit, then the transmission rate among 5-year-olds would be far higher than the rate among 6-year-olds. The results don’t show that. Instead, they show that transmission rates, which were low among the youngest kids, steadily increased with age—rather than dropping sharply for older children subject to the face-covering requirement. This suggests that masking kids in school does not provide a major benefit and might provide none at all. And yet many officials prefer to double down on masking mandates, as if the fundamental policy were sound and only the people have failed... In mid-March 2020, few could argue against erring on the side of caution. But nearly 18 months later, we owe it to children and their parents to answer the question properly: Do the benefits of masking kids in school outweigh the downsides? The honest answer in 2021 remains that we don’t know for sure"
On their Facebook, lots of mask fetishists were very upset about this article
Too bad kids make people hysterical
Weird how "the science" is different in different countries
Another natural experiment showing that masking is useless
FL Surgeon General: Data Did Not Support Lockdowns, Mass Masking - "“When the Danish mask study came out, for the general public, it showed no benefit; that was not something that was discussed. And so what we had to do in Florida was really work hard to find the actual data, look at the studies, and consider those regardless of if the media wanted to,” he said. “But then if there was something that was kind of half-baked that supported the narrative, there would be blaring from the headlines about how important this is. I mean, things like saying that, you know, the pandemic could end in six weeks if just 90 percent of people wore a cloth mask and all of these other things that were constantly trotted out with very little actual rigor behind them”"
Clearly, there is no dose-response effect, and the effects of masking can only be seen if 90% of the population wear them so the fact that mask adoption doesn't reduce covid rates doesn't mean masks don't work
Pandemic Could End in 4-6 Weeks with Universal Mask Usage: CDC Director - "Nationwide use of face masks could significantly slow the spread of COVID-19 and end the epidemic in four to six weeks, Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control, said"
From July 2020. Weird how places with rigorously enforced mask mandates (including outdoor masking) still can't control covid
One-quarter of South Koreans Ready to Wear Masks Indefinitely - "You don’t take time off for a cold. Instead, you put on your mask and you go to the office... a plurality of Koreans (27%) said that masking should continue indefinitely, and was consistent across age groups. It should be noted that the question’s language did not present any conditions such as vaccination or case rates. It’s also worth mentioning that 21 percent said that masking should stop in the first half of next year and another 23 percent said masking should stop in the second half of 2022. But the least supported option (11%) was to stop masking this year, 2021. Not only was this the least supported option, but the youngest Koreans (6%) were the least likely to want it. That last point deserves some thinking beyond the armchair analysis I can provide here. But I am beginning to hear anecdotes. And those include comments that mask-wearing is “more comfortable” for some. That is in quotes because I don’t think it denotes masks being physically comfortable. Rather it is about being more comfortable in public by being better able to conceal one’s physical appearance, reducing the concerns about being judged for that appearance. That could certainly be tied into the importance placed on physical appearance. But I don’t think this tells the whole story. Vaccination rates have now surpassed 70 percent fully vaccinated and 80 percent have received one dose. One health official suggested that once that number hits 85 percent, the requirement for masks in public could be rolled back. (Those comments were controversial.) Now, as the government transitions to “living with COVID,” the earliest the public mask mandate will be rolled back in mid-December"
From 2020
Face mask: Lip-reading sisters abused for lifting mask on train - "A 16-year-old who lifted her face mask so her sister could read her lips was verbally abused by a train passenger. Saule Pakenaite was on the Liverpool to Southport service with sibling Karolina, 24, who had a guide dog with her. When Saule briefly removed her covering to speak, a woman began to shout verbal abuse, despite the sisters explaining Karolina was registered as deafblind... Mobile footage shows the woman refusing to accept the sisters' explanation that Ms Pakenaite is hard of hearing and visually impaired. She goes on to question whether she is actually disabled after she is able to respond to her comments... Sense chief executive Richard Kramer said the sisters' experience "wasn't a one-off - a number of people have been challenged for not wearing a mask". He said the organisation had received "lots" of similar accounts, which could reinforce any anxiety felt about leaving the home, or lead to further isolation."
Someone observed that the same people aggroing people about not wearing masks were aggroing people about wearing them earlier. That suggests that much covid shaming isn't really about covid