Talk on X - "Face masks return to public transport and shops tomorrow but Prof Carl Heneghan doubts how effective they really are. "Germany and Austria mandated medical grade masks. They're now bringing in complete restrictions to deal with the rise in cases." @JuliaHB1 | @carlheneghan"
From 2021. Putting people in a "perpetual state of anxiety" is good when it serves political purposes
No evidence face masks protected vulnerable from Covid during lockdown, health officials admit - "There is not enough evidence to suggest medical-grade face masks protect vulnerable people from Covid, health officials have admitted. A rapid review report published by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) investigated if high-quality masks, such as the N95, KN95 and FFP2 coverings, protect clinically vulnerable people in the community from catching Covid. However, the report was unable to find a single piece of scientific research which had usable data... Some vocal academics entrenched in scientific politicking have vociferously defended their own position for the last three years while other scientists calling for more research have often been met with criticism. Now, health officials are struggling with a lack of data which experts warn leaves us just as in the dark now as we were three years ago about whether masks work or not. Prof Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford, told The Telegraph it is “a significant failing” that there have not been high-quality trials done on the effectiveness of masks. “I do not understand why there's been a lack of will to do high-quality trials in this area,” he said. “We have completely failed to address this issue and I actually consider that to be an issue that the [Covid] inquiry needs to look at... Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine at the Norwich School of Medicine, led a study at the end of 2020 looking at how effective masks were and used data on flu, as well as other viruses. “Masks did reduce risk of transmission by about 20 per cent and in the early days of the pandemic that was really important,” Prof Hunter told The Telegraph. “But they were never the cast-iron guarantee that some people seem to have been saying. However, since the appearance of omicron masks no longer provide much if any value. “The exception is people who remain particularly vulnerable to severe disease as there is some evidence that if you catch Covid whilst wearing a mask you generally get a less severe infection... Dr Aodhán Breathnach, a Consultant Global Health Microbiologist at UKHSA and a Consultant Medical Microbiologist at St George’s University Hospitals, recently published a study which found masks in hospitals had little impact on Covid transmission in the omicron wave. He told The Telegraph that conducting randomised clinical trials for mask-wearing would be very difficult to do in practice. “It is maybe surprising that there is no conclusive evidence one way or another [as to whether masks work], given that SARS-CoV-2 is perhaps the most studied virus ever, and masking was always a debated topic,” Dr Breathnach said. “Nonetheless, the fact that the studies that do exist (including our own late addition) fail to show convincing evidence of benefit from masking suggests that, if there is a benefit, it is a rather modest one, i.e. masks may reduce the risk slightly but do not guarantee you won’t get infected.”"
From 2023. Lack of evidence doesn't matter when Everyone Knows the Facts, and everyone who doesn't Know them is a covidiot spreading misinformation
Meme - Cato Jeremyson: "The Melbourne Marxism Conference. This past weekend. Seriously. *everyone wearing a mask*"
How to Care for COVID at Home, and Is That Sniffle Allergies or the Virus? COVID Quickly, Episode 30 | Scientific American - "Fischman: That’s good news. Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves against both COVID and allergies?
Lewis: Wear a mask! It might spare you some sniffles—or worse. "
From 2022. Weird. We were told that masks were to protect other people, not yourself
COVID Quickly, Episode 19: Mandate Roadblocks, Boosters for All and Sickness in the Zoo | Scientific American - "It’s a puzzle how the cats got sick since the Lincoln zoo says keepers were masked."
From 2021. Mask fetishism ignores the science
COVID, Quickly, Episode 7: The Coming Pandemic Grief Wave, and Mask Whiplash | Scientific American - "there’s no way to know if someone who’s not wearing a mask has been vaccinated or not. It’s basically an honor code. And that could leave unvaccinated people—including young children—or immunocompromised people vulnerable to getting COVID. Plus, it makes it virtually impossible for businesses to enforce mask guidelines, which could make essential workers feel unsafe."
From 2021. Given that some people can never be vaccinated, clearly everyone must wear masks till the end of time. Weird how essential workers felt unsafe - why didn't they trust the "science" on the vaccines working?
Strange. I thought no one claimed the vaccines reduced transmission
Meme - Wajahat Ali @WajahatAli: "I feel America has forgotten we're still in the middle of a pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 people, and there's a deadly Delta Plus strain, and our kids are still not vaccinated. Sigh. I see packed restaurants and people inside stores and malls and their kids aren't wearing masks. I feel I'm in a horror movie."
Meme - Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.subst... @JordanSchachtel: "Hope you get the help that you need."
From June 2021. But the crazy thing is even in 2024 there're people like this
Meme - "I found out that the person that I love most in this world is no longer masking
their entire family including four small children have stopped masking"
Mask fetishism in 2024
Still masked 💙💙💙 on X - "I’m the only one masked at the gyno and lots of people are coughing. All these unmasked pregnant people make me feel sad.
i have a friend who had COVID while pregnant and lost her baby due to the placenta not forming properly. breaks my heart. what are we doing to children? :("
Lots of covid hystericists in the replies
Thread by @Rule3O3 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Emergency mini 🧵on an insane drama unfolding in St. Louis. Heard this from a pal who teaches at Wash U: Yesterday, out of the blue, the health director (smiling below) staged a public policy putsch by imposing a mask mandate on the city. Evidently she did this without consulting - maybe without even warning - her mayor, the regional heads of hospital, local presbyters & big shots, etc. This was so irregular at first people thought the order might be a prank. Turns out it was real. Her reason for issuing the mandate was to reduce strain on the hospital system, which she said was foundering under a surge of respiratory illness. Interestingly, she did not justify masking as a response to Covid only, but to flu and RSV, citing case increases of 50% and 150% above the 5 year average. Naturally this freaked people out even more, because linking mask mandates to bugs other than Covid implied they might never go away. The peasants would’ve revolted, but they didn’t get a chance. The nobles beat them to it. People with titles complained, in chorus. Could the Director of the Health Department, an Infectious Disease physician, really make a mistake this big, and dumb? Why that’d be like finding out the president of Harvard is an impostor. The hospitals made a statement: “We are not overwhelmed. So far this is a normal winter.” Ouch. This made it obvious she hadn’t bothered to talk to them, but had simply used the “shortage of ICU beds” copypasta from 3 years ago. St. Louis docs must really like this gal because they helped her further into the ditch by pointing out a flaw some of you already noticed in her analysis: The 5 year average includes an anomaly, winter 20-21, lowest for flu in the modern history of records. Every normal year will be above the 5 year average until it excretes that anomaly. Now this mistake too could have been easily avoided just by talking to a few members of the profession she makes policy for. But incompetent people don’t like talking to competent ones. It’s not fun for them. Feels like being told you’re wrong all the time. Feels like not being in charge. They learn to avoid the experience. Today the mask mandate was rescinded. Lived less than 24hrs. To save face they let her issue an “update” that “strongly recommends” masking. I mean, you can’t have your Health Director losing her self-confidence in the midst of a crisis she imagined."
to add a correction: The mandate was NOT for the entire city, just public employees. (Though that makes the idea even *less* rational, because masking 10k out of 300k in a metro area with 3m has zero chance of producing any benefit. It’s homeopathy applied to NPIs.)"
Damn covid deniers! Besides being stupid and ignorant they are racist and sexist!
Canada's top doctor: 'consider using a mask' during sexual activity - "Canada’s top doctor dispensed some important sexual education today for those attempting to date during a pandemic: consider wearing a mask during sex. Dr. Theresa Tam put out a statement Wednesday that covered how best to keep yourself safe from COVID-19 while engaging in sexual intercourse... She recommends couples skip kissing and avoid “face-to-face contact or closeness” during sex, or “consider using a mask that covers the nose and mouth.”"
From 2020
Five Times August on X - "Pause and reflect: Who were you back then? Were you the dad just trying to feed his kids and live his life? Or were you the crazy ass nazi psycho bitch wishing death on the maskless family? 🤔"
Meme - Noha Aboelata, MD @NohaAboelataMD: "There's gotta be at least one airline that will do masked only flights. I would become a preferred customer."
KimRB she/her @kimRigden: "Usually, i am happy to stand out, but just once I would love to be part of a crowd of masked people on a flight."
Mask fetishism in November 2023
Meme - Roo Barker: "Both Youngkin and Murphy lifted school mask mandates. I wonder why MSNBC had very different reactions to two governors doing the exact same thing"
"'In his first 10 days, he's gone backwards tow Trump': Experts discuss Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin banning school districts from requiring masks"
"'This is the right step': New Jersey governor lifts mask mandate for schools and day cares starting March 7"
Vaccination Is Making America Forget a Basic Pandemic Rule - The Atlantic
From 2021. The logic of the article was very interesting - we were simultaneously told that covid vaccines reduce the risk of transmission and that the vaccinated still needed to wear masks. Of course, the immunocompromised were mentioned. So apparently everyone was supposed to wear masks for the rest of all time
Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD on X - "We reanalyze & expand the highly-influential Boston school mask study by Cowger et al published in @NEJM
- Our expanded sample actually found higher case rates (not significant) in the masking districts
- The authors' original findings did not hold up when not using the very specific Callaway Sant'Anna Diff in Diff methodology which we argue was inappropriate to use given the data they had
-We show districts that dropped masks 1st had the biggest drop in cases (!)
-We found prior immunity could explain up to 2/3 of the variation in case rates (!)
We discuss in detail why causal inference was inappropriate in the original paper (https://nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2211029?query=featured_home) including statements about masks effectively reducing cases or being able to help mitigate structural racism"
Lack of correlation between school mask mandates and paediatric COVID-19 cases in a large cohort - "The association between school mask mandates and cases did not persist in the extended sample. Observational studies of interventions are prone to multiple biases and provide insufficient evidence for recommending mask mandates."
Anti-mask, anti-mandate activists focus on mid-term elections, turnout - The Washington Post - "A man in the audience yelled that Gabriel should run for governor. “I will!” Gabriel replied. “I will run for governor. And I’ll run for president. And I’ll run for everything!” She waited a beat before adding: “Once I’m of legal age.” That’s the kind of youthful energy far-right movements are working to harness across the country as they teach the pandemic’s newly minted activists how to get out the vote... Researchers say connections forged early in the pandemic allowed once-fringe groups to take on more visible roles in other kinds of organizing, such as the “Stop the Steal” effort to overturn the 2020 election results, or the campaign to whitewash U.S. history by attacking the teaching of racism and its impact. The nonstop focus on grievances, researchers say, has created a tinderbox of disenchanted Americans who view themselves as foot soldiers in a struggle against mandates and other perceived attacks on personal liberties"
From March 2022. Opposing any aspect of the left's agenda makes you "far right", and opposing their distortion of history means you're whitewashing it
Youth energy and enthusiasm for politics and social issues are only good when they're pushing the liberal agenda
A nonstop liberal focus on grievances is good, of course, because only liberals have valid grievances
The left can associate with, support and cheer terrorists (e.g. Oscar Lopez Rivera, Susan Rosenberg) of course and if you oppose them you're the bad person
Ashley Hughes: Liberals inexplicably clinging to travel mask and vaccine mandates - "Canada is now a solo traveler on the international stage when it comes to travel mandates for planes and trains — measures which increasingly appear to be punitive rather than backed by any evidence or logic. As of May 16, the European Union no longer mandates face masks for air travel. This follows the removal of the federal mask requirement on public transport in the United States, after a federal judge ruled such mandates are unlawful. The U.S. was a laggard to the United Kingdom, which removed its mask mandates on aircraft a full month earlier, in March. The U.K.’s announcement was part of a much larger and more significant move, lifting all remaining travel restrictions, including coronavirus testing requirements, for unvaccinated visitors. Meanwhile, Canada still has its closed-sky COVID policies firmly in place. The Trudeau government remains wilfully, even vindictively, stubborn in easing its tight grip on the few remaining restrictions within its control — namely, vaccine and mask mandates on federally regulated transport, including air and rail. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership, the federal government is living in a parallel universe, totally out of step with almost any other western country, and even its own provincial governments. Canada’s vaccine mandate on domestic travel puts it in the company of North Korea and China. Almost every country in the world now allows its unvaccinated citizens to fly internationally, except for Canada. Even New Zealand and Australia — two of the most COVID-locked down countries on earth, relinquished such control last month. For weeks now, the unvaccinated Antipodeans have been free to travel both within and outside of their countries. According to the London Times, the list of countries now welcoming the unvaccinated include Lebanon, Cuba, Kazakhistan, and Saudi Arabia. It will take years, if ever, for Canada’s aviation and tourism industries to recover from their glaring absence on the world stage of global air travel. Moreover, I can’t help but wonder what Trudeau, the senior, would think of the junior? After all, it was Pierre Trudeau who enshrined minority rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for this very situation that sees the majority being allowed to run roughshod over the minority. He seemed to have a special insight into the power of a herd mentality that can sometimes sweep through a nation, particularly during a national emergency... The Trudeau administration continues to spout the tired and utterly discredited line of “we are following the science,” but what science is this? That line is an ideology itself — a blind belief in some sort of vague definition of “the science.” How about common sense? Pragmatically speaking, if this is evidence-based public health policy, shouldn’t federal politicians be asking why “Canadian science” is so different from that followed by the country’s own provinces and much of the rest of the world, save for communist China?"
From May 2022. When covid policies are political...
Should masks be worn outdoors? - "Wearing face coverings outside should be normalised because it may reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in some situations—and may encourage mask wearing indoors, where risks are greater—say Babak Javid, Dirk Bassler, and Manuel B Bryant. But Muge Cevik, Zeynep Tufekci, and Stefan Baral argue that outdoor transmission contributes very little to overall infection rates and that efforts should focus on reducing indoor transmission"
From 2021. Basically, virtue signalling and doing the "right" thing with no heed about cost-benefit analysis - a good description of mask fetishism. Of course, given that we know that there's no good evidence for masks...
Kevin Bass PhD MS on X - "CDC acknowledges significant harms of N95s due to CO2 buildup (https://t.co/JQWka8tvhG)👇 To avoid these, CDC recommends not wearing N95 for more than 1 hour. In other words, all-day use advocated by today's public health elite causes harm, without demonstrated benefit"
Weird. Didn't they watch all those videos by people wearing N95s on treadmills "proving" that N95s don't reduce oxygen in the blood?
Thread by @ShiraDoronMD on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Why I believe it is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not work. The reasons form the basis for our ability to move forward together. A long🧵 First, masks. I don’t pay attention to simulations and mannequin studies. Those of us who write COVID policies for healthcare settings started with this systematic review and meta-analysis which used data from COVID and other 🦠s. N95s were in disgustingly short supply that first spring. Many hospitals reserved them for COVID patients undergoing high risk procedures only. We wore surgical 😷 for the rest. And we found something amazing: HCWs weren’t higher risk than other essential workers. Despite prolonged close contact (we practically bathe in 🦠 all day), seroprevalence rates among HCWs were consistent with the surrounding community, and patient facing HCW were not at greater risk than non patient facing. @ericashenoy summarized it in these slides in 2020. Little known fact: the patients, for the most part, are not wearing masks. One-way masking is how we have always used them. On the sick person or the HCW, not both. Oh, and if you’re worried the holes are too big? That’s ok. The electrostatic charge is part of the mechanism.
So if masks work, why don’t mask mandates?
Because:
a. Most spread happens in places you wouldn’t wear a mask (at home, at social gatherings with friends etc, not at the grocery)
b. People are wearing cloth masks (which don’t work)
c. People aren’t wearing them right
d. It’s not realistic to expect that people keep a mask on all the time, because they need to eat and drink (traveled by air before the mandate lifted? people are eating and drinking every second in airport and plane)
That’s not to say that we need to tighten the mandate & require continuous wearing of N95s. Countries/cities/schools with mandates haven’t had different shaped curves than those without, even if they required N95s. Plus if you mandate medical grade PPE, you’d better provide it. What does this mean? It means mandates are not effective or necessary, even when cases are rising. They cause rifts in society for no reason. If you’re high-risk or risk averse, a medical grade mask will protect you as well as it would if others were wearing it too. in this @landmanspeaking interview hit the nail on the head. There are more important things we should do to protect the public, like vaccinations and testing to treat. Getting COVID is inevitable, so I’m not willing to hide my face forever. Let’s get back to a place of mutual respect. Of evidence-based science rather than ideology. *That* is how we take care of each other."
Like most covid measures, mask mandates are about politicising covid, so
Meme - Mohamad safa: "Until you do 30 minutes+ of CPR in a plastic gown, surgical mask, two pairs of gloves and a face shield, you should probably stop complaining about wearing some fabric on your face to the grocery store."
Does this logic apply to all the First World Problems liberals bitch about too?
Tucker Carlson, Unmasked - The Atlantic - "Social media has so conditioned people to expect hyperbole that there’s a perverse satisfaction when a clip is truly as bad as advertised. Last night, a viral tweet claimed that Fox News’s Tucker Carlson had told his audience to harass people on the street wearing masks—and to “call the police immediately; contact child protective services” if they saw a child wearing one."
Harming children is only good when liberals approve
As usual with liberal anti-Tucker Carlson hit jobs, this misrepresents what he said (besides not engaging at all with the argument but just taking the fact that he's bad as axiomatic). Luckily, the transcript is available so those who are interested in what he actually said can look it up and unsurprisingly he said something different. He actually recounted the science about covid very accurately and pointed out the hypocrisy of the public health establishment is sanctioning BLM protests/riots despite covid, while pressing for outdoor masking. To liberals, asking them polite questions amounts to "harassment" (Carlson said to "Ask politely but firmly") - this is yet more proof that liberal claims of "harassment" and "bullying" are bunk, since they regard their views being challenged as "harassment"
No joke: smile training booms in Japan as face masks slowly come off | South China Morning Post - "Himawari Yoshida, 20, one of the students taking the class as part of her school’s courses to prepare them for the job market, says she needed to work on her smile... An hour-long one-on-one lesson costs 7,700 yen (US$55)... while the government may have lifted its recommendation to wear masks in March, many people have still not let them go on a daily basis. A poll by public broadcaster NHK in May showed 55 per cent of Japanese saying they were wearing them just as often as two months earlier. Only 8 per cent said they had stopped wearing masks altogether. Tellingly, roughly a quarter of the art school students who took the class kept their masks on during the lesson. Young people have, perhaps, become used to life with masks, Kawano said, noting that women might find it easier to go out without make-up and men could hide that they hadn’t shaved."
Masking may not have eased respiratory virus surge in the fall: PHO document
From Feb 2023. The mask fetishists will be very upset, since they only selectively trust the science
Meme - Jonathan Kay @jonkay: "This is the first time I've been reported for anti-maskism"
Mary Fernando MD @MaryFernando_: "Please report @jonkay Masks work. People should be allowed to wear them without being called names. Thank you."
Geoffrey P. Johnston @GeoffyPJohnston: "What is wrong with Jon Kay? Trolling a woman of colour who is a doctor. Dr. @MaryFernando_is smart, informed, & the opposite of Kay. She is also a friend of mine. His post is a dog whistle to troll her. I've no doubt that racists will take the cue. Despicable behaviour."
Jonathan Kay @jonkay: "the fruit loops and cocoa puffs are strong with this one"
Mary Fernando MD @MaryFernando_: "It takes me awhile to get angry. I’m now angry. My young adult son and daughter wear masks. Being not white, they’re already more likely to be seen as ‘criminal’. Thank you @CTV for putting children at risk who aren’t white with your mask article. #NotACriminal #NotWhite"
This was in response to an extraordinary meltdown over a news article (linked below). Of course, we know that the press needs to be censored based on left wing demands, and liberal reaches are obvious and no one can question them
How a pandemic measure is being exploited by criminals: security experts - "Security experts have noticed thieves and purse snatchers are often wearing medical masks while they commit crimes. “We are seeing a lot of people who are up to no good keeping masks on, and I’m sure it’s to aid in their ability to do what they want to do,” said James Blight with Paladin Security. Last week in Richmond, two men wearing masks were caught on surveillance video trying to steal bags from patrons of a popular seafood restaurant. They were chased down by staff who managed to retrieve a stolen bag, but RCMP say the masked men have not been identified. “I think the normalization of the medical mask makes it very challenging, it adds to the anonymity that a thief can have when they want to do something criminal,” said Blight. There is a separate criminal code charge for committing a crime while concealing ones identity. “If you commit a crime while you’re disguised, it is worse on the eyes of the law than if you commit a crime when you’re not disguised. But because of the normalization of medical masks, I don’t think we are going to see that pursued by Crown,“ said Blight."
The Lone Masker on X - "Lone Masker in the dr office waiting room... the nurse and dr masked for me but I witnessed their coworkers laughing, questioning, and subtly mocking them/me for masking. A nurse ignored me, asked my nurse "you okay?" while giggling. As my dr exited, other dr asked why the mask."
Weird. Why doesn't she should Trust the Experts and Healthcare Professionals?