Whether mandated by individual states, urged by our health care officials, or socially obliged, masks are now a fixture of American life in the age of COVID-19. This is a sea change without precedent for our nation. Just as quarantining the healthy has virtually no historical antecedent, requiring a face-covering of the general public for any forays outside the home is utterly novel. As America gives in to the sartorial fascism of required masking, urgent questions need to be asked. Is this cultural directive science-driven and based on hard data that demonstrates benefit, or a wildly successful attempt to propagandize and control the masses?
Just a few short months ago, our health officials were advising us very differently than they are now about the necessity and efficacy of masks to combat COVID-19. In a dereliction of duty exceeded only by China's strenuous efforts to obscure the origins of the virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) unaccountably failed to declare the Wuhan Coronavirus a pandemic until March 11.
Just weeks prior, WHO representative Christine Francis said that medical masks alone could not prevent transmission of COVID-19 and stated there was no evidence they protect people who are not sick. As recently as May 28, the WHO recommended that masks only be worn by people taking care of others infected by the contagion.
Jumpcut to the present in which the WHO has reversed itself and now recommends masks for all global citizens in areas of transmission, especially when social distancing is impossible. This is despite the fact that "direct evidence about whether wearing a mask of any sort outside a health-care setting reduces actual transmission of COVID-19 is lacking," according to Catherine Clase, associate professor of medicine at McMaster University and a nephrologist of St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton. The professor's statement is confirmed by the inconvenient truth that there are no large-scale studies to prove that masks can halt or impede the transmission of COVID-19 - and that any smaller studies undertaken have had equivocal results.
Masks: Unnecessary But Necessary
At the outset of the pandemic, the surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Jerome Adams, also cautioned against the use of masks, stating that "a surgical mask does not protect you from a respiratory virus – the average citizen – that mask is not going to protect them, and in most cases, they're actually going to increase their risk of being contaminated."
Contrast that with his recent statement that medical masks are "instruments of freedom" that will help us bring back football and college dances. This turnabout is not based on any new science about the benefits of masks. Instead, it conforms to the prevailing zeitgeist in which the mainstream media are excoriating Americans who resist wearing masks that have no proven benefit as science denialists who are endangering their fellow Americans.
And of course, "America's Doctor" Anthony Fauci, who never held a position on COVID-19 he didn't later reverse, has been to one pole and back on the subject of masks. During a March 8 interview on 60 Minutes, Fauci said the following:
"Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks – there's no reason. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask may make people feel a little better… but it's not providing the perfect protection people think. And often there are unintended consequences."
Now, however, despite the dearth of good science on the benefits of wearing facial coverings, Fauci is a face mask fan. To cover his tracks, the doctor now claims he was previously saying not to wear masks out of concern at the time about the "very short supply" of them for health care workers and he "did not want them to be without the protective equipment they needed."
To not have his dueling statements lost in translation, it's important to point out that Fauci is admitting to lying to the American people about masks to secure the supply for doctors and nurses – as if they get medical supplies from Walmart and Target like the rest of us. This bald-faced bureaucratic mendacity should give every American pause.
The Case Against Masks
Consider the work of Denis Rancourt, PhD, who reviewed all the studies on the efficacy of masks over at least a decade. His bombshell paper Masks Don't Work concludes that study after study that uses randomized controlled trials with verified outcomes unambiguously finds there is "no statistical evidence of a benefit in terms of reducing the risk of getting a viral respiratory disease."
An even more recent meta-analysis on the use of face masks for reducing the risk of transmitting viral respiratory infections within community settings showed there is no evidence masks work, and yet we are being compelled, even bullied, into wearing them. Add Professor Russell Blaylock MD and Dolores Cahill Ph.D. to the list of doctors and scientists who not only assert that masks are ineffective but that they can harm the wearer by reducing blood oxygen levels, preventing exhaled viruses from escaping and causing hypoxia in some instances.
Why is it the average American doesn't know about any of the real science behind the mostly useless muzzles they are browbeaten into wearing at virtually every moment outside their homes? The answer to that is a disturbing meditation on the acquisition and exercise of raw power in 2020.
Have we thought about the fact that in under six months, the mainstream media, in league with politicians they endorse and leftist groupthink, have successfully divided the country into "obedient mask wearers" vs. "selfish people who won't wear the masks?" These are the same thought leaders who dictated what we are allowed to do, including protest, riot, shop at Walmart and Home Depot, and what we aren't – namely attend weddings, funerals, proms, and church.
These same elected officials closed down public schools nationwide and have "restructured" schools moving forward under the guise of "public safety" – even though there is no evidence whatsoever of COVID-19 being dangerous for children. Does it occur to us that in this darkest and most cynical social experiment, the powers that be have proven that fear will allow the government to proscribe the inalienable civil rights and freedoms of its citizens in draconian ways, unimaginable just six months ago?
In case you've been blind to the trajectory – the very next thing we'll be told we must do is to shut up and take Bill Gates' as yet unformulated miracle Coronavirus vaccine. If world leaders can convince the earth's population to wear a mask – which doubles as a perfect symbol of the muzzling of our freedom of speech – then making 7.5 billion global citizens roll up their shirtsleeves for a vaccine that has not been tested will be a cakewalk.
Clueless Hollywood Bullies
Clue-challenged, self-important celebrity scolds such as Jennifer Aniston, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Hanks are now acting as good foot soldiers in the fight against "ignorance." Aniston admonishes us that there should be "no debate" about wearing a mask – the phrase always invoked when dissenting views must be crushed. Good 'ole boy McConaughey lectures us to "wear the damn mask if you want to see next year," because he's both folksy and salty. And the usually winning Hanks has had about enough of this nonsense and assures his public that if you don't wear a mask, you're a "pu--y."
The CDC recently conjectured that as many as 20 million Americans had contracted COVID-19. If accurate, their mathematical models lower the U.S. mortality for Coronavirus to roughly .26 or one-quarter of one percent – close to seasonal flu levels. That is the same conclusion drawn by a USC study back in April that demonstrated far higher infection levels in LA county than thought, and a far lower mortality rate as a result. It is also the same thing Anthony Fauci conceded in a New England Journal of Medicine article back in March.
The Fourth Estate, however, doesn't trumpet this information. The media are most interested in amplifying racial division in America and in cudgeling us to obey science-free COVID-19 directives that keep us in fear for our lives. The fact that as many as 99.75% of people recover from the Wuhan Coronavirus isn't something the media or Bill Gates want you to know. The fact that high asymptomatic infection rates coupled with low mortality indicate that only the elderly and immunocompromised should be quarantined is more inconvenient still.
The worst news of all for these purveyors of fear? The incredibly high infection rates mean we are edging closer than ever to natural herd immunity – at which point the need for a vaccine becomes utterly moot. We will have beaten back COVID-19 in the same way humanity has been conquering viruses for millennia - naturally. And the muzzling of America with masks will come to be seen as the symbol of control and oppression it so obviously is.
If it isn't already clear by now: America, you're being lied to. The only question is, what are we going to do about it?
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Read more from Pennel Bird.
