Part 1: God Gave You a Fantastic Face
Or, "Why informed compassionate people resist masking, due to science"
This is Part One of a three part series on masks. Part One herein covers the research on how masks have been proven to not stop spread and how cloth masks even dramatically increase respiratory infections, and Part Two and Three will cover social and moral reasons why mask-wearing is harmful to society and yourself, and should be avoided.
Just looking at smiling people makes your brain feel happier, right? But do masks help protect people?
While the L.A. County director of public health is still a believer in masking, several L.A. cities have said they will defy a mask mandate from the county: it “doesn’t follow the science.”
What follows are the seven main studies to know. If you want to read through them in detail you can, or you can scroll down to the pictures of people wearing shoes and fruit for masks (!), where the studies are summarized for you.
MASKS - RESEARCH SHOWS THEY ARE INEFFECTIVE AND HARMFUL
2015 – Large randomized control trial in hospital workers compared cloth masks, surgical masks, and no masks during flu season. Cloth masks increased general respiratory infections: “Respiratory infection is much higher among healthcare workers wearing cloth masks compared to medical masks. Cloth masks should not be used...” Conducted in 2015. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150422121724.htm
2022 - Mask mandates in Southern California did not reduce hospitalizations or deaths. “There was no reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wearing mandate.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC83
2022 - "Results from this study strongly suggest that mask mandates actually caused about 1.5 times the number of deaths or ∼50% more deaths compared to no mask mandates." This increase in case fatality rate is hypothesized to be from continuing to inhale concentrated virions from the mask area deep into the lungs. https://journals.lww.com/md-journal/Fulltext/2022/02180/The_Foegen_effect__A_mechanism_by_which_facemasks.60.aspx
July 2022 - Scientific Reports, “Bacterial And Fungal Isolation From Face Masks.” Conclusion: “We propose that immunocompromised people should avoid repeated use of masks to prevent microbial infection.” - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-15409-x
July 2022 - School mask mandates have no impact on case rates of Covid-19: "Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students." https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1773983/v1
May 2021 - Masks harm society and childhood development: Masks of all types have negative impacts on some people, including headaches, difficulty breathing, and weakened social bonds. “A mask obstructing a face limits the ability of people of all ages to infer emotions expressed by facial features, but the difficulties associated with the mask’s use are significantly pronounced in children aged between 3 and 5 years old. These findings are of essential importance, as they suggest that we live in a time that may potentially affect the development of social and emotion reasoning.” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.669432/full
July 2022 - No need for concern about Covid, per L.A. County hospital epidemiologist: "We have not had a patient intubated due to Covid for several months." Only three patients in the hospital were admitted for Covid and none are in the ICU. https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/watch-mask-mandate-looms-la-hospital-officials-ridicule-covid-media-hype
November 2022 - N95’s don't provide higher protection - A two-year, multinational study with over a thousand medical professionals determined fit-tested N95 masks do not provide statistically significant protection compared to loose surgical masks with lesser filtration. Let the reader understand. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M22-1966
Still with me?
Here’s the summary of the above studies, most of which were conducted in 2022:
“Respiratory infection is much higher among healthcare workers wearing cloth masks compared to medical masks. Cloth masks should not be used...”
“There was no reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wearing mandate.”
"Results from this study strongly suggest that mask mandates actually caused about 1.5 times the number of deaths or ∼50% more deaths compared to no mask mandates."
“We propose that immunocompromised people should avoid repeated use of masks to prevent microbial infection.”
"Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students."
“A mask obstructing a face limits the ability of people of all ages to infer emotions expressed by facial features, but the difficulties associated with the mask’s use are significantly pronounced in children aged between 3 and 5 years old. …we live in a time that may potentially affect the development of social and emotion reasoning.”
"We have not had a patient intubated due to Covid for several months." Only three patients in the hospital were admitted for Covid and none are in the ICU. (July briefing from LAC-USC epidemiologist). A two year study comparing N95 masks to surgical masks found that there was no statistically significant benefit to N95s.
WAIT… 2015?
Glance up at that first study listed above, about how cloth masks increased infections. That was conducted in the year 2015, and is the gold standard of scientific research - a large, diverse, randomized control study. Years of studies consistently provide the same message.
WHY MANDATE MASKS, THEN?
Since masks don’t work (and can actually increase infections and fatality rates), why have they been pushed so hard… by a government that seems to be pushing a lot of craziness lately? Whatever the original reason, there is certainly no research-based reasons to continue their usage, and in fact real-world studies show no benefit and a likelihood of harm. Cloth or surgical mask policies are symbolic now - symbolic of conformity and compliance, and of other issues - and the government in some areas finds it useful to tell the public to wear these symbols.
Continue reading in Part Two to consider the moral obligation to resist useless/symbolic mask policies. You have a rational, scientific, and moral right to show your God-given face when you want to, whether the government “approves” of it or not.
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For further reading:
https://www.justfacts.com/news_face_masks_deadly_falsehoods
&
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-mask-studies-you-should-know/
Why mandate masks? To gauge compliance