In my daily walk through a large regional park with my dog, I noticed a strange phenomenon lately: more people are wearing masks while exercising outdoors.
While taking a walk on Saturday, I was excited to see an informal football game played by girls aged 7 to 8 years. But then I realized that their coach was wearing a mask. And when I looked more closely at the children playing, they were all wearing masks too. Outside … Playing a vigorous game of football …
Teens playing volleyball were also masked.
Hikers, runners, cyclists and strolling families wore masks.
Many of the daily mask users I see seem fearful, usually walking past me in a wide arc for fear that I might be a walking contagion. Other mask users clearly believe that wearing masks is a symbol of social responsibility.
It reminded me of what I read recently in the journal of journalist Alex Berenson
Most importantly, Berenson concludes, “… the worst reason of all is that mask mandates appear to be a government effort to find out what restrictions on their civil liberties people will accept based on the most tenuous evidence.
He describes how masks have become mandatory, despite a great deal of medical evidence showing that they do not prevent users from contracting respiratory infections.
“’Overnight, masks became a symbol of social responsibility,’ wrote The New York Times on April 10,” Berenson reported in Part 3: Masks. “’If you still need to be convinced, see why you should now wear a mask in public spaces.’ Two months later, the Times happily offered ‘Tips to make your mask work’ ”.
Berenson wrote the series of booklets in three parts, largely dispelling much of the misinformation inflicted on the public by “public health experts” and control-oriented politicians. “Unreported truths, part 1, focused on how we count deaths from COVID-19. Part 2 explained the blocks. Part 3 covers an even more central topic in our lives every day – the evidence that masks work or not to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, ”he explained.
Berenson says “for months, public health experts have proclaimed, ‘My mask protects you, while yours protects me’. Governments around the world now make people use facial coverings in public. But the proof that masks do some good is much weaker than almost anyone can imagine. “
Berenson investigates many studies and trials with interesting results.
… “Even the trained medical staff doesn’t like to use them for more than a few hours. As two doctors wrote in a comment in August, “when used correctly, N95 masks are suffocating, uncomfortable and difficult to tolerate for long periods”. (https: // jamanetwork.com/ journals / jamainternalmedicine / fullarticle / 2769441) As a practical matter, if civilians are going to wear facial covers, they will be cloth or standard surgical masks. “
Berenson noted that in several studies, health experts “did not say so explicitly in their conclusion, perhaps because they were aware that any criticism of the masks was prohibited in the coronavirus era. Instead, they pointed out that their work offered ‘quantitative results … [for] evidence-based decisions. ‘In other words, we are not going to tell you that surgical masks don’t work – you can read. (https: // jamanetwork.com/ article.aspx? doi = 10.1001 / jamainternmed. 2020.4221)
“What is true for surgical masks seems to be doubly true for home-made cloth masks, which generally filter even less small particles and are even less effective. The general evidence is clear: the standard cloth and surgical masks offer almost no protection against virus-sized particles or small aerosols. “
Berenson concludes:
“The theoretical evidence that tissues and surgical masks do not protect their users is overwhelming. But we have even stronger evidence. It comes from real clinical trials of people wearing masks. Medical evidence comes in many different forms. The weakest evidence comes from anecdotes based on a person’s experience. Just because I didn’t have an accident after driving drunk doesn’t mean it’s safe. On the other hand, the gold standard of evidence comes from what scientists and doctors call randomized controlled trials. “
“Clinical trials consistently find that masks do not protect people from respiratory viruses.”
Berenson found a recent test:
“If only we had a large randomized clinical trial that specifically examined whether the masks protected their users from coronavirus. Now yes. In an article published on November 18, Danish researchers reported on a trial that covered almost 5,000 people in Denmark in the spring. The test was carefully designed and executed, with half of the participants being instructed to wear high quality surgical masks and 50 supplied free of charge. The other half was not asked to wear masks. Participants were followed up for a month to see if they had been infected with Sars-Cov-2. Within a month, 53 people in the group without a mask were infected, compared with 42 who wore masks. The difference was indistinguishable from chance, and suggested that masks may actually cause a 46 percent reduction to a 23 percent increase in infections among its users. The reason for the failure was not that the people in the masked group did not follow the rules. When they looked only at participants who always wore masks, the researchers found an even smaller difference. The use of a mask “did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of Sars-Cov-2 infection”, the authors wrote in their discussion “.
There is little asymptomatic dissemination:
“Forcing everyone to wear masks will be of little importance unless asymptomatic people spread the coronavirus in large numbers. Everyone agrees that symptomatic people with a fever or cough should stay home or wear a mask if they have to leave. If only sick people wear masks, facial covers can act as a public signal: I don’t feel well, stay away. But the goal of universal mask mandates is to force people who don’t feel bad to wear masks, based on the theory that people without symptoms can also spread the virus. Like virtually every other part of the “my mask protects you” theory, this has not been proven. Worse – like the advice on general blockades, which were never recommended before March – it has become highly politicized. “
Even Dr. Anthony Fauci explained that asymptomatic transmission was not a threat.
Maria Van Kerkhove, a scientist at the World Health Organization, said at a news conference last June that asymptomatic people almost never transmit the coronavirus. Berenson addressed the consequences of his statement:
But the media and other public health experts immediately rejected Van Kerkhove’s accidental honesty at the June 8 news conference. Why? Because the threat of asymptomatic transmission is critical to the universal mask mandate argument. If people without symptoms are very unlikely to transmit Sars-Cov-2 to others, why make them wear masks? “
The evidence is overwhelming that surgical or tissue masks do not protect their wearers, so who exactly do the masks protect? ”Experts offered by hospitals agreed that“ there is limited evidence on the significant extent to which masks are useful in reducing the risk of transmission. ”In addition, wearing masks for long periods had disadvantages, nursing experts told Hayes. The masks were uncomfortable, were damp and could cause skin irritation. (One referred to a “grunge factor”.)
O Globo reported months ago in the “mouth of the mask”, a new syndrome that dentists report seeing caused by the moisture trapped in facial masks, which creates a Petri dish of breeding ground for bacteria as it is placed directly over the mouth . The constant use of masks is causing all kinds of dental disasters, such as decaying teeth, gum wrinkles and sour breath. The use of a mask for a long period also causes persistent coughing, as well as dermatitis on the skin around the mouth.
“Of course, encouraging people to take actions that are (supposedly) symbolically valuable is different from forcing them,” said Berenson. “I may want to wear a pink pin to show that I care about beating breast cancer, but Governor Cuomo cannot make me. At least I don’t think he can, although I’m not so sure anymore. “
“The not-so-good reason is that making people wear masks scares them. It scares us. Masks are warnings that none of us can escape. This virus is different. This virus is dangerous. This virus is not the flu. It is best to calm down until a vaccine is ready to save us all. But the worst reason of all is that the mask mandates appear to be a government effort to find out what restrictions on their civil liberties people will accept on the basis of the most tenuous evidence. They are the not so thin edge of the wedge. Today, we must wear masks. Tomorrow we will need negative Covid tests to travel between countries. Or vaccines to work with. I would like the masks to work. I wish we didn’t have to fight over them. But they don’t want to. And we do. “
– Unreported truths about Covid-19 and Lockdowns: Part 3: Alex Berenson masks
I strongly recommend reading Alex Berenson’s three-part booklet series – they are short, well-written and full of very important information, facts, studies and research that readers can use immediately to put their fear to rest.
