….and why do some keep believing the lie?
I am truly baffled by the inability for such a large portion of the very intelligent population that I serve to be blinded by truth, that they grip a lie as if their life depends on it. Last week I had a young, healthy fit man come in for his appointment and abruptly leave when he saw my secretary without a mask on. He told her that he needed to reschedule because he just did not feel safe. I had another patient who is a retired cancer researcher who proudly announced she was vaxx’d, boosted and came in double masked. When I asked her what fun plans she had this winter or spring, she scoffed and said it was just too dangerous to leave their home and they were exercising an abundance of caution.
As my readers, you likely know that on the front end of the pandemic, I was all in on the masks. I pushed aside my years of knowledge to trust what Fauci et al were saying. Why would they lie? Clearly they had new evidence and in simple terms it makes sense that covering your face should produce some benefit. I sewed over 2000 masks in the course of 9 months and then did an about face on my desire to believe masks work. I had started peaking behind the curtain and I must say, once you do you cannot unsee the truth!
As countries around the world are dropping mask mandates and vaccine passports, it seems our country is doubling down on the falsehoods. The CDC recently put on this:
Here is the study if you wish to read about the nonsense science our public health figures are using to continue to lie to the US population.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, a UCSF, is speaking out about this ridiculous study and breaks down the inherent flaws quite simply:
the people who were testing for COVID in this study were testing for different reasons. Those testing positive were likely because they had symptoms whereby those testing negative were possibly required to do so for mandatory testing for work or travel
an extremely poor response rate—only 13% of those who tested positive and 9% of those who tested negative responded to the researchers follow up phone calls
mask usage was ‘self reported’
the effect size is implausibly large!!! A 66% reduction should have been a clear sign that something was extremely wrong with how this study was conducted
they omitted subjects from the study who had been in contact with a known COVID+ person
The White House is asking Spotify to censure Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan should ask the CDC to censure MMWR. The truth is the CDC has put out so many papers that borderline propaganda, that they create the space for people to seek alternative information. They have lost trust.
But I am more disappointed in smart scientists who share this essay. They are losing their credibility. I am sad to see it.
Ultimately, the CDC & NIH failed us. The agencies should have run a half dozen masking cluster RCTs under different conditions, and for different ages. We were starving, and we needed this loaf of bread. Instead, the CDC published flawed study after flawed study. It didn’t even give us crumbs; it gave us a fistful of sand. Starving, we swallowed each grain, and begged for more. Medical leaders told us to fill our bowl before it runs out. Science lies on its deathbed.
A friend shared with me this article that I found to be a great summation of what it has been like to live through the continued obfuscation of truth. The author highlights a book authored by Ian Miller entitled, Unmasked: The Global Failure of Mask Mandates.
A document published by the World Health Organization in 2019 framed the results of these studies in no uncertain terms: “there was no evidence that face masks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza”. It’s unsurprising, then, that when the CDC briefed reporters on the pandemic in February of 2020, masking was not even mentioned among the NPIs that might be deployed. The UK government, too, stated early in 2020 that there was no evidence to support masking.
In light of the earlier consensus, Miller’s findings in Unmasked should not be surprising. As we might have predicted based on a plethora of trials and meta-analyses published prior to the pandemic, mask mandates have had little to no demonstrable impact on curbing the spread of the virus. Miller reaches this conclusion by comparing areas with mask mandates of longer and shorter duration with each other and with areas that never imposed mandates at all. The results, he shows, simply do not support the standard adage that “masks save lives”.
The best line of this article:
Making us all put masks on was the expert class’s mask-off moment — and what we can see now isn’t pretty.
In closing, at this point to live by the lie, to not stand up and speak out about the nonsense of this failed public health measure and the continued torture of our children in schools is being complicit to this crime!
Sadly so true! Those who are being lead by these lies refuse to seek out other knowledgeable sources. If we ALLOW them to take away our rights during an “emergency” they will continue to manufacture emergencies to take away more rights.
Vinnay says we ought to get hacksxxinated....
I can't take his writing or thoughts with any credibility given that sentiment he expresses in his latest writing, even if he opposes masks now