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During my daily hike in a large regional park with my dog, I noticed a strange phenomenon lately: more and more people wear masks when exercising outside in the air fresh.
During my hike on Saturday I was comforted to see an informal soccer game played by girls aged 7-8. But then I noticed their trainer was wearing a mask. And when I took a closer look at the children playing, all were also wearing masks. Outside… Play a vigorous football match…
Teenagers playing volleyball were also masked.
Walkers, runners, cyclists and families on walks wore masks.
So many of the daily mask wearers I witness seem fearful, usually walking past me in a wide arc lest I may be walking contagion. Other mask wearers clearly believe that wearing a mask is a symbol of social responsibility.
It reminded me of what I read recently in journalist Alex Berenson
Importantly, Berenson concludes “… the worst reason of all is that mask warrants appear to be an effort by governments to find out what restrictions on their civil liberties people will accept based on the thinnest evidence possible.”
He explains how masks became mandatory, despite extensive medical evidence showing that they do not prevent wearers from contracting respiratory infections.
“” Overnight, masks became a symbol of social responsibility, “The New York Times wrote on April 10,” Berenson reported in Part 3: Masks. “’If you still need to be convinced, here’s why you should now wear a mask in public spaces.’ Two months later, The Times happily offered “tips for making your mask work.” “
Berenson wrote the three-part booklet series, largely dispelling much of the misinformation imposed on the public by “public health experts” and control-oriented politicians. “The first part of the unreported truths focused on how we count deaths from COVID-19. Part 2 explained the interlocks. The third part covers an even more central topic in our everyday life: the proof that masks work or do not work 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 are now forcing people to cover their faces in public. But the evidence that masks do good is much weaker than most everyone understands. “
Berenson looks at many studies and trials with interesting results.
… “Even trained medical personnel don’t like to wear them for more than a few hours. As two doctors wrote in a comment in August, “When worn correctly, N95 masks are suffocating, uncomfortable and difficult to tolerate for long periods of time.” (https: // jamanetwork.com/ journals / jamainternalmedicine / fullarticle / 2769441) In practice, if civilians wear face masks, they will be either standard cloth or surgical masks. “
Berenson noted that in several studies, health experts “did not explicitly say so in their conclusion, perhaps because they were aware that any criticism of masks is prohibited in the age of coronaviruses. Instead, they emphasized that their work offered “quantitative results … [for] evidence-based decisions ”. In other words, we’re not going to tell you 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 appears to be doubly true for homemade fabric masks, which generally filter out even fewer small particles and are even less effective. The overall evidence is clear: Standard tissue and surgical masks offer virtually no protection against virus-sized particles or small aerosols. “
Berenson concludes:
“The theoretical evidence that surgical fabrics and masks do not protect their wearers is overwhelming. But we have even stronger evidence. It comes from actual clinical trials on 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 haven’t had an accident after driving while intoxicated doesn’t mean it’s safe to do so. On the other hand, the gold standard of evidence comes from what scientists and doctors call randomized controlled trials.
“Clinical trials consistently show that masks do not protect people from respiratory viruses.”
Berenson found a recent essay:
“If only we had a large randomized controlled trial that specifically looked at whether masks protected their carriers from coronavirus. Now we are doing it. In an article published on November 18, Danish researchers reported on a trial that covered nearly 5,000 people in Denmark in the spring. The trial was carefully designed and executed, with half of the participants asked to wear high-quality surgical masks and provide 50 free of charge. The other half were not asked to wear masks. The participants were followed for a month to see if they had been infected with Sars-Cov-2. During the month, 53 people in the unmasked group had been infected, compared to 42 who wore masks. The difference was indistinguishable by chance, and the suggested masks could really cause a 46% decrease to a 23% increase in infections in their wearers. The reason for the failure was also not that the members of the masked group were not following the rules. When they only looked at the participants who always wore masks, the researchers found an even smaller difference. Wearing a mask “did not reduce the incidence of Sars-Cov-2 infection to conventional levels of statistical significance,” the authors wrote in their discussion.
There is little asymptomatic dissemination:
“Forcing everyone to wear masks will matter very little unless asymptomatic people spread the coronavirus in large numbers. Everyone agrees that people with symptoms of fever or cough should stay home or wear a mask if they need to go out. If only sick people wear masks, the masks can work as a public signal: I’m not feeling well, stay away. But the purpose of universal mask warrants is to force people who don’t feel sick to wear masks anyway, 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 aspect is unproven. Worse, like advice on general lockdowns, which had never been recommended until March, it has become highly politicized. “
Even Dr Anthony Fauci explained that asymptomatic transmission was not a threat.
Maria Van Kerkhove, a scientist from the World Health Organization, told a press conference last June that asymptomatic people almost never transmit the coronavirus. Berenson spoke of the fallout from his statement:
But the media and other public health experts immediately rebuffed Van Kerkhove’s accidental honesty during the June 8 press conference. Why? Because the threat of asymptomatic transmission is central to the argument for universal mask mandates. If people without symptoms are very unlikely to pass Sars-Cov-2 to other people, why make them wear masks? “
The evidence is overwhelming that surgical or cloth masks do not protect their wearers, so who exactly do masks protect? The experts the hospitals had proposed agreed that there was limited significant evidence of the usefulness of masks in reducing the risk of transmission. Plus, wearing masks for long periods of time had drawbacks, nurses’ experts in Hayes said. The masks were uncomfortable, got wet, and could cause skin irritation. (One referred to a “grunge factor”.)
The Globe reported months ago on “mouth mask,” a new syndrome that dentists are reporting caused by moisture trapped in face masks, which creates a petri dish of potting soil for bacteria because it is in place directly over your mouth. The constant wearing of masks leads to all kinds of dental disasters such as tooth decay, receding gum lines and very acidic breath. Long-term mask wear also causes a persistent cough, as well as dermatitis on the skin around the mouth.
“Of course, encouraging people to take action that is (supposedly) symbolically valid is different from forcing them,” Berenson said. “I might want to wear a pink pin to show that I care about beating breast cancer, but Governor Cuomo can’t do me. At least I don’t think he can, although I’m not so sure anymore.
“The bad reason is that making people wear masks scares them. 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. We better squat until a vaccine is ready to save us all. But the worst reason is that the mask warrants appear to be an effort by governments to find out what restrictions on their civil liberties people will accept on the basis of the thinnest evidence possible. They are the not-so-fine edge of the corner. Today we have to wear masks. Tomorrow we will need negative Covid tests to travel between countries. Or vaccines to go to work. I wish the masks worked. I wish we didn’t have to fight over them. But they don’t. And we do.
– Unreported Truths About Covid-19 and Lockdowns: Part 3: Masks by Alex Berenson
I highly recommend reading Alex Berenson’s three-part booklet series – they’re short, well-written, and full of very important information, facts, studies, and research that readers can immediately use to allay fear. .
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