Tag: face masks

Masks Didn’t Slow COVID Spread: New Study

New findings reported Tuesday in a University of Louisville study challenge what has been the prevailing belief that mask mandates are necessary to slow the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. The study notes that “80% of US states mandated masks during the COVID-19 pandemic” and while “mandates induced greater mask compliance, [they] did not predict lower growth rates when community spread was low (minima) or high (maxima).” Among other things, the study—conducted using data from the CDC covering multiple seasons—reports that “mask mandates and use are not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among US states.”

“Our findings do not support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates decrease with greater public mask use,” notes the U of L report. Researchers stated that “masks may promote social cohesion as rallying symbols during a pandemic, but risk compensation can also occur” before listing some observed risks that accompany mask wearing:

Prolonged mask use (>4 hours per day) promotes facial alkalinization and inadvertently encourages dehydration, which in turn can enhance barrier breakdown and bacterial infection risk. British clinicians have reported masks to increase headaches and sweating and decrease cognitive precision. Survey bias notwithstanding, these sequelae are associated with medical errors. By obscuring nonverbal communication, masks interfere with social learning in children. Likewise, masks can distort verbal speech and remove visual cues to the detriment of individuals with hearing loss; clear face-shields improve visual integration, but there is a corresponding loss of sound quality.

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The graveyard of meaningless terms has gained another resident: “Science”

Back in 2014, HuffPost ran an article that discussed 12 words that have been so overused and misused that “they really don’t mean anything anymore.” Words like “literally,” “awesome,” “honestly,” and “unbelievable” all rightly made the list.

I’d like to submit a 2021 revision, suggesting that we add the word “science” to the archive. Whatever it once meant, over the course of this last year mankind has watched it be sautéed, filleted, and utterly obliterated on the altar of Covid, face masks, and vaccines to the point it has become void of any objective definition.

Just in recent days the butchery of science has become epic.

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How Facebook uses ‘fact-checking’ to suppress scientific truth

At the end of a recent 800-meter race in Oregon, a high-school runner named Maggie Williams got dizzy, passed out and landed face-first just beyond the finish line. She and her coach blamed her collapse on a deficit of oxygen due to the mask she’d been forced to wear, and state officials responded to the public outcry by easing their requirements for masks during athletic events.

But long before the pandemic began, scientists had repeatedly found that wearing a mask could lead to oxygen deprivation. Why had this risk been ignored?

One reason is that a new breed of censors has been stifling scientific debate about masks on social-media platforms. When Scott Atlas, a member of the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force, questioned the efficacy of masks last year, Twitter removed his tweet. When eminent scientists from Stanford and Harvard recently told Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that children should not be forced to wear masks, YouTube removed their video discussion from its platform. These acts of censorship were widely denounced, but the social-media science police remain undeterred, as I discovered when I recently wrote about the harms to children from wearing masks.

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Hypocrites: Maskless Hugs and Handshakes are Back at the White House as Pelosi Fines GOP Lawmakers For Ditching Their Masks

The White House on Thursday was packed with smiling, maskless Democrat lawmakers and Biden officials shaking hands and hugging.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among the maskless lawmakers at the White House on Thursday.

There are two sets of rules: One for Democrats and elites in the Biden Admin and one for GOP lawmakers.

Pelosi is still requiring lawmakers to wear a mask on the House floor despite the CDC recommendation that vaccinated people can be indoors without a face mask.

Pelosi is fining GOP lawmakers $500 each for flouting her mask rules.

GOP lawmakers are refusing to wear masks so Pelosi is now suggesting that members of Congress who don’t prove vaccination status should be denied access to the House floor.

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‘Taking Away The Male Gaze’: Some Women Want To Keep Wearing Masks Indefinitely

A number of women have come forth asserting they would prefer to keep wearing masks, even after the general public has discarded them, with some of the women offering explanations such as a mask functions as an “invisibility cloak” or acts “almost like taking away the male gaze.”

The women who preferred keeping masks were interviewed by The Guardian, which reported some of these comments:

“I don’t want to feel the pressure of smiling at people to make sure everyone knows I’m ‘friendly’ and ‘likable.’ It’s almost like taking away the male gaze. There’s freedom in taking that power back.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker or maybe it’s because I always feel like I have to present my best self to the world, but it has been such a relief to feel anonymous. It’s like having a force field around me that says ‘don’t see me.’”

“It’s a common consensus among my co-workers that we prefer not having customers see our faces. Oftentimes when a customer is being rude or saying off-color political things, I’m not allowed to grimace or ‘make a face’ because that will set them off. With a mask, I don’t have to smile at them or worry about keeping a neutral face. I have had customers get very upset when I don’t smile at them. I deal with anti-maskers constantly at work. They have threatened to hurt me, tried to get me fired, thrown things at me and yelled ‘f*** you’ in my face. If wearing a mask in the park separates me from them, I’m cool with that.”

“I appreciated that I felt a bit more anonymous in a mask and more gender ambiguous. After lockdown ended, it was confronting to go out and be exposed to all that offhand racism, sexism and misgendering from strangers again … Sometimes when I’m just going out to grab takeaway, I’ve enjoyed keeping the mask on even though it’s not really necessary here now.”

“I just stare at that little box with my face in it and pick apart my appearance. My double chin seems six times larger, my eye bags are too deep of a purple, etc … Even when there’s a heatwave and my apartment is close to 90 degrees, I’ll wear a turtleneck that I can pull up. I pack on thick makeup that makes my skin peel. I 10,000% plan on wearing it for the foreseeable future. After a full work day of worrying and not being able to focus on my actual job, it just feels nice to blend in. Simply put, I’m sick of being perceived.”

An article in Inside Hook stated, “Of course, a mere face covering isn’t going to deter the more dedicated cat-callers and unwanted attention-givers among us. After all, the lips may be the vagina of the face or whatever, but suffice to say cat-callers still have plenty of other material to work with even if the mouth and chin remain out of sight.”

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PBS Journalist Implies That Ending Mask Mandates is Racist

During a White House press briefing, a PBS journalist suggested that ending mask mandates was racist.

Yes, really.

Last week, the CDC disappointed face diaper extremists by lifting restrictions on mask wearing in numerous settings.

This prompted a massive backlash from those who have adopted the face covering as a kind of cult symbol, with a PBS journalist attempting to argue that not masking up will lead to the deaths of more black people.

“The CDC guidelines on masks is putting front line workers and especially people of color at risk and they’re calling for the CDC to reverse that, what’s the White House’s stance on…people of color (being) at risk,” said the journalist.

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