Last February and March, medical authorities in government from the highest level in Washington, D.C. to local health directors told the public that the average person wearing a mask in public was engaging in an unhealthy behavior.
Mask wearing, they said, was ill-advised because masks are petri dishes for germs and viruses that people breathe into their lungs. Doctors and medical professionals change their masks frequently because of this petrie-dish scenario. The public, however, doesn’t have access to an endless supply of disposable masks, and therefore people are sucking in the bad stuff.
In Alaska, that authority was Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s Chief Health Officer, who told the Senate Health and Social Services Committee on Feb. 12, 2020 that a person wearing a mask is breathing in a wet, moist environment collecting viruses and bacteria, and it is in general not useful for protection from other persons’ germs.
Zink said that a mask was useful for someone walking into a clinic who was coughing or sneezing, but that the N95 mask — the one that is effective — has to be fitted and tested and that the recommendation was for average persons to not wear masks because they don’t know what they are doing with them.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said the same thing a month later, adding that wearing a mask might make people feel better, but isn’t providing protection. He said that people don’t wear them properly, and handle them recklessly. When asked about that statement by CBS News later in the summer, he equivocated.
“I don’t regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs,” he said in an interview with CBS Evening News.
“In the context of the time,” is the key phrase.
To be clear, Fauci said it wasn’t good for Americans to wear masks because they did not work, only to later admit that he was really concerned about running out of masks for medical professionals. Fauci attended press White House coronavirus press briefings throughout March and April without wearing a mask.
Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, will serve President-elect Joe Biden as his chief medical adviser after Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
It isn’t the first time Fauci has been caught misleading the public. Last week Fauci acknowledged that he selectively lied about the percentage of the population that must be vaccinated to halt the virus.
“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci told the New York Times. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”
Rather than following the science, Fauci seems to be following the surveys to gauge how willing Americans are to take his advice.
As for Alaska’s mask recommendations, an Alaska state advisory posted on April 3, 2020 recommended that people make their own cloth masks, and save the professional-grade masks for the medical professionals.
“Another tool that may help to minimize transmission while people are around others outside of their household is the use of face coverings,” the press release continued. “Because we are experiencing a nationwide shortage of medical supplies, including facemasks, we recommend that Alaskans make their own face coverings and wear them in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) — especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”
According to the State press release on April 3, there was sufficient evidence showing that asymptomatic and presymptomatic people can “shed” the virus to others. It was in sharp contrast to what Dr. Zink had stated just six weeks earlier.
“This means that people who have no symptoms whatsoever may be infected with the virus and capable of transmitting the virus to others when interacting in close proximity — for example, speaking, coughing, or sneezing,” the state’s press release noted. “This heightens the need for community-wide implementation of control measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among people who are not experiencing symptoms of illness.”
Now, scientists are questioning just how true that statement is. In Nature, scientists say evidence shows that “about one in five infected people will experience no symptoms, and they will transmit the virus to significantly fewer people than someone with symptoms. But researchers are divided about whether asymptomatic infections are acting as a ‘silent driver’ of the pandemic.”
Sen. Marco Rubio earlier this week blasted Fauci for playing fast and loose with the facts.
Rubio wrote that Americans should cease “placing blind faith in unelected celebrity scientists — elevated by a media that award Emmys to negligent politicians with their own grisly records,” in reference to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recent Emmy Award for hosting press conferences, despite his administration forcing COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, where they infected the residents, who then died from the virus.
“I do not question Dr. Fauci’s motives — I trust they are noble — but I am appalled by his arrogance,” Rubio wrote. “If he wants to lead the nation, he should run for office. Otherwise, he should give us an honest and transparent reading of the science, not polling data, and let the rest of us — policymakers and the American people who have elected them — do our jobs.”
Extra credit reading: “The surgical mask is a bad fit for risk reduction,” by Shane Neilson, MD
The mask has been de-bunked, and now it is about control. People please stop wearing masks where you can. Like stores. I get confronted at the front door by employees asking where my mask is, I ask if they need me to leave the store because I won’t wear a mask, and they’ve always said no. We need to stop letting our dictators bully us!
Dr B. recommends you change your scivvies, socks and hanky’s daily with fresh clean ones. It’s only basic … fundamental hi-gene.
The premise of the Scientific Method is all elements of the process. The method starts with a Question, Hypothosis, Research Steps, and comes to a Conclusion. The Conclusion involves Criticism from the researchers and scientific community to define the reliability of the study conducted and outcome thereof. I am concerned that our State and Country’s science leaders feel that they can make unilaterial “scientific conclusions” and minimize or disregard outside criticism as not acceptable to the scientific method.
My criticism of the process regarding COVID is that there are multiple approaches to deal with it. One is to decrease the virus presents by mindful cleaning, distancing, and aware of vulnerable populations. Two is to empower the immune system. And, three is to promote effective medications, immune supported plasma from COVID infected and free citizens, and vaccines for immunity. My critical observation is we are emphasizing distancing and vaccines to the exclusion of scientific evaluation of the impact of the COVID free, immune empowered residence of this State. I read on the DHSS COVID website of the current cases but not the abundant recovered cases and functioning thereof. I read on the DHSS website the self supporting data but not comparison studies (e.g. influenza history vs COVID types or longitudinal comparison bar graphs of deaths in Alaska). I do not read on the DHSS website of ways to empower your immune system (e.g. current medical recommendations such as vitamin C, vitamin D, zink, aspirin, etc).
The proponents of the scientific method accept critical thinking as the Conclusion process. Thick skin scientists are seers of truth. Politically correct scientists are vulnerable to extortion of the scientific method process through the influence of their voice, position, or authority. Policy decisions are being driven by vulnerable science and these politicians inappropriately cry foul of anyone who questions the method that they don’t even understand. True fear is succumb by False Evidence Appearing Real policies.
We rugged Alaskans can think for themselves, use the scientific method too, and collectively overcome any challenge. We have been proven this for generations (e.g. subsistence living, AKCAN Highway, pipeline, mining, fishing, etc). We can and will overcome COVID by following valid and reliable scientific research that includes constructive critical evaluation and reflection. What are your thoughts?
Sorry, Ken. You lost me at the term “mindful.” I know you’re trying to educate people, but this is a blog, not a research paper. Keep it short and succinct.
This has been a subject of some contention for a while. Do masks work or not? It is a complicated subject because there are many variables, such as the type of mask, how well it is fitted, how effective the filtering layers are for both droplets of various sizes and aerosols, whether or not it is being worn properly, how it is being sanitized if it is reusable, the list goes on and on, and we aren’t well trained in how to use them.
Without getting into details and a rant about the scientific uselessness of many mask rating studies, suffice to say that masks, if they provide protection, provide it at a relatively low level. The main, and most important, means of preventing transmission of the virus is to avoid being where the virus is. That means distancing. That means isolating and assessing risk levels when going out into the wild. These are not popular solutions, and if they are to be implemented on a broad scale, they will be even more disastrous for businesses, such as restaurants and bars, than current masking mandates have been.
The simple, but not easy fact is that the only solution to preventing the virus running wild is to distance. That means isolating. That means avoiding crowds, closed spaces, and close contact. This is how the disease has been defeated in places like New Zealand, where we have witnessed New Year celebrations with huge crowds and close contact in both open and closed spaces, because they have had zero infections within the last three weeks. They did the hard work of isolating early on, along with a couple of repeats when the virus reappeared, and are now celebrating the new year freely and openly. If the virus rears its head again, they will hunker down for another two or three or four weeks until they have no transmission or new cases, and they will open up again. They know this works. They’ve seen it work. Although it isn’t easy, they are all on board.
Perhaps it is time to put the mask charade to rest and do the hard work that needs to be done to defeat COVID. If not, we can piddle around and eventually get to what is called herd immunity, but the cost will be high, as it already has been.
We should, however, not forget that this virus will very likely not become extinct. It will likely haunt us from this day forward as do it many cousins, the many varieties of the common cold. And we shouldn’t forget that the biological forge that created SARS-CoV-2 is still at work, creating new and, quite likely, more deadly viruses that the one that haunts us now. This is a test. This is only a test. When the deadly virus comes, the one with a 50 or 60 or 90 percent fatality rate, we will be evaluated by how well we have passed this test.
And that deadly virus is already in the works. We haven’t seen it yet. We don’t know when it will come because the forge hasn’t yet created it or set it loose, but you can be assured that just as there was a 1918 Spanish flu and a 2020 Corona virus there will be a another dangerous one emerging from the biological morass sooner or later.
OMG, another loquacious “authority”. Keep it short or go try publishing it somewhere else.
Catchy, simplistic explanations deny the fact that there’s more to things than meets the eye.
You are jacked up on and regurgitating fear porn. This “virus” is the cold and flu that has all but disappeared since the appearance of “covid”. Keep your hands and nose clean, keep your hands away from your face and cover your cough and sneezes. That method of “protection” has worked for more than a hundred years now. Sometimes, people will fall for the most elaborate lies and cast aside the simplest truths…like now
I hardly think it’s a “lie.” COVID-19 is a reality in Alaska and all over the world. Suzanne let’s have some reality checking going on here please!!
It is patently a lie, however, that this current very mild pandemic is “novel”, unprecedented, or is a threat on the order of the Black Death. On the contrary, it is the wildly extreme, unjustified and vastly overreaching reactions to this very mild pandemic that are the REAL threat, and that are causing the most harm.
One does not cut off one’s arm in order to avoid being stung by a bee. That is what all you Covidiots’ overreactions and hysteria amount to.
Good luck with your bee sting.
Tell that to the 18- 50 million people who died from the 1918 Spanish flu. Wait a minute. They’re all dead. And, probably so are their offspring.
Never mind.
The reason it will haunt us, is because now the government knows how to scare and control, with this well orchestrated game and all its willing participants. The great vaccine is here,, so the people can now bend over again, and it will be all great.
See above comment
“I do not question Dr. Fauci’s motives — I trust they are noble — but I am appalled by his arrogance,” Rubio wrote. “If he wants to lead the nation, he should run for office. Otherwise, he should give us an honest and transparent reading of the science, not polling data, and let the rest of us — policymakers and the American people who have elected them — do our jobs.”
How does arrogant lying make for noble motives? Tells you a little about Marco.
Rubio is right, it is the elected leaders and policymaker’s job to lie to us.
Fauci is a proven liar and political hack. He has lied repeatedly and moved more goalposts than Allied Van Lines.
He’ll be a perfect fit for the Harris, err Biden, regime.
?Speaking of Biden, Harris and Fake Fauci, they ALL should be going to GITMO and GOOD RIDDANCE to the traitors!!
New synonym for fraud and prevarication: “to fauci”
Why are so many people claiming to be free thinking conservatives looking to the government for all the answers all of the time?
Stop being a hypocrite.
That would be a good start for people claiming to be free thinking conservatives looking to the government for all the answers all of the time.
And with all that said, a lot of people fell for it all, still are, and obeyed their masters.
Our (Experts) say the mask is 20% effective. Would you fly on a jet liner if it had an 80% chance of the wing falling off???? Enough of the unhealthy face diapers. You sheep look like fools. This is about control of the masses. Beware the gas chambers await.
I bought a cloth mask at our local grocery store for three bucks. I cut the length in half so I would have two as I didn’t need it to cover my neck and had a clean one. Last time I was at the same store they still have them…..$12.
From a New Zealand Study published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology titled “Moralization of COVID-19 Health Response: Asymmetry in Tolerance for Human Costs”.
“Lead author Dr Maja Graso, a Senior Lecturer in Business Ethics at the University of Otago’s Department of Management, says results supported the hypothesis, suggesting COVID-19 elimination efforts became moralised to an almost sacred level.”
Welcome to The Holy Order of The Mask, lead by Cardinal Fauci.
And shame on you heretics.
Now that thar is downrit funny, it is.
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