by Casey | Nov 16, 2020 | Blog, Idiocracy, Science
I was asked to write a letter to the St. Joseph County Commission (Indiana) ahead of their vote on mask mandate fines for local businesses. This is what I sent them.
Commissioners,
Most of you know who I am. I wanted to send you just a small sample of actual scientific research on masks and their effectiveness on viral spread as well as real-world data ahead of your vote on the mask fine ordinance.
My goal is to present a small sample of the abundant research showing masks aren’t nearly as effective as many suggest. I ask that you set aside any confirmation bias you may already hold and just look at what I’ve included here.
I suppose the first thing is to look at the real-world data.
Experts originally opposed mask requirements because people would inevitably not use them correctly. They would abandon the other, more effective, measures to prevent infection. They would no longer wash their hands or socially distance themselves or stay home. Those warnings have all come true.
In early March, Dr. Anthony Fauci told “60 Minutes” face masks were not necessary for the general population, noting that while masks might make people “feel a little bit better,” they don’t provide the protection folks believe they do and might create “unintended consequences.”
Fauci wasn’t alone. I covered dozens of infectious disease experts at the time who said the same thing. Virologist Dmitry Lvov is another expert to look at. He said in March you can wear them but they don’t provide much protection. I don’t want to provide a list of experts who don’t buy into the mask hype. My point is that there is no scientific consensus on masks being effective.
A great starting point is to look at this study by Dr. Brosseau, a national expert on respiratory protection and infectious diseases and professor (retired), University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Sietsema is also an expert on respiratory protection and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data
Masks went from the least important, least effective measure you can take to becoming the primary means of preventing yourself from getting infected. The CDC’s own data shows that the overwhelming number of people who get COVID wear the mask in accordance with mask mandates in the US. If masks worked the way some local health officials have said, the infection rate for mask wearers shouldn’t be so high (over 3/4 of those infected wear masks regularly).
In August, the AP said declining COVID cases in the U.S. were due to mask mandates. Gov. Holcomb said the same about Indiana. Look what’s happened since then. Massive spikes. That shouldn’t be possible according to the mask hype from local health officials. A study showing masks reduced COVID infections was just retracted because the areas used in the study all had spikes after the study was completed.
It’s not just the United States. Mask mandates have been in effect going back to January of 2020 in some countries. All have spikes in COVID infections. Below are the countries having spikes and when their mask mandate went into effect:
- Germany – mask mandate went into effect April 22
- France – mask mandate May 10
- Italy – mask mandate went into effect August 16
- South Korea – mandate May 26
- Rwanda spike – mandate April 9
- Switzerland spike – mandate first week of June
- Japan has had near 100% mask-wearing from the beginning of the outbreak but have a huge spike now. NYT headline on June 6: Japan’s coronavirus numbers are low, are masks the reason why?
- Austria spike – mandate April 6
- Venezuela has a massive spike but was one of the first countries to have a mask mandate
- Israel spike – mandate April 12 and had some of the strictest quarantine policies in the world.
- Spain spike – mandate May 20
Here’s some visual graphs to illustrate the data above. All of which you can confirm with a simple internet search in a few seconds.
In other words, everywhere in the world that mask mandates have been in effect, the virus has continued to spread. Why? Because COVID is airborne. We originally didn’t think it was and focused on droplets. Masks can work on droplets by reducing the distance a droplet travels. No mask, not even N95, work on airborne viruses. The CDC’s website even states that masks don’t filter the COVID virus. They also sent a statement to Tucker Carlson in October saying: “At no time has CDC guidance suggested that masks were intended to protect the wearers.”
During the recent wildfires in California, people were using their COVID masks as protection from the smoke particles. The CDC had to point out cloth masks don’t work on those particles. The size of those particles are .4 to .7 microns in size. COVID is .12 microns in size.
Some recent studies on masks and viral transmission:
- Jacobs, J. L. et al. (2009) – Face mask use in HCW was not demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds.
- Cowling, B. et al. (2010) – None of the studies reviewed showed a benefit from wearing a mask to prevent spread of influenze, in either HCW or community members in households.
- bin-Reza et al. (2012) – “There were 17 eligible studies. … None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”
- Radonovich, L.J. et al. (2019) – “Among 2862 randomized participants, 2371 completed the study and accounted for 5180 HCW-seasons. … Among outpatient health care personnel, N95 respirators vs medical masks as worn by participants in this trial resulted in no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”
There are others, but you get the idea. Up until this
pandemic, the scientific community understood that masks of all kinds do not prevent viral spread or infection. Suddenly, without real evidence, they do now.
There exists no peer-reviewed
clinical trial showing masks are effective. Only preliminary lab results, some of which have problematic methodology. Never in history has a preliminary lab result been considered scientifically viable evidence. Until now.
I don’t write to you to debate the efficacy of masks. I write you to point out that, without a doubt, masks have not worked as some had portrayed them to. In Michiana, people are abiding by mask mandates en masse with very few exceptions. Not only is it not based on sound science or the real-world data to enforce mask mandates under penalty of law, but it is counterproductive considering the widespread adherence to the mandates in place now.
Furthermore, violating a business’s property rights to require them to be an enforcer of these mandates under penalty of fines would be a gross abuse of power. Encroaching on their rights in this fashion would always be problematic, but to do so knowing the ordinance is enforcing, with penalties, mandates that have proven beyond the shadow of the doubt to be ineffective would be a dereliction of duty.
I understand the immense pressure government and
public health officials are under to make it seem like they are trying to fight this virus and protect citizens. I understand it is easier to just go along to get along so you can say at least you tried at election time. However, to allow such government abuse over a mandate that isn’t working under the false guise that it would somehow magically start working now because there are penalties would be a violation of your oath of office. Surely, there is another way without setting the government up to abuse citizens just to appease the mob that has produced no evidence this would work to begin with.
Sincerely,
Casey Hendrickson
Radio Talk Show Host – 95.3 MNC
UPDATE: Corrected some grammatical errors since I was rushing to get this letter sent before my show.
UPDATE 2: Added context of why I wrote this letter to the top of the post.
by Casey | May 21, 2020 | Blog, Conspiracy, Science
A few weeks ago, I told you about Professor Petr Chumakov, a leading Russian microbiologist at Russia‘s Federal Research Centre for Research and Development of Immunobiological Preparations. He said the Chinese Wuhan lab was doing ‘absolutely crazy things’ in the laboratory.
He claimed they had been “actively involved in the development of various coronavirus variants for over ten years.
‘Moreover, they did this, supposedly not with the aim of creating pathogenic variants, but to study their pathogenicity.”
The ‘crazy things’ they did were:
‘For example, inserts in the genome, which gave the virus the ability to infect human cells.
‘Now all this has been analyzed.
‘The picture of the possible creation of the current coronavirus is slowly emerging.’
He told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper: ‘There are several inserts, that is, substitutions of the natural sequence of the genome, which gave it special properties.
‘It is interesting that the Chinese and Americans who worked with them published all their works in the open (scientific) press.
Basically, he accused them of taking viruses that wouldn’t transfer to humans, altering them, and making the virus a threat to human beings.
This is critical because a new study from Austria says the exact same thing about COVID-19. They say it’s been manipulated in a lab. The general consensus now is that COVID-19 did, in fact, come from the Wuhan lab. The question has now been whether it was a natural virus that escaped, or was it manipulated by humans.
Summit News:
A scientific study in Austria has found that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that has led to a pandemic, was likely created in a lab, barring some “remarkable coincidence” that led to the virus naturally evolving to be optimised to attack human cells.
The study was led by Nikolai Petrovsky, a vaccine researcher at Flinders University. The scientists in his team discovered that the coronavirus is optimized for penetration into human cells, rather than animal cells, which means that the theory that it emerged from an animal market and jumped to humans naturally is unlikely.
Lifesite News reports that the scientists “used a version of the novel coronavirus collected in the earliest days of the outbreak and applied computer models to test its capacity to bind to certain cell receptor enzymes, called “ACE2,” that allow the virus to infect human and animal cells to varying degrees of efficacy.”
“They found that “the novel coronavirus most powerfully binds with human ACE2, and with variously lesser degrees of effectiveness with animal versions of the receptor.”
The authors believe this means that the virus “became specialized for human cell penetration by living previously in human cells, quite possibly in a laboratory.”
Pretty remarkable if the study holds up.
