Hour 2
Not Very Good: Snarky Psaki Mocks Space Force Question, Snaps at Reporters
White House tries to clean up after scoffing at Space Force question
Top House Republican demands Psaki apologize over ‘disgraceful’ Space Force quip
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki Tweeted A Gay Slur At Lindsey Graham
EXCLUSIVE: Attorney Lin Wood under investigation over whether he voted illegally in November, officials say
More than 700K November Voters Skipped Georgia Runoffs; Dropoff Highest in Right-Leaning Districts
Holcomb was so committed to getting his message across Wednesday that even when Indiana Department of Transportation Commissioner Joe McGinnis delivered a report that focused on roadways with no discussion of facial coverings, Holcomb responded with this line: “You did say masks are working. I just want to get that in there for the third time.”
The two articles and corresponding charts above already prove my point. Those results are duplicated globally.
Let me put a couple of things to bed right away since I already know how some of you will react.
I’m not anti-mask. I’m pro-science.
I wear my mask all the time to put people at ease, not because it’s effective.
COVID is real and no one is actually denying its existence beyond a few online. This is a childish red herring argument used when you are desperate.
My goal has always been to inform my audience of the actual clinical facts so they can protect themselves. There is no other motivation.
I started regular coverage of the virus in December 2019.
I started daily coverage on January 14, 2020. This is long before anyone in US media I’m aware of (for daily coverage), and far sooner than almost any politician considered COVID a threat.
I promoted the masks early on before we knew the virus was airborne while reminding everyone to only use their mask once.
I’ve been reminding everyone about the single-use of the mask from the very beginning. Reusing a contaminated mask defeats the purpose and can spread infection.
My opinions about masks or mask fines don’t come from my politics or my ideology. They come from peer-reviewed clinical research, not preliminary lab results with problematic methodology, which have never been considered scientifically valid in any scientific field. As well as real-world data.
Everything I said in this interview is backed up with scientific research and real-world data. None of it is baseless opinion. None of it is taken from unsubstantiated posts from social media, or some conspiracy website yapping about Bill Gates.
While many of you may be new here, I’ve already addressed the issues you’ll likely post … many, many times. I simply don’t have time to go over 12 months of work I’ve done on this in a single interview or post.
The reality … officials are in a tough spot. They don’t have any answers. They can’t stop the virus. It’s career suicide to say that out loud so they must come up with, what I call, ‘busy work’ to make it seem like they are trying. Often, as is the case with fines, this busy work pushes the blame on an innocent population in order to pass the buck and buy time.
The experts went from correctly telling you a mask was your last hail mary to prevent infection but wasn’t all that effective. Every other step is more important in prevention but the mask is the least effective tool in your tool chest. Now, they’ve all but abandoned those other steps in favor of indoctrinating people into the Cult of Mask with a form of religious dogma that masks are the most important and effective tool you have. Cases continue to spike and they keep neglecting to tell people to only use their mask once.
Consider this … everywhere mask mandates have been in effect, where COVID is an issue, has now been hit by a new spike in cases. This includes places with universal compliance like Japan. If masks worked the way the dogma currently dictates, the spike would be impossible.
Everywhere that installed mask mandate fines on businesses and/or individuals hasn’t reduced their number of cases. The policy is ineffective and causes unnecessary tension, strife, and hardship with zero tangible results. It’s just throwing matches on a powder keg.
We had lockdowns because the Imperial College released a study showing hundreds of millions might die. Oxford proved their study wrong and the IC retracted it, but lockdowns remained.
We have mask mandates because we thought the virus was spread through droplets alone and asymptomatic people were superspreaders. We now know it’s airborne and all of the research shows asymptomatic spread, while possible, is not a major source of infections.
I’ve included just a few links to get you started on your journey if you really want to dive in.
Prior to the pandemic, there was a mountain of research showing masks of all kinds don’t prevent aerosol viral spread. This research has now been completely abandoned and ignored in favor of preliminary lab results that are never considered scientifically acceptable to draw conclusions from. I can’t include all of the links to those studies but some are mixed in below.
Dr. Brosseau is 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.
“The evidence from…laboratory filtration studies suggests that such fabric masks may reduce the transmission of larger respiratory droplets. There is little evidence regarding the transmission of small aerosolized particulates of the size potentially exhaled by asymptomatic or presymptomatic individuals with COVID-19.”
We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility (Figure 2). However, as with hand hygiene, face masks might be able to reduce the transmission of other infections and therefore have value in an influenza pandemic when healthcare resources are stretched.
Tom Jefferson is a senior associate tutor and honorary research fellow, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford. Disclosure statement is here
Carl Heneghan is Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Editor in Chief of BMJ EBM
In 2010, at the end of the last influenza pandemic, there were six published randomised controlled trials with 4,147 participants focusing on the benefits of different types of masks. 2 Two were done in healthcare workers and four in family or student clusters. The face mask trials for influenza-like illness (ILI) reported poor compliance, rarely reported harms and revealed the pressing need for future trials.
Despite the clear requirement to carry out further large, pragmatic trials a decade later, only six had been published: five in healthcare workers and one in pilgrims. 3 This recent crop of trials added 9,112 participants to the total randomised denominator of 13,259 and showed that masks alone have no significant effect in interrupting the spread of ILI or influenza in the general population, nor in healthcare workers.
A study conducted by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center sought to test lockdowns along with testing and isolation.
What were the results? The virus still spread, though 90% of those who tested positive were without symptoms. Incredibly, 2% of the CHARM recruits still contracted the virus, even if all but one remained asymptomatic. “Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine.”
The study actually suggests the quarantine may increase the spread of the virus.
Our results suggest that the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers in a setting where social distancing and other public health measures were in effect, mask recommendations were not among those measures, and community use of masks was uncommon. Yet, the findings were inconclusive and cannot definitively exclude a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection of mask wearers in such a setting.
The use of masks only makes sense in confined places, where it is not possible to have certainty and guarantee necessary physical distancing or outdoors when physical distancing is not possible. I tried to look for scientific evidence on the use of open air mask and potential benefits of virus transmission, but I couldn’t find any.
Making the mask mandatory across Italy outdoors without any distinction between the higher and lower endemic circulation areas is wrong.
Conclusions: This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs (Health Care Workers), particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
Jacobs, J. L. et al. (2009) “Use of surgical face masks to reduce the incidence of the common cold among health care workers in Japan: A randomized controlled trial,” American Journal of Infection Control, Volume 37, Issue 5, 417 – 419. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19216002
N95-masked health-care workers (HCW) were significantly more likely to experience headaches. Face mask use in HCW was not demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds.
“There were 17 eligible studies. … None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”
Smith, J.D. et al. (2016) “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks in protecting health care workers from acute respiratory infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” CMAJ Mar 2016 https://www.cmaj.ca/content/188/8/567
“We identified six clinical studies … . In the meta-analysis of the clinical studies, we found no significant difference between N95 respirators and surgical masks in associated risk of (a) laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection, (b) influenza-like illness, or (c) reported work-place absenteeism.”
Contrary to popular opinion on social media, in our tribalist political arena, news media, or local officials … Americans actually wear masks and comply with mask mandates much higher than much of the world. Over 80% wear their mask now. The latest spike in the U.S. started September 14 when 77% of Americans were adhering to the mask mandates. That number is exactly the same as July 31 when U.S. COVID cases began to decline drastically and before the AP and Gov. Holcomb credited masks for the decline in cases.
In other words … the same percentage of Americans who wore masks during the big decline in COVID cases over the summer were also wearing masks at the beginning of the latest surge in cases. There was no change, no fluctuation at all in the number of Americans wearing masks during a decline and a surge in COVID cases. The number of people wearing masks had no effect on the number of cases of the virus.
I said the same thing three times, three different ways so everyone understands the actual data on mask-wearing. Sorry about being redundant.
I know you all just came here to listen to the interview with Mayor Roberson. You weren’t expecting all this to be thrown at you. However, it’s important that you know what I said during that interview is factually correct. While I can appreciate the Mayor is just taking the advice of his advisors, those advisors have no actual data backing up their policies. I do.
The mandates we are being given by public officials are unscientific and, dare I say, emotional.
Lockdowns didn’t work and the preponderance of research says they are ineffective and actually worse for people long-term.
Mask mandates simply don’t work.
Blaming innocent people for those two failed policies with fines simply because you’ve run out of ideas and are trying to hold on until the vaccine/herd immunity happens is not a legitimate way to govern. It’s tyrannical. While Mayor Roberson may not be seeking to be tyrannical, the end product is just that.
In a 43-part tweetstorm on Tuesday, Doucette recounted a recent experience defending a 17-year-old black teen from claims by a police officer that the teen was doing 360s in the middle of the street. Over the course of the story, Doucette demonstrates many of the problems black people face in the U.S. court system and why changes never seem to stick.
Read the article. The police were trying to hose this kid, and there‘s no doubt about it. However, Fusion clearly jumped the shark a bit with their headline. As did the lawyer. I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times to people of all races. Again, it’s corrupt blue line vs good cops vs the public. Until officers who lie on reports, and bare false witness are punished, we will have this problem of trust. Let’s just stop pretending it only happens to one group of people. No, it isn’t a ‘black’ thing, and no, there isn’t any evidence to the contrary. Let me give you just one example of the hundreds of cases like this I’ve covered in my career.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in 2009 lost Officer James Manor in a fatal car crash responding to a domestic violence call. Officer Manor was a black man. He was killed after Calvin Darling, a white man, pulled out in front of him. This led to a horrific accident, and Officer Manor’s vehicle catching fire. Ultimately, he lost his life.
The day of the accident we learned Calvin Darling was arrested for DUI. The city exploded into a hatred for Calvin Darling like you wouldn’t believe. An officer responding to a domestic violence call was using his lights and siren while trying to help someone in need, and this DRUNK GUY pulls out in front of him and kills him. The sheriff at the time, Doug Gillespie, was adamant that Officer Manor was doing nothing wrong. He repeated all of this in the media, and on my show as he sat right next to me.
I was the first person in all media that day to urge calm because we didn’t have any evidence Darling was actually drunk. No test had been done at the scene. The rage I got from callers who were citizens, police officers, and their wives was intense. Then I got a call from a listener who witnessed the accident. They said the story being told about Calvin Darling wasn’t true. More on that later.
The reason the public was so outraged about this is that there was a second officer who was driving behind Officer Manor. The witness. That officer is the one who said Manor had his lights on (running code), and that Darling was drunk. He lied.
We eventually learned Officer Manor wasn’t running code. He wasn’t using his lights, or his siren. Neither was the other officer who said he was. He was driving at 109 mph on a 45 mph road in the pitch black of night. The front and back of Metro’s patrol cars are black. Difficult to see at night anyway. When you add in the speed with which the officers were driving, Calvin Darling had no chance to avoid the collision.
We also learned that Calvin Darling was not drunk. He passed all of his blood alcohol tests. We also learned that he attempted to rescue Officer Manor. He risked his life to do so in spite of his own serious injuries. When it became clear he couldn’t get to Officer Manor because of the flames, he attempted to put the fire out. He wasn’t a drunk man who killed a police officer, he was a hero who tried to save an officer who was responsible for a deadly accident, and violating department policy.
You need to understand something here … there was a long time that passed before we learned that Officer Manor wasn’t using his lights or siren. The Sheriff was constantly saying he was sure Officer Manor did nothing wrong before he even had the information (there’s a box installed in the patrol cars that records when lights and siren are used).
Eventually, all charges against Calvin Darling were dropped, and the police settled with him for $120,000. Far too little in my opinion.
Calvin darling, a white man, had done no wrong. Yet he was accused of killing a black police officer, and the police department attempted to set him up to take the fall for a crime of which he was innocent. If it were a white officer and black motorist, the headlines would have all been about how racist white officers tried to frame a black guy for murder. Race had nothing to do with it. It was the thin blue line protecting its own from scrutiny, but the story gets worse.
Now that we knew Officer Manor and the other officer were not running code, were violating policy and the law, and that the other officer had LIED about it on his police report leading to the arrest of an innocent man, who was actually the victim … what must become of the lying officer?
I had Sheriff Gillespie on my show again once this revelation was discovered. He looked me in the eye and promised the other officer (name withheld) would be disciplined. I asked what that discipline might look like, and the Sheriff declined to answer.
Some time passed … weeks, months, years. Nothing ever happened to the officer who lied that day. No discipline at all, I know, because I asked. The media (except for me) stopped asking questions. Metro had successfully swept the criminal actions of this officer under the rug. Not because of race, not because they are evil, but because they take care of their own. Even if their own are corrupt and criminal in many jurisdictions.
Obviously, this isn’t the norm. Somewhat common perhaps, but not the norm. The great law enforcement leaders do their job to protect the public from corrupt officers. Unfortunately, stories like this kid who was being hosed by police over his mythical 360 donuts, and stories like Calvin Darling foment distrust between people and police departments. That trust is further damaged when officers are punished for speaking out against corruption in their department.
Maybe, just maybe, the kid in the Fusion article wasn’t being set up because he was black. Maybe it was just because the officer was a dickhead. Like Officer Thompson, who lied about me when I was a teenager when he said I was drunk (didn’t have a drop), and in possession of alcohol (wasn’t holding anything, or with the group he detained). After the other kids fled (I stayed because I was innocent), he arrested me and charged me with all of the charges the kids who ran faced. He lied on his police report. Then he lied again in court. It took me a while to get over that, and start trusting police officers again.
As a society, we have to stop automatically jumping to the bigotry conclusion because of the races of those involved. We should only accuse people of bigotry when there is actual evidence of it. To continue to make baseless race-baiting accusations against anyone, but especially the police, only serves to foment mistrust, hatred, and even violence. Often this animosity gets seeded in people because of false accusations, mythology, and outright lies.
Mostly white constitutionalists have been sounding the corrupt police abuse alarm for a long time before #BlackLivesMatter chic was a thing, and they were all but ignored. Now that many minorities are starting to see what they saw all those years ago, they still aren’t teaming up to hold corrupt law enforcement accountable.
How is it that #BlackLivesMatter protesters, many of whom have rioted and used violence or threats of violence, get a pass in the media? They are trying to propel change they say. Legitimately protesting alleged police abuse they say. Funny how the narrative changes when it’s white guys with cowboy hats who protest the same police and government abuse at a wildlife refuge with far less violence. Those guys are racist, white, right-wing terrorists. They are protesting the exact same thing people.
