Super Glue, Amulets, and Face Masks
Folks, we didn’t need two years of Covid to figure this out. We knew back in 2020 that face masks don’t prevent the spread of airborne illnesses.
Super Glue – a substance that rarely works, but is claimed to have miraculous bonding powers
Amulet – an object worn, especially around the neck, as a charm against evil or injury, such as garlic to ward off vampires
Face Mask – a cloth or paper covering, frequently worn below the nose or chin, officially claimed to prevent spread of the microscopic SARS-CoV-2 virus
The New York Times The Morning reports today that “masks reduce the spread of the Covid virus by preventing virus particles from traveling from one person’s nose or mouth into the air and infecting another person. Laboratory studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effect.” Note the emphasis on “laboratory studies,” because in the real world, face masks have had no significant impact against the spread of Coronavirus, as The Times itself goes on to say:
“You would think that communities where mask-wearing has been more common would have had many fewer Covid infections. But that hasn’t been the case.” That’s an interesting about-face from claims made in prior columns, but then The Times laughably tries to explain why. “The Covid virus is so contagious that it can spread during brief times when people take off their masks, even when a mandate is in place,” such as while eating and drinking on an airplane, or in a restaurant, or when “schoolchildren let their masks slide down their faces.”
Perhaps The Times needs a review of the fact that Covid is transmitted after prolonged contact, in an enclosed space, with an infected person, which is why the majority of spread is through households. Believe me, if airline travel, restaurant dining, school attendance, and grocery shopping had been big spreaders of Covid, we never would have heard the end of it, just like the repeated story about the one church choir that practiced for two hours and infected a bunch of choir members. There were fears promoted throughout the pandemic about the possibilities of brief-contact spread, but no actual cases. Not one.
Folks, we didn’t need two years of Covid to figure this out. We knew back in 2020 that face masks don’t prevent the spread of airborne illnesses. Contrary to the hope that masks could be effective against the spread of airborne illnesses, the May 2020 CDC meta-analysis that examined studies over a 60-year span concluded otherwise.
As did the Denmark study that was conducted in April and May 2020, in which roughly 6,000 people participated. The goal was to determine if mask wearing would prevent a person getting infected with Covid. Half of the participants wore masks while going about their daily activities; half did not. There was a less than 1% difference in contracting Covid between those who wore masks and those who didn’t. This is known as a “statistically insignificant” difference in science and medical communities.
With regards to the efficacy of masks in preventing the spread of airborne illness, and the appropriateness of mask mandates, the CDC study and the Denmark study – provided all we needed to know back in early 2020. “But,” someone protests, “there have been so many studies since then that show masks work! We know masks work!”
I refer you to the work of Ian Miller, who has used publicly reported data throughout the pandemic to chart the outcomes of mask mandates in communities throughout the world, as chronicled on his Substack, and also in his book, Unmasked, The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates. The real world data is in and here is the result: Masks. Don’t. Work.
There isn’t one long-term study that correlates a drop in Covid disease spread, with face mask wearing in the community. But someone argues, “People aren’t wearing the masks properly; that’s why.” That statement is not borne out by the evidence. For example, in the highly controlled environment of Marine basic training at Paris Island, 100% compliance with face masks, 6-foot distancing, and other safety measures did not prevent the spread of Covid.
More recently a Cornell University New York study found that despite almost 100% enforced campus compliance with mask mandates, vaccinations, mass testing, and rapid contact tracing with enforced isolation, “traditional public health interventions were not a match for Omicron.” As far as vaccines go, that will need to be a whole different post, but for now we’ll make this one statement: the most highly vaccinated states in the U.S.A, such as Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, have higher Covid case rates per 100K than the least vaccinated such as Wyoming and Georgia. Countries with high vaccination rates such as Australia and Israel have much higher Covid case rates per 100k than those less vaccinated, such as South Africa and India. And on May 16, 2022 the CDC reported slightly higher incidences of Covid infection among vaccinated children ages 5-11, than among the unvaccinated.
But back to face masks, how do super glue and amulets fit into this discussion? Believing something will work does not make it work. I’m assuming I’m not alone in experiencing many failed attempts at using super glue, but sometimes I still try again. Amulets were the superstitious charms used in medieval times to ward off illness and danger. Hoping something will work, is not a scientific strategy. However, it has been an effective political strategy, if your goal is to see how much compliance you can enforce on a fearful public. I would hope that the majority of people are aware by now that we have been manipulated and played over the past two years; instead a Stockholm Syndrome type of submissive compliance persists.
I’ve often wondered throughout the Covid pandemic why so few people seem to see the parallels between well-known stories, and what is happening in our real world today. I would expect those who have devoured epic series such as Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Avengers, to recognize the parallels to our times. Even if one has only seen the movies, the themes are there: an evil, mentally unhinged force has a lust for power at any cost, a small group recognizes and fights against the danger while most others are unaware or hope if they just lie low and comply things will get better, freedoms of speech and movement are curtailed, chaos and misery spread, resistance becomes increasingly dangerous and difficult, eventually everyone is drawn into the conflict, and good triumphs in the end.
Will good triumph in the end? As a Christian, I have faith that good triumphs over evil in the long run, but that doesn’t mean we get to sit back and watch it unfold without lifting a finger. Certainly the most immediate impact we can have in the world is to do our best to treat our family, friends, and community in the way we would like to be treated. But that’s not enough. Christians are called to engage in the battle for defending freedom, because evil always takes away freedom.
One of the first things the Taliban did in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the U.S. troops in 2021, was to go door to door searching for Bibles, and Bible aps on phones – maimings and executions being the punishment for possession of such items. They also banned girls from attending school and hunted those who played on sports teams, beheading a star player of the women’s national volleyball team, and posting the grizzly images on social media. Just this month the Taliban reinstated the requirement for all women in Afghanistan to wear the burqa, which covers the entire body and head, except for a rectangle around the eyes.
The burqa is dehumanizing. So are face masks. Dr. Mark McDonald, a child psychologist located in ground zero mask mania Los Angeles, has seen a huge increase in mental illness during the pandemic. McDonald stated in an interview on April 14, 2022, “How many times have we heard that in the last two years, ‘It’s just a mask.’ Well it isn’t, actually; it’s not just a burqa either. We would not allow American women to be covered head to toe in black cloth like they do in the Islamic world (largely speaking not always), because we find it dehumanizing. Whether we’re told that it’s done for good reason or not is irrelevant, we would say no. Why? Because we’re not scared to say no. But we have been incredibly frightened and intimidated in the past two years…and now we make our decisions based upon fear, therefore we are compliant.”
Jan Jekielek, who conducted the interview with Dr. McDonald pointed out, “We’ve been told we should wear masks in all sorts of contexts, including outside, and that that would make us safe… I think a lot of people who have chosen to do this are thinking they’re doing something quite rational because they’re listening to the authority that told them.”
McDonald, who recently released the book United States of Fear, replied, “My view is that people, Americans, largely speaking became irrational regardless of whether what they’re being told is true or not - that’s not the point. They became irrational and they started to follow orders because they were scared. I believe that fear is really the mechanism by which people lost their ability to think rationally.” McDonald said to go back and “justify the behavior as rational because you’re told to do it is kind of a false argument. It’s like being… told that you need to support the extermination of Jews because the general told you that in Nazi Germany, therefore it’s rational. That doesn’t really work…”
Some might argue that referring to Afghanistan and Nazi Germany, when discussing the irrationality of face masks, is too extreme but I don’t think so. The psychology behind them is the same. The potential for people to be manipulated into irrational, even unthinkable, behaviors does not appear to be a human condition we are going to ever overcome, therefore we need to be always vigilant.
In the April 14, 2022 American Thought Leaders episode referred to above, Jan Jekielek states, “In the last few weeks…we’ve made a 180 degree turn…I think most masking policies are gone…there seems to be a sort of emergence out of this state of masking, state of lockdowns…state of mandates..so a lot of people are thinking, ‘Okay, I guess we’re done.’”
McDonald replies, “Well this sounds great. We’re all free. We’re all safe. Mandates are over. No more distancing. No more testing. No more facial coverings. No more Plexiglas shields, gloves, hand sanitizer, etc. Great! Wonderful! We’ll just move on. We’ll move forward. The problem with that is that behavior has fundamentally changed. People have become not just compliant with the rules; they’ve actually taken them in unconsciously.” Which means we’re vulnerable to a repeat of the unscientific and unconstitutional mandates we’ve suffered through for over two years.
On May 20, 2022 Philadelphia school districts announced that masks are required again for students and staff, “due to an increase in Covid-19 infections.” The San Diego Unified School District is also considering reinstating face masks. The whole time all the rest of us have been mask-free, the two through five year-olds in New York have still had to wear them.
Why? Why would anyone go along with this travesty? All the data shows that children are not at high risk for Covid, and are not big spreaders of Covid. Without any other documentation, the CDC death statistics prove this. In addition, rising Covid cases are no longer leading to increases in hospitalizations and deaths, and haven’t for a long time. Yet face masks and lockdowns for all were the norm. As has been known since April 2020, Covid targets the elderly and infirm. A January 2022 working paper from Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics found that lockdowns “had little to no public health effects,” but that they had “imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
We knew this without the paper, just by observation, yet still we have government and public health officials touting the success of lockdowns and facemasks. And the World Health Organization (WHO) is in the process of drafting policies that approve lockdowns, face masks, and forced vaccination as effective public health measures in future pandemics. The WHO is also drafting a resolution that, if signed by the U.S.A., and other member countries, allows unelected (and therefore unaccountable) WHO leadership to determine world pandemic response, overriding the sovereignty of individual countries.
Dr. McDonald states, “I really am concerned about what the next crisis will bring; the next demand for us to change our behavior. Now that the government, corporations, media, all know that we will simply follow blindly whatever they tell us, what’s going to be the next stage?...We are not moving forward. We are just in a holding pattern for the next crisis.”
And here it is. They’re talking about Monkeypox a virus that’s been around since the 1950s, is not primarily airborne, is not highly contagious, and is very well managed through contact tracing and quarantining of infected individuals. But you wouldn’t know that from how CNN and others, including President Biden, are talking about it. Bill Gates, who doesn’t have a bachleor’s degree, let alone a medical degree, can’t wait for the next pandemic; he already wrote a book about it, and he participates in pandemic simulations that involve world leaders. In fact, there was a Monkeypox simulation in May 2021 that predicted an outbreak in May 2022. Isn’t that a strange coincidence? Almost as strange as Event 201 held in October 2019 that simulated a coronavirus outbreak, which somehow foreshadowed in great detail events very similar to what happened with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic beginning in 2020.
Today we are in a battle for our freedom, yet so many remain unaware, either by choice or circumstance. The pandemic, identity politics, tensions over race and gender, the rise of totalitarian practices in Western governments, the continual battering of America’s history and way of life, are all contributing to a breakdown of long cherished beliefs and practices in Western civilization. Think about which country is poised to step in if America ceases to be the leader on the world stage.
The pandemic response has the Chinese Communist Party’s fingerprints all over it, from the uncertain origin of the virus in Wuhan, withholding of information and allowed transmission, the lockdowns, mandatory masking, and the disruptions in the supply chain, to the increasing push for digital medical ID’s and facial recognition technologies to better track disease (wink-wink). That is, to better control the population. Digital financial and medical IDs, and facial recognition technology, are ideas that were featured during the World Economic Forum’s 2022 meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
So to those who think it’s over, and yay! Now we can get back to normal life, and traveling, and doing all the things we like to do, and it’s all going to be good, I think it would be wise to pay a little more attention, analyze what is going on around us a little more deeply, and get a little more involved in speaking up and pushing back. Will Philadelphians comply with the return to mask mandates in school? If enough people refuse, the new mask mandate will go away, the same way the renewed indoor mask mandate in Philadelphia lasted only a few days in April 2022. Philadelphia is a test run, coming soon to a location near you.
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Updated 07-27-22 for slight editing and to convert footnotes to hyperlinks.