This article was originally published by Matt Agorist at The Free Thought Project.
A new study published in The Southern Medical Journal (SMJ) found that a county-wide mask order in Bexar County, Texas, did not lead to a reduction in COVID-19 hospitalization rates or deaths.
The study, which was peer-reviewed, analyzed data before and after mandates were imposed at both the state level (July 3, 2020) and in Bexar County (July 5, 2020), Texas’s fourth-largest county.
“We defined the control period as June 2 to July 2 and the post mask order period as July 8, 2020–August 12, 2020, with a 5-day gap to account for the median incubation period for cases; longer periods of 7 and 10 days were used for hospitalization and ICU admission/death, respectively,” the study authors wrote. “Data were reported on a per-100,000 population basis using respective US Census Bureau–reported populations.”
Authors of the study, which was reviewed by the US Army Institute of Surgical Research, analyzed the daily average number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, ICU visits, patients on ventilators, and deaths, and concluded the policy did not reduce any of these metrics.
“All of the measured outcomes were higher on average in the post mask period as were covariables included in the adjusted model,” the researchers said. “There was no reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wearing mandate.”
San Antonio mask study, US Army Institute of Surgical Research:
"No reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wearing mandate."https://t.co/1gzm8m9pGz
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) September 7, 2021
The SMJ research results come four months after the CDC published a large-scale study that found there was no statistically significant difference in COVID spread among children in schools where masks were optional compared to schools where masks were required.
That study analyzed roughly 90,000 elementary school students in 169 schools in Georgia in November and December 2020.
Other studies, however, have found masks reduce the spread of COVID-19, including a large-scale analysis from Bangladesh currently in preprint and under peer review at the journal Science.
“We now have evidence from a randomized, controlled trial that mask promotion increases the use of face coverings and prevents the spread of COVID-19,” said Stephen Luby, a professor of medicine at Stanford and co-author of the study.
Others, however, contest this conclusion.
“The Bangladesh mask study does not show a statistically significant difference in the efficacy of cloth masks vs surgical masks,” Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff recently observed. “Based on the confidence intervals, both could be around 0% or both could be around 20%.”
The Bangladesh mask study does not show a statistically significant difference in the efficacy of cloth masks vs surgical masks. Based on the confidence intervals, both could be around 0% or both could be around 20%. https://t.co/N7d5biTWFG
— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) September 8, 2021
A recent New York magazine article said conflicting research on mask mandates, combined with the absence of outbreaks in Europeans schools that do not require children to wear masks, suggests the science on masks “remains uncertain.”
In light of the unclear efficacy of masks and mask mandates as a mitigation to slow the spread of COVID-19, many would argue it seems both unscientific and unhelpful to compel people to wear masks. (People, of course, are free to wear face coverings if they wish.)
This, perhaps, is why many people are beginning to resist measures that require them to wear face coverings to attend local gatherings and public meetings.
— Carmen Krebs (@CarmenKrebs5) September 8, 2021
However, fewer may realize that mask mandates fall out of the purview of science even if research concluded they were effective at reducing the spread of COVID-19.
As the economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) once observed, in the modern world science has long been invoked by the state to coerce and dictate the actions of individuals.
“The planners pretend that their plans are scientific and that there cannot be disagreement with regard to them among well-intentioned and decent people,” Mises wrote in his 1947 essay “Planned Chaos.”
Science, however, cannot answer moral questions or provide answers in the realm of subjective value judgments. It cannot tell us what we should do or what we must do.
“[T]here is no such thing as a scientific ought,” Mises wrote, echoing a famous argument by the philosopher David Hume. “Science is competent to establish what is.”
Much of the debate surrounding COVID-19 stems from the fact that public health officials have overstepped the boundaries of science. Instead of making public health recommendations based on scientific evidence, the state has begun to use the power of the law to coerce individuals into actions.
The results have been disastrous—and frightening.
Masks mandates, lockdowns, and other state-enforced “non-pharmaceutical interventions” may very well reduce the spread of COVID-19—though an abundance of scientific evidence suggests they do not do so effectively and come with unintended consequences, some of which are dangerous and deadly.
But don’t call these interventions “science.” As Mises rightly understood, there’s no such thing as a scientific ought.
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The prez and his VP Cumhola believe and act that gov’t is the master and people are the servant, they have it exactly backwards. The desire to rule over us and keep diminishing our rights is facilitated by a scheme to keep us “safe”. Their job isn’t to keep us safe, it is to keep us free. Outside of that they have no legitimacy. He cannot Constitutionally force a person to receive a vaccine, if we don’t have sole control over our bodies in effect we have no rights. Out rights and freedoms are not privileges bestowed by gov’t, they are ours by default because as humans we are born with our rights that gov’t has no right to abrogate or abridge. Just who in the hell do these people think they are!?!?
I must repeat a quote by HL Mencken again; “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”.
Especially since the “Vaxx” is for experimental authorized use. We haven’t given consent to be an experiment!
No surprises that masks don’t work; medically masks are part of a controlled closed sterile environment like hospital treatment areas. Medically, they are changed regularly more than once a day, even once per patient.
Even so, pre-COVID studies were mixed about their effectiveness against viruses. Some medical professionals such as dentists protested their mandatory use in their offices.
Viruses and fine particulate they may ride upon as fomites, easily slip through masks. Even the vaunted N-95. However, pathgens can also get caught in masks and accumulate. A moist mask – we all sweat and exhale moisture – increases the problem.
Masks are useful in stopping larger bacteria and droplets. However, in critical care environments like intensive care units, masks are changed every hour or half hour. Pathogens cling to masks and collected pathogens can be sucked though in in-breath or dislodged on out-breath.
A used mask is a germ collector; theoretically everything that touches a used mask, will pick up what the mask has been exposed to and collecting.
In an ICU, regular mask changes more or less use the wearer as an additional air filter. However, used masks in hospitals are hazardous waste disposed of in incinerators, not re-used.
Amateur masking as done under COVID-1984, seems designed to increase the pathogen load, help the virus spread, and generally help pathgens linger in the ecosystem.
Also if you look at the pictures even the N95 masks were quickly abandoned by medical workers quickly for supplied air surgical masks. The positive pressure of the supplied air is what keeps the virus at bay. Regardless saying any mask protects those around you is BS. They protect the mask wearer, they all have to let you breath out, which is what spreads the virus.
Sigh. Writer: no, there is not any “unclear efficacy” in regards to whether masks work– the only thing unclear is the false idea which the MSM has planted in your mind.
Masks DO NOT WORK. That has been SETTLED science for DECADES.
ALL healthcare workers know that masks are only worn to make patients feel better. They know that masks do NOTHING positive. Dozens upon dozens of studies over the last several decades have proven definitively that masks do not work. Even more meta-analyses have been done and found that no good science supports masks, and only junk science supports them.
For this blog to say there is “unclear efficacy” regarding masks tells us a lot. It tells us why the world has gotten so bad today– even the Truthers have bought the lies and even now repeat them as if they are fact. You, SHTFPlan, are part of the reason things are so bad.
While you were screaming about stupid crap like the Jan. 6 incident or the Portland riots, our rights are gone and the lies used to take those rights were repeated nonstop by YOU.
YOU are to blame and YOU will pay with your freedom.
We are in the age of deceit, where almost all people are actively seeking to be deceived by listening only to those who tell them what they want to hear without caring whether it’s actually true or not.
Being deceived, they will deny they are doing it and become unable to escape the trap they have laid for themselves.
This is the times we are in.
When people only gravitate towards information that reinforces their own beliefs they ignore information that doesn’t.
Some people just can’t handle the truth and would rather hear lies in order to avoid being butthurt.
Why does every single doctor, nurse, and EMT I know (and I know many) wear a mask when in contact with, caring for, or operating on ANY patient, let alone those with Covid? Have they all been fooled into believing masks prevent the spread of illness? Do ya think, maybe, you might NOT be smarter than those who have spent numerous years studying medicine? Of course you don’t believe that. You f*cling idiots don’t believe anything that’s true or real. You’re all convinced Covid is a hoax, masks are for sheeple, and the vaccine is the “mark of the beast”. You are f*cking idiots.
I am so incredibly grateful that you morons continue to labor under your right wing media delusions. The sooner you retards are struck down by Covid, the better. Please, for the sake of decent humanity, continue to refuse the vaccine and shun the mask. Morons like you are the perfect example of Darwin’s theory. You’re all too stupid to live, and I am actively cheering on Covid to finish the job. In fact, let me be the first to thank you for allowing decent society to get back to normal. Keep on dying from Covid, you brain-dead troglodytes. Decent society is 100% behind you…dying. F*ck you all ?
As typical, the gov’t always uses statistics in a way to spin its narrative. When it says for example 400k new cases of covid in the US this week it also tries to project most of these people are gravely ill and even dying; this is patently and grossly false (the MSM is complicit and share in this officially sponsored deception as they know they are disseminating completely false information).
Of course some will become ill in various degrees, and unfortunately some of those who become ill will pass away, but 98 % of these “new cases” will display the mildest symptoms, or won’t even display any symptoms whatsoever. Furthermore, the PCR test that is administered to detect the covid virus is so unreliable/inaccurate there is no real telling just how many have been actually exposed to covid.
The truth is the vast majority of people becoming ill from covid are the ones who have already received covid vaccinations. Not only is the gov’t not your friend, but the enemy of truth. It lies, distorts, twist, fabricates, omits, and perverts facts to manufacture a narrative it wants people to believe.
A quote from Nietzsche cannot be repeated enough; “Everything the State says is a lie, everything it has it has stolen”.
I wore masks and respirators my whole working career to do my job. I was qualified on everything from a paper dust mask to a SCBA (self contained breathing apparatus). I know what these devices can and cannot do, and I have said this all along, these mask mandates are BS.
The pores in most masks (worn by the majority of people) though small, are still more than 4000 times larger than the virus. The gov’t knows this of course. Yeah, that’ll stop it. The masks serve as nothing more than visible compliance meters. Trust me, just about anywhere anyone goes, there is someone somewhere observing, recording, and reporting social compliance rates for wearing masks.
The gov’t also knows the majority of people who are sick or hospitalized due to covid are the already vaccinated. To hide this fact the gov’t resorts to its standard policy of lying and twisting facts. For example, if a person becomes ill with covid but has already received the covid vaccines, the gov’t will report the person as unvaccinated if he/she became ill within 14 days being vaccinated. The gov’t also says if a person becomes ill from covid before receiving the booster (the third jab) the person is considered non-vaccinated. The gov’t can then use these twisted facts to support the lie only the unvaccinated are becoming ill with covid.
Now we know the Post Office – which has 664,000 employees are exempt from covid vaccinations, so is Congress and all their staffs, and federal judges, and NBA basketball players, and all illegal immigrants too are exempt, and there are others. The Dems., liberals, progressives, and officialdom call this good gov’t.
The gov’t is so hideously awful, thoroughly marinated in corruption and grossly incompetent.
I see it says the test did not show much of a difference between cloth masks and surgical masks. You can make a test show whatever you like by changing the parameters to fit your desired conclusion. Many tests are done this way. I notice the absence of N95 and N99 masks in their tests…only cloth and surgical, neither of which are comparable to N95 or N99. The truth is that most masks have pores larger than the virus. Only N95 and N99 mask pores come close to the virus size.
However, when you cough, sneeze, talk, or even just breathe, the virus is expelled in droplets that ARE larger than the pores in your mask. These droplets are what is stopped by your mask. Therefore, while some virus still does escape, most is stopped by the mask.