It’s like deja vu all over again. On Dec. 9, NYC’s health commissar advised that everyone (including 2-year-olds!) “should wear a mask at all times when in an indoor public setting.” Then our state’s public health leaders followed in lockstep.
Today @NYCHealthCommr issued an advisory as NYC faces high levels of COVID-19, flu and RSV. New Yorkers are strongly urged to wear masks in public indoor settings and crowded outdoor settings: https://t.co/oDvGGLKxrI pic.twitter.com/X3Xsun6kTG
— nychealthy (@nycHealthy) December 9, 2022
As a weirdly-authoritarian Dec. 9 Seattle Times front-page story pontificates, “It’s time, Washingtonians: You should resume regularly wearing a mask indoors, if you haven’t already.”
That’s based on:
“new guidance from 12 county health officers and 25 hospital executives is fueled by the region and county’s surge in viral respiratory illnesses – mainly influenza and RSV” with “pediatric hospitals … overcapacity for months”, so they “recommend that everyone wear a high-quality, well-fitting mask when around others in indoor spaces to protect against both acquiring and spreading these infections to others.”
Likewise Jefferson/Clallam County Health Officer Allison Berry filled the front page of the Dec. 10 Peninsula Daily News, saying “our health care systems are not strong enough to handle all of … these viruses at the same time… It’s been worn down by two years of responding to COVID-19, we were short-staffed going into the winter season,” but “If we wore masks indoors, particularly around kids and around the elderly, that would make all the difference.”
Berry reveals she’s involved in “ongoing discussions about returning to mandatory masking” which is “possible”, but “what makes us consider mandates is when we see critical infrastructure fail. So when we see that people can’t access medical care when they need it… that’s when we begin to look at mandates.”
Questions Begged
Of course, this begs lots of questions. For instance: Why precisely are our heath care systems weak, worn-down, and short-staffed, especially after all the federal funding windfalls pumped into them?
Could public health authorities possibly be to blame for monomaniacally focusing on a single virus while throttling care for all other conditions, driving people crazy by exaggerating its dangers while enforcing useless hygiene theatre, and preventing safe and effective early treatment options while pushing deadly and useless Remdesivir and mRNA jabs?
Could all the health workers forced to quit or retire to avoid jab mandates, or who were made sick by taking the jabs, or had their morale destroyed by hostile work environments, possibly have contributed to short-staffing?
When Berry says she might dictate mask mandates if “we see critical infrastructure fail” or if “people can’t access medical care”… how is that more logical than kicking your dog when you’re mad at your boss? Where’s the causal connection between gagging innocent bystanders and fixing infrastructure management failures?
This harkens back to Berry’s Sep. 2, 2021 fallacious and discriminatory restaurant/bar mandate, which targeted those unwilling to disclose their HIPAA-protected private medical records to eateries. Where was there ever any causal justification for this punitive mandate, especially given CDC admission that mRNA injections are “not effective at preventing transmission of the virus”?
Another question being begged: How dare NYC and other health officers blithely talk about reintroducing masking in schools and child care facilities for all kids two (!!) years old and up, with no concern about the psychological hell, impoverished learning, disrupted socialization, increased suicides, and physical harms they’d be cavalierly inflicting on children at minimal risk from these seasonal colds and flus?
Have these fools or knaves learned nothing from the destruction wreaked on kids these past few years — not by covid, but by their own lockdown measures? What’s being “advised” by these health authorities is literally child abuse.
But the main question being begged here is: Why face masks? Why trot out this singularly ineffective nostrum once again, as if it were an all-powerful savior, when it was never considered a panacea for respiratory viruses prior to 2020, and it has failed miserably to have any significant beneficial effect during the years it’s been pushed and mandated worldwide, as documented by numerous careful studies.
Stephen Petty is a Certified Industrial Hygenist and Certified Professional Engineer who has worked for 45 years in the field of health and safety, protecting workers and the public from toxins. He has been involved in over 400 legal cases of exposure control and PPE. In the powerful 15-minute expert testimony below, Petty summarizes the reality on masks’ effectiveness against viruses.
Mask misconceptions have been covered extensively by multiple Free Press articles, hence there’s no need to retread them here… check the story links at the bottom of this article if you’re interested in all the backstory evidence.
Breaking News: “High-Quality” Masks Don’t Work
The current warmed-over propaganda campaign to force “high-quality” masks over everybody’s mouths and noses has long been rendered absurd.
And now, coincidental to the latest mask campaign, an extremely high-quality randomized controlled mask study was published on Nov. 29. This was big news that should have been reported in the papers and by health officers if they were worth their salt.
Ian Miller (author of Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates) summarizes this study as follows:
The Annals of Internal Medicine just published a randomized controlled trial comparing the ability of medical masks to prevent COVID infection to fit-tested N95s. Importantly, this trial was conducted on healthcare workers who would be most likely to use masks appropriately.
They examined 29 different health care facilities on multiple continents, from North America to Asia and Africa. The percentage of healthcare workers testing positive for COVID in each group was tracked to determine how effective or ineffective higher-quality masking was in preventing infection.
Unsurprisingly, the results confirmed that there is essentially zero difference between surgical [the common blue and green pleated “medical” masks made of nonwoven material] or N95 respirators when it comes to tests results.
The N95 masks provided statistically-insignificant 1% reduction in cases, while causing 3% increase in adverse events compared to surgical masks — that’s 13.6% gratuitous adverse events compared to wearing no mask at all!
Miller concludes:
The researchers also took pains to ensure that the control and treatment groups shared as many similarities as possible. The N95s in use were even specifically fit tested and approved respirators, far from the KN95s commonly used by the general public.
Everyone, in each health care facility, “for all activities,” was required to wear masks. They even tracked potential exposure points, whether at home, in the community or in hospital exposures.
Yet none of that mattered; there was no difference in outcomes between the medical and N95 level masks.
On top of being functionally useless, N95s were substantially more likely to result in adverse effects.
This becomes even more noteworthy since compliance with respirator masking was lower. While still extremely high, health care workers “always” wore N95s 80.7% of the time instead of 91.2% for medical masks.
This is one of the many issues the “experts” now pushing for (now disproven) “higher-quality” masking should address. Health care professionals who are trained to use N95s can’t always use them yet experience higher rates of adverse effects.
Imagine how much worse compliance would be among the general public, especially if 13% are suffering significant side effects.
Beyond statistics, just think about the physical facts: Sure, surgical masks can protect surgeons from blowing bacteria directly into an open wound. But viruses are more than an order of magnitude smaller than bacteria, so they CAN pass through surgical masks, and they DO easily pass around the sides and top of all kinds of masks when breathing out, as viruses follow the paths of least resistance, after which they enter the persistent viral soup of indoor atmospheres.
That’s why masks have never shown any significant viral protection for others in randomized controlled studies. Your mask does little or nothing to protect you, but most significantly there’s no way it can protect grandma or anybody else. And thus falls the entire pretext for mask mandates.
Wearing a diaper on your foot would be just as “effective” and a lot safer than wearing it on your face. Health authorities still pushing face diapers on kids (or anybody else) after years of lockdown failures are neither competent nor fit to keep their positions.
_______________________________
“Masking is a stupid, superstitious exercise that does nothing to stop virus infections, but that’s beside the point. Imagine, instead, that strapping these low-quality pseudomedical plastics to your face actually reduced your rate of respiratory infection. In this counterfactual scenario, it would follow that masks are at least partly responsible for the immunity deficit causing the unusually high rates of RSV and influenza infection…. Continuing to mask would merely prolong our immunological naiveté for another season, potentially leading to long-term dependence on this ridiculous, antisocial ritual. It’s a blessing that masks actually do nothing.”
— eugyppius (writing about a similar situation in Germany)
_______________________________
More from the Free Press about mask follies:
Masks Don’t Stop Viruses and Could Harm You: The Latest Research
Parents Appeal to PT Schools:Are Students Facing Mask Segregation?
Double-Masking, “Pandemic Denialism,” and Belief in the Ignorance of Experts
Stephen Schumacher graduated with honors in Mathematics from Harvard College and programmed funds transfer systems between Wall Street banks and the Federal Reserve before moving to Port Townsend in 1983. He has served as an officer for various community organizations such as the Food Co-op, Jefferson Land Trust, and the Northwest Nutritional Foods Association. He co-created The Port Townsend Leader’s original online newspaper and programs ship stability software used by naval architects.
Dr. Berry made a special appearance at today’s BOCC meeting at the behest of Heidi Eisenhour, who spent the tail end of last week panicking about increasing RSV, influenza and COVID numbers and the potential for increased circulation of these respiratory viruses through “super spreader events” such as holiday craft fairs.
Berry noted that children’s hospitals are struggling to care for the unprecedented number of children falling ill to the diseases, emphasizing that more rural locations (such as Jefferson and Clallam counties) simply don’t have the ability or resources to help sick children, who have to go to the larger Seattle and Tacoma areas for care. A young Clallam county child reportedly died from RSV a couple of weeks ago when he couldn’t receive care.
Berry postulates that masking is the way out. After all, masks can stop viruses in their tracks. “I think it’s important for the community to know that all of these viruses can be prevented by masking. Flu, COVID and RSV all don’t transmit when we wear masks in indoor areas.”
(Greg Brotherton, hitherto maskless in a room with more than five—5!—people present, quickly realized his mistake and donned a surgical mask upon hearing this divine pronouncement.)
“We’re not mandating it right now,” Berry continued, “but I would encourage masking in schools.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, most children apparently are not wearing masks in school. Brotherton noted that his child (a highschooler) struggles with wearing a mask when the majority of students are maskless. Peer pressure is a powerful force, and Dr. Berry suggested that teachers wear masks to p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶u̶r̶e encourage children to follow suit. Nevertheless, she cautioned that a mask mandate localized in Jefferson and Clallam counties wouldn’t be enough to prevent the spread of disease. The mandate would have to cover the entire region (including King county) to be effective.
The Public Health Update, originally airing at every BOCC meeting, was cut down to once a month a few weeks ago. However, the commissioners believe that it is important for Berry’s sage advice to be heard, and will likely be increasing her appearances twofold, on the first and third Mondays of each month. Her next appearance is next Monday. Anybody can send a question for Dr. Berry to answer on her Monday updates by emailing contactus@kptz.org. Questions must be sent by the preceding Friday at noon to make it into the question list.
I will not comply with any future mask mandate. Period. I will not.
If I have to take my business to another county I will. I will not reward businesses that enforce a mandate.
I hope others will refuse to comply as well, but even if I am the only one, I will not comply.
Enough of the madness.
Did you ever see the movie I am Legend with will Smith? You should it has a very interesting storyline, you can’t make this up at this point…
Just returned from running errands in town. Went to QFC, the library, the Post Office and the Chimacum Corner Store. 80% of our fearful mask addicted community citizens are already wearing masks. If they already feel protected why should it bother them if 20% choose not to wear them? In their minds they are protected against me and others that are maskless. Why then a mandate?
As Stephen’s article points out, mandated masks had no statistical effect on the spread of a virus. The only reason, I can see, for a reintroduction of a mask mandate is to continue the ability for government authorities to keep a firm hand on the control of our population. We are giving blanket power to those that are sworn to serve the WHOLE community. What might be next, Vaccine Passports and community social crediting?
The freedom for each of us to choose what we put in and on our bodies is a birthright not legislated permission. Each time we do something that we don’t feel in our hearts and minds is correct, we are giving up a gift that was given to us at birth. To do what others around us are doing out of fear of being different is the pressure of herd mentality (remember mirror neurons?). Those who govern others know this and use it. It is our friends and neighbors that deliver the pressure to conform. When a mandate is initiated, we the people, have every right to act according to our individual sensitivities. Civil disobedience and noncompliance are the only individual weapons that we have to combat the arrogance of tyranny.
Really !!!
I’m thinkin’ I’ll wear 25 at once…maybe the virus cant get through the “pores” in the masks then….LOL !
😱🤯🤡🤦🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️😩😋😤🤢🤫🤡
We are told there is a problem with too much carbon. We are told there is a problem with not enough tourists and the shops need tourists for money. Rather than working on alternatives for making a living that aren’t dependent on tourism we are instead told that the solution to all of this is that there will someday be no parking downtown, and, until then, when you do park you can’t idle your car for more than 10 minutes. Cruise ships exempt.
We are told there is a problem with too much virus. We are told there are not enough masks, and everybody needs to put their masks back on. Rather than working on alternatives for keeping people healthy, that aren’t dependent on overreaching mandates, instead we are told that the solution to all of this is we should wear masks constantly, and what the heck, why not put on an extra one, just to be sure.
Nevermind that, as Dr. Michael Shellenberger so clearly explained in his book Apocalypse Never, that carbon isn’t actually going to kill us all. Nevermind that, as countless doctors including Dr. Robert Malone have stated, neither the masks nor the jabs do to coronavirus what was hoped. In fact, both are realistically creating horrific health problems for people, as well as sudden deaths.
These statements are not conjecture. They are not conspiracy. They are truly science. Double blind. Randomized. So much actual testing now done on both the jabs and the masks and both have been proven to be not only useless, but harmful.
Not sure why Dr. Berry isn’t listening to the updated info., unless… I don’t know, does she maybe possibly have another agenda? Another agenda perhaps from the United Nations? An agenda which, as someone suggested above, depends on getting people to comply with government mandates? Hmmmmm…
The Jefferson County Public Health Facebook page has been pushing masks, especially for children, for the past several weeks.
Example from November 22, 2022 has an image of a masked child in a super-hero outfit.
“Parents of children at high risk for developing severe RSV disease should help their child, when possible, do the following:
🔹Wear a mask indoors (for children over 2) …”
At one point, Dr. Berry had 6,000 people under quarantine in 2 counties. She tried to get approval to mandate emergency room treatment be withheld from people not fully vaccinated.
Most of the hypodermic needles scattered over Port Angeles are from the Health Department needle exchange that she supervised.
Now that the midterm election has come and gone, it’s medically necessary to mask up again?
I haven’t seen a thing that would make me want to retain her as a public health officer
Thank you Stephen. When I heard the County Commissioners were considering re-upping mask mandates I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I had my “you got to be kidding” moment like everyone else. Call it mass psychosis or mass formation, you can talk to these people until you are blue in the face (no pun intended), facts, logic, reasoned debate does not reach them. The only thing that stops this is non-compliance, by businesses and individuals. We are well beyond any sort of, “it can’t hurt and might actually help” scenario. We know masks are bad for your physical and mental health. Anyone with children has seen the damage masking has done. In the mean time I am willing to donate air line miles to send Alison Berry wherever she would like to go. All she has to do is agree to never come back.
From our PTFP Facebook page comments:
Zozo Zehinger
I worked in healthcare, it even tells you on the mask boxes that they don’t protect you or others from Viruses ! its insane. Most people will actually be breathing far more harmful bacteria of their own if they wear them all day. Before all this got really crazy, we had a top Doctor advise us against wearing masks because of the bacteria. But it seems people love being slaves and disguise it as ‘the greater good’ when in fact it only serves the power hungry festering fools who have put themselves as the all knowing, only knowing people out there. Most people don’t even know about the agenda of the World Economic Forum…. if they did, they would soon be far more vocal about all this insane BS.
Gina Masson
Zozo Zehinger Loved your factual comment! I worked in healthcare too the first 6 months of C and nurses and CNA’s we’re put on call so much we had to use all our vacation time.. only a handful of C patients and 2 deaths I knew about that they said we’re from C were NOT! They died with it but not FROM it.
So much lies and yes people need to read the World Economic Forum and wake up!
In his typical inimitable style, CJ Hopkins lifts up those masks to see what’s really behind them. Our ‘public health’ petty tyrants haven’t a clue:
“If you think the corporate media’s reaction to Matt Taibbi’s initial Twitter Files release was brutal — and it certainly was — imagine what would happen if he and Bari told the story of Twitter’s role in the global New Normal Gleichschaltung campaign. They would likely lose everything, publishers, book deals, literary agents, colleagues, friends. They would be excommunicated from the Hall of Seriousness, cast out into the outer darkness where the denylisted souls of “Covid-denying, conspiracy theorizing anti-vaxxers” moan into the void for all eternity.
Because telling that story would mean documenting everything … the fabricated “Covid cases” and “Covid deaths” statistics, the lies about the lockdowns, the masks, the “vaccines,” all of it, the whole New Normal megillah. Not how it’s “over now” because “the science changed,” but how the whole thing was one enormous PSYOP (regardless of whether or how much of it was intentional), how it was manufactured with lies and propaganda from the very beginning, in March of 2020.”
https://consentfactory.org/2022/12/10/swimming-with-sharks/
I will wear a mask when ever I want and/or if asked. It is just not that big a deal to me. It can’t hurt to do it and it does slow down the projection from coughs and sneezes. But it does seem to be an economic burden which will affect its implemantation.
TonyG, I respect your freedom to choose to wear a mask whenever you want, and your right to choose to wear a mask when asked. However, I feel that you are missing the point of this article. It is not about a person’s choice. And it is not about choosing a response when asked. Asking implies a choice of responses. A mandate however is not a choice. It is a demand enforced under penalty of law backed by the threat of force by the state if you do not comply. It is a mandate from an unelected official. It has no precedent in history other than during periods of irrational hysteria. (Unless you are over 100 years old you have never been subject to a mask mandate before 2020.) The evidence that masks do not stop aerosol virus transmission is overwhelming. To declare a masking mandate we should require overwhelming evidence that it works — and that evidence does not exist. Dr. Berry has little more than “It can’t hurt”. (And by the way, there is mounting evidence that it can harm.)
TonyG – Like John, above, I don’t think any of us here dispute the right of an adult to choose wearing a mask if they think that it will benefit them in some way. But as he (and Stephen in the article) mention, it is not correct that “it can’t hurt to do it.”
This mask mania has multiple negative consequences. Among them are the psychological impacts which I addressed in the article “Masks: The Great Face-Covering Psyop”, most especially for children who are showing cognitive impairment from not being able to see people’s faces. Psychiatrist/MD Dr. Mark McDonald, among others, considers it child abuse to force masks on children. There is also an environmental consequence — the amount of synthetic debris now littering and entering the waste stream since this madness began is staggering.
But what actually may warrant its own article is the harm to people’s physical health from constant masking. Masks reduce the inhalation of life-giving oxygen and capture the exhalation of CO2 which the wearer then breathes back in. The masks collect bacteria on the inside where the moist, damp conditions are a breeding ground for infectious agents. So along with rebreathing waste CO2, mask wearers are breathing in bacteria and other toxins. Many doctors (the ones being censored who do not parrot the narrative) say that the reduced oxygen intake along with breathing in all that bacteria and CO2 is damaging people’s immune systems and one of the reasons there is more susceptibility now to viruses and other opportunistic toxins.
There is a very lively discussion on our Facebook page about this article (nearly 40 comments now) and one of the topics is harm to people’s health from masks. Here are a couple of the comments:
Don Beeman
Masks increase the CO2 in your nose, lungs, and blood. Bacteria thrive on CO2. How many died of bacterial pneumonia after being weakened by COVID?
Stay home orders also increased CO2 the same way because the occupancy rate per unit time was increased in homes, many of which already had CO2 problems because of tight construction.
But they emptied the jails for the same reason.
BTW, there is excessive CO2 in hospitals, even in ICUs.
Zozo Zehinger
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a gas the body naturally produces as waste. We breathe in oxygen (O2) to fuel organs and tissues and the end product is CO2. The balance between these two gases is required for a healthy body. However, when we rebreathe CO2 it can have harmful and sometimes dangerous effects on the body. When CO2 levels are elevated in the body it is known as hypercapnia. Hypercapnia can occur for a number of reasons, one of which is rebreathing our own exhaled CO2. Rebreathing CO2 can lead to increased blood pressure, headaches, muscle twitches, rapid heart rate, chest pain, confusion, and fatigue. In extreme cases, if left untreated, hypercapnia can lead to organ damage and even have long standing effects on the brain.
I completely agree. I have links to more than 200 studies showing that masks make no difference. Steve Kirsch published (a couple of days ago) the summary of a Danish and Bangladesh study that showed this. I wish I could post the graphic here to show you, but you can find it at https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/questions-you-can-ask-your-doctor at about the middle of the article.
An N95 mask has 0.8u pores. The Covid virus is about 0.3u– about the same ratio is a mosquito flying through chicken wire or a golf ball going into the hole. Some “experts” will say, “yes, but it traps microscopic droplets of sputum when we speak”, but that also is misleading. The droplets of sputum are indeed stopped….for a second or two before the moisture evaporates and the viruses sail right on through. And, they don’t have to be inhaled– they can land on public surfaces, like menus, ATM, handrails, etc, that we touch, then touch our noses without sanitizing. I do not know for how long the Covid virus can be picked up from surfaces, but it has been common knowledge that sanitizing hands reduces cold and flu contagion so I doubt the Covid virus is much different.
Further, mask wearing is not without consequence. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic killed more mask wearers from mask-induced pneumonia than from the actual disease.
So why are masks mandated? The answer lies in a discovery by the Arabs, some 2300 years ago. They discovered that covering the face dehumanizes us and makes us more obedient and submissive.
Astounding to see the once-respected New York Times push this “get masked” narrative Tuesday under the pretext that “there is strong evidence” that masks help to reduce the transmission of several respiratory viruses”:
…but their “strong evidence” link points to a weak trial finding precisely the opposite, namely that “the differences compared with the control group were not significant“:
Shocking https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/vaers-showing-4070-increase-miscarriages-stillbirths-since-mrna-roll/
400% increase in sudden death https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/shocking-study-reveals-massive-spike-deaths-following-forced-covid-vaccines-germany/
Face mask wearing is virtue signaling. It’s nothing more than a talisman some people lean on that do more harm than good. Anyone that can think for themselves knows that one needs oxygen, masks deplete oxygen, increase CO2, create acidosis, create a warm, moist environment, they do not stop pathogens from entering or leaving thus allowing the wearer to inhale deeply into the lungs potentially causing serious health issues. Furthermore, since the wearer is constantly touching the mask, touching other items as well so that they can cross contaminate. It’s a bio-hazard where the wearers can become super spreaders. If you’re wearing a face diaper, I’m going to assume you’re sick; just as they used to indicate to the public, not the other way around.
WHY is there an “Endless Pandemic”? Here is an important article about new scientific research which confirms how the fake vaxxine depresses the immune system and creates endless variants and suppresses the immune system, thus creating more and more disease and deaths. This was all predicted 3 years ago by INDEPENDENT scientists and doctors!
https://www.conservativereview.com/horowitz-possibly-the-most-important-study-on-covid-shots-might-explain-why-covid-never-seems-to-end-2659039644.html
Just one example is Dr. Harvey Risch, a professor emeritus of epidemiology at Yale, who said at that time, just before the vaxx attack was begun, “It’s established science you never vaccinate in the middle of a pandemic, it only creates endless variants…”
We are SEEING that now, aren’t we? The criminals have created an endless death spiral: more shots, more variants, more immune suppression, more disease, more deaths, which leads to more panic, more shots, more variants, more immune suppression, which leads to more deaths, more panic, which leads to… Round and round. Brilliant diabolical strategy. Herd the sheep right off the cliff.
Baa Baa Baa Dr. Berry??
I’ve been writing in 5-7-5 haiku recently, in part because they seem to defeat social media algorithms, and also for the juxtaposition of a structure often conveying serenity with a discomforting message. My latest:
We learn to Unthink
Everything we hear from
Allison Berry