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Saint Augustine once wrote: “Do not try to understand in order to believe, but believe that you can understand.” He was obviously writing about matters of faith. Unfortunately, many of those who have scolded the public for “following the science” over the past few months now seem content to treat masks as an object of faith rather than relying on the science behind them.
Take the now famous Danish study on masks (Henning Bundgaard, et al.), Posted in The Annals of Internal Medicine, November 18, 2020. One would think that the study’s findings would encourage greater scrutiny on the efficacy of mandatory mask mandates, considering the absurd burden it places on individuals and businesses, not to mention the likely violation of civil liberties. Instead, many on the left wasted no time in resolutely defaming the study, attacking its credibility, and criticizing the semantic holes it purports to find.
And so it turned out.
Not that The annals made it difficult for the study to be attacked. The remissions, as well as the abstract, tended to make the findings seem as benign as possible to the pro-mask narrative: “Observational evidence suggests that mask use mitigates the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS -CoV-2) and that the findings “should not be used to conclude that a recommendation for everyone to wear masks in the community would not be effective in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections.”
Fortunately, the study itself says otherwise. In fact, the study itself would point out that the Danish authorities “did not recommend the use of masks outside of hospital settings.” Why is that?
Because the Danish health authorities themselves “do not recommend that healthy people who move in public [to] they generally wear masks. “The only exceptions are visits to the hospital, travel within risk areas or when caring for family members infected with COVID-19.
The study involved nearly 5,000 participants, of whom half were asked to wear masks and the other half were not. Those who were asked to wear masks were given proper training and the masks given to them were of good quality. In the end, “1.8% were infected with masks, while 2.1% were infected without masks.” Which is statistically insignificant. Therefore, as the study itself points out: “the recommendation to wear a surgical mask outside the home, among others, did not reduce incident SARS-CoV-2 infection to conventional levels of statistical significance compared to the recommendation of do not use a mask ”.
This should be taken in the context of study after study showing that masks in public settings tend to be ineffective. And a CDC report from September 11, 2020, which found that among those infected with COVID-19, 85% “always” or “often” wore masks, while 70% of those actually hospitalized for COVID -19 “always” wore masks. .
What makes this insanity even more frustrating is that centuries before and until March 2020, the advice had almost always been: “don’t wear masks.”
Suddenly, however, the defenders of the mask imposed a radical change. It became “yes, use it publicly because it protects you.” Then it changed to “no, it doesn’t really protect you, but it does protect others.” The current rally appears to be: “well, put it on to raise awareness of COVID-19.”
The foregoing is strangely contradicted by CDC Director Robert Redfield on September 16. Statement: “A mask is more likely to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.” Which, in turn, strangely contradicted the CDC’s own 9/11 Report (particularly in an email to Health Feedback), which stated that it “clearly stated that wearing a mask is intended to protect other people in case that the user of the mask is infected. At no point did the CDC guidance suggest that the masks were intended to protect users. “
Note that an October 23 study (Dhaval Adjodah, et al), published in medRxiv, had to retract when he claimed that the mask mandates resulted in a reduction in COVID-19 cases, only to find that infections in subject areas increased after the study was published.
Then, finally, there is this: A study (Shiyi Cao, et al) published on November 20, described “a city-wide SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid detection program between May 14 and June 1. 2020 in Wuhan. xxx There was no positive test among 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases.”(Emphasis provided).
In short, and if it is true: asymptomatic spread is not real. And if that’s the case, with almost 98-99% of COVID-19 cases asymptomatic or mild, what could justify the mandatory use of a mask?
To reiterate a point made in a previous article: if the science on the public use of masks shows that this is useless or does not work (in fact, the Danish mask study seems to indicate that masks can even increase the probability of infection) or in the least uncertain, then that the government makes public the use of a mask as a mandatory requirement is arbitrary, capricious and perhaps even despotic.
It’s one thing to recommend that people wear masks. But forcing people to wear masks at risk of punishment is a simple government overreach.
Jemy Gatdula is a Senior Fellow of the Philippine Council on Foreign Relations and Professor of Law at the Philippine Judicial Academy in philosophy and constitutional jurisprudence.
www.jemygatdula.blogspot.com
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Twitter @jemygatdula
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