“When the history books are written about the use of non-pharmacologic measures during this pandemic, we will look as pre-historic and barbaric and tribal as our ancestors during the plagues of the middle ages.” ---Vinay Prasad
“People should not be walking around with
masks. There’s no reason to be walking
around with a mask.” ---Anthony Fauci on 60 Minutes, March 8, 2020
For example, I began the article “Line Up For Your
Booster!” this way:
On July 27, 2021, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced a
new policy. The agency now recommends that people vaccinated against
COVID wear masks when indoors. Over two-thirds of the American
people have had at least one shot, but the vaccinated are apparently in danger.
In 2031, will
this news item make any sense at all? Or
will readers ask, “OK. The vaccines
didn’t work very well. Got it. But why would the authorities want anyone to
wear masks? Did they really think
mask-wearing would stop people from transmitting viruses?”
And
here’s the answer for you 2031 readers.
Most government officials did not really believe masks would protect
anyone from catching COVID (though some probably did believe that). But early on, in April of 2020, government
mask mandates were used to frighten and dehumanize the populace, and set the
reshaping of society in motion. There
never was any scientific basis or public health rationale for the mask-wearing,
and in fact, public health authorities all over the world told people NOT to
wear masks because they presented health and respiratory dangers of their
own. These scientists even cited
(correctly), peer-reviewed studies in medical journals demonstrating the
ineffectiveness or hazard of mask-wearing.
Then, suddenly, in April 2020, they changed their tune. There were no new studies, there was no new
science---but governments everywhere started issuing rules and regulations
ordering the populace to wear the things.
One
would expect that such an abrupt change could only take place following an
argument in the community of scientists about the wearing of masks, but no such
argument ever took place. Instead, the
rules were issued, the public health authorities fell into line, and opposing
voices were silenced. Once the program
was implemented, those who offered any objection or criticism of the new rules
were de-funded, banned from TV and radio, and had their postings on the
internet erased.
In
America, this happened on one day. On
April 3, 2020, the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams all
announced that not only were masks beneficial in slowing the transmission of
respiratory viruses, but they should be mandatory across the country. Up until the previous day, they had all held
the opposite position, as had the World Health Organization. The WHO actually maintained its anti-mask
advice until June 2020, when it too finally fell into line.
Now,
with mandates in place for the last sixteen months, there have been dozens of
studies on the results. These are mostly
not peer-reviewed or published in reputable journals, and one can find a wide
variety of them, but you cannot review this literature (as I have), and
conclude that this extraordinary public health experiment has been a
success. There was never any reason to
think that mask-wearing would prevent the transmission of respiratory viruses,
and there still isn’t.
Still,
the official position of governments around the world, and the public health
bureaucracy, is that masks “work.” No
discussion is permitted on this false proposition. And that is why, when the Director of the CDC
announces that the COVID vaccines are not very effective, she urges vaccinated
people to wear masks so they don’t get sick.
For her to offer some explanation of the mask recommendation would
suggest there might be some possible doubt
about the effectiveness of masking, and the CDC cannot allow that sort of
thinking. Masks stop the transmission of
viral diseases, and that’s that, as far as the authorities are concerned.
Lockdowns,
meaning the closing of schools and government services and small businesses (but
not large ones), were another measure with no precedents, lots of reasons to
think they would do a great deal of harm, and no support in scientific
literature. And again, no discussion
occurred on the question of whether they would prevent infections, save lives,
or do any good at all. They had never
been tried in previous pandemics, and therefore there was no way of justifying
them. The only experience of lockdowns
had been in Wuhan Province, China, at the outbreak of COVID-19 in January 2020,
and there was no evidence from Wuhan that the lockdowns had been anything but a
nightmare.
The
other worldwide public health experiment has been “social distancing,” another
safety measure with no precedents and no scientific justification. Of course it is true that if you are two miles
away from some infected person, they will not be able to make you sick, so
there is some measure of truth behind the idea.
The distances used in the “social distancing” guidelines are completely
arbitrary, however, and vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Three feet, six feet, one meter, two
meters---take your pick. And now, from
studies done over the last eighteen months, it seems likely that the minimum
effective distance for “social distancing” would be more like twenty feet, but since
this would render any commerce or social interaction virtually impossible,
these findings are never discussed.
So
my message to time travelers and historians revisiting this period and trying
to understand what happened is this: we are not as pre-historic and barbaric and
tribal as our actions might indicate.
Many of us, including many who are
enforcing the restrictions imposed on
us, 1) know that masks are ineffective in stopping the transmission of
respiratory viruses, 2) know that lockdowns have no scientific justification as
a disease-mitigation strategy, and 3) know that keeping people six feet apart
when there’s a respiratory virus floating around is pointless. But all of these societal interventions and
rules have been imposed upon us from above, and any attempt to discuss the
wisdom behind them is punished by the authorities.
Masks
work. Lockdowns save lives. Social distancing prevents infection. All these assumptions are now treated as
facts. No dissent or debate is permitted.
Copyright2021MichaelKubacki
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