Friday, December 04, 2020



The Strangely Unscientific Masking of America

Iremember vividly the day, at the tail end of March, when facemasks suddenly became synonymous with morality: either one cared about the lives of others and donned a mask, or one was selfish and refused to do so. The shift occurred virtually overnight.

Only a day or two before, I had associated this attire solely with surgeons and people living in heavily polluted regions. Now, my friends’ favorite pastime during our weekly Zoom sessions was excoriating people for running or socializing without masks in Prospect Park. I was mystified by their certitude that bits of cloth were the only thing standing between us and mass death, particularly when mere weeks prior, the message from medical experts contradicted this new doctrine.

On February 29, the U.S. surgeon general infamously tweeted: “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS. . . They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus.” Anthony Fauci, the best-known member of the coronavirus task force, advised Americans not to wear masks around this time. Similarly, in the earliest weeks of the pandemic, the CDC maintained that masks should be worn only by individuals who were symptomatic or caring for a sick person, a position that the WHO stood by even longer.

As rapidly as mask use became a matter of ethics, the issue transformed into a political one, exemplified by an article printed on March 27 in the New York Times, entitled “More Americans Should Probably Wear Masks for Protection.” The piece was heavy on fear-mongering and light on evidence. While acknowledging that “[t]here is very little data showing that flat surgical masks, in particular, have a protective effect for the general public,” the author went on to argue that they “may be better than nothing,” and cited a couple of studies in which surgical masks ostensibly reduced influenza transmission rates.

One report reached its conclusion based on observations of a “dummy head attached to a breathing simulator.” Another analyzed use of surgical masks on people experiencing at least two symptoms of acute respiratory illness. Incidentally, not one of these studies involved cloth masks or accounted for real-world mask usage (or misusage) among lay people, and none established efficacy of widespread mask-wearing by people not exhibiting symptoms. There was simply no evidence whatsoever that healthy people ought to wear masks when going about their lives, especially outdoors. Yet by April, to walk the streets of Brooklyn with one’s nose and mouth exposed evoked the sort of reaction that in February would have been reserved for the appearance of a machine gun.

In short order, the politicization intensified. President Trump refused to wear a mask relatively early on, so resistance to them was equated with support for him. By the same token, Democratic politicians across the board eagerly adopted the garb; accordingly, all good liberals were wearing masks religiously by the beginning of April. Likewise, left-leaning newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post unequivocally promoted mask-wearing after that March 27 article, with no real analysis or consideration of opposing views and evidence.

The speed with which mask-wearing among the general public transitioned from unheard of to a moral necessity struck me as suspicious. After all, if the science was as airtight as those around me claimed, surely masks would have been recommended by January or February, not to mention during prior infectious disease outbreaks such as the 2009 swine flu. It seemed unlikely that the scientific proof became incontrovertible sometime between late February and late March, particularly in the absence of any new evidence surfacing during that time period.

Perhaps none of this is particularly surprising in this hyper-political era. What is shocking is the scientific community’s participation in subverting evidence that does not comport with the consensus. A prime example is the Institute of Health Metrics Evaluation’s (“IHME”) rather astounding claim, published in the journal Nature-Medicine and echoed in countless articles afterward, that the lives of 130,000 people could be saved with a nationwide mask mandate.

As my colleague Phil Magness pointed out in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the IHME model was predicated upon faulty data: it assumed that 49% of Americans were wearing masks based on a survey conducted between April and June, while claiming that statistic represented the number of Americans wearing masks as of September 21. In fact, by the summer, around 80% of Americans were regularly wearing them. (Ironically, had Dr. Fauci and the Surgeon General not bungled the message in March, mask use probably would have reached much higher rates much earlier on).

This called into question the accuracy of the 130,000 figure, since many more people habitually used masks than the study presumed.

Although Magness contacted Nature-Medicine to point out the problem, after stalling for nearly two weeks, the journal declined to address it. Needless to say, the damage had been done: newspapers such as the New York Times undoubtedly would fail to correct the error and any retractions certainly would be placed far from the front page, where the initial article touting the IHME figure appeared. Thus, as expected, the unfounded claim that 130,000 lives could be saved with a nationwide mask-mandate continues to be repeated, including by president-elect Joe Biden and National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.

That the science behind mask-wearing is questionable at best is further exemplified by a letter to the editor written in response to Magness’s article. Dr. Christopher Murray acknowledged that rates of mask-wearing have steadily increased, but then concluded that masks should be used because they are “our first line of defense against the pandemic” and current IHME modeling indicates that “if 95% of U.S. residents were to wear masks when leaving home, we could prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans” because “masks work,” and “much deeper pain is ahead if we refuse to wear them.”

None of this accounts for the failure of either Nature-Medicine or the IHME modelers to recognize and correct the error. Moreover, neither the IHME modelers nor Dr. Murray provide any evidence that masks work. They assume masks are extremely effective at preventing spread of the coronavirus, and then claim that the model is correct for that reason. This sort of circular reasoning is all-too typical of those who so vociferously insist that masks are effective without going to the trouble of substantiating that contention – or differentiating what is likely a modest benefit from mask-wearing in specific indoor locations and around high-risk individuals from the media-driven tendency to depict masks as a silver bullet for stopping the virus in all circumstances.

Coverage of a recent mask study conducted in Denmark likewise epitomizes the failure of the scientific community to rigorously engage with results that do not fit the prevailing masks-as-a-panacea narrative. The first randomized and controlled study of its kind (another appeared in May but it pertained to flu and had similar results), it found an absence of empirical evidence that masks provide protection to people wearing them, although it apparently did not assess whether they prevent infection of those who encounter the wearer. The report was covered in a New York Times article bearing the patronizing headline, “A New Study Questions Whether Masks Protect Wearers. You Need to Wear Them Anyway.”

Noting that the results “conflict with those from a number of other studies,” primarily “laboratory examinations of the particles blocked by materials of various types,” the author remarked that, therefore, this research “is not likely to alter public health recommendations in the United States.” Notably, laboratory examinations, as opposed to the Danish study, do not account for the realities of everyday mask usage by non-medical professionals.

The author then quotes Susan Ellenberg, a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, who claims that the study indicates a trend: “‘in the direction of benefit’ even if the results were not statistically significant. ‘Nothing in this study suggests . . . that it is useless to wear a mask,’” according to Dr. Ellenberg.

Nor does anything in this study suggest that it is useful to wear a mask, a fact that Dr. Ellenberg (and the headline) conveniently ignores. Furthermore, if a result is statistically insignificant, it should not be used to make the case for any proposition — as even I, a layperson, know.

Scientists ought to dispassionately analyze data that contradicts their biases and assumptions, and be open to changing their beliefs accordingly. That the results of the only randomized, controlled study were and continue to be automatically discounted demonstrates that, when it comes to the subject of masks, anything approximating the scientific method has gone out the window. That is all the more evident given the lack of interest that mask proponents have shown in conducting a randomized, controlled study themselves.

An article in the Los Angeles Times went even further: it twisted the findings of the Danish study to argue, incomprehensibly, that the research demonstrated more mask-wearing is warranted. The author cited, as supposedly compelling evidence that masks work, the low Covid-19 death rates in Singapore, Vietnam, and Taiwan. Indeed, according to the latest YouGov poll, administered in mid-November, 83% of Americans now wear masks in public, higher rates than Vietnam (77%) and Taiwan (82%).

Furthermore, there are other explanations, apart from widespread mask usage, for the remarkably low death rates in these countries. Some scientists believe that previous exposure to other coronaviruses in these regions may confer partial or total immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Others have speculated that obesity, environment or genetics could be the reason that Europe and the United States have substantially higher death rates than many Asian and African countries; after all, obesity is one of the most significant risk factors for severe illness.

To conclude on the basis of low death rates in several countries that masks prevent coronavirus transmission is patently absurd, illogical, and unscientific. A casual observer might also note that coronavirus cases (albeit not necessarily deaths) are rising in many parts of the world, regardless of mask mandates or rates of implementation. While not a controlled experiment, this fact at least ought to be addressed when making such sweeping claims.

Ultimately, I do not have the credentials to determine whether or not –or to what extent — masks work. But it is obvious that the issue has become so politicized that mainstream media outlets, politicians, and even scientists seize upon the slightest bit of favorable evidence, dismiss out of hand anything that conflicts with their theory, and most egregiously of all misrepresent the data, to support the conclusion that masks worn by asymptomatic people prevent coronavirus transmission.

And masks are only one part of this story: school closures, lockdowns, and social distancing all have been dogmatically embraced as a means of controlling infection. The substantial evidence that these mechanisms are not effective, particularly beyond their duration, has been automatically rejected for too long. This is not science: it is politics, and those within the profession who have refused to examine their confirmation biases, or manipulated the evidence to score political points, are utterly unqualified for the job.

Leftmedia Uses COVID to Justify Authoritarianism

Fomenting panic over the highly survivable novel virus is all about promoting leftist politics.

We coined the term “Leftmedia” to quickly identify the agenda behind news media organizations, an activist agenda promoting socialist ideals. The Leftmedia’s socialist agenda has been made all the more apparent during the global COVID-19 pandemic, during which the press has sought to induce panic over a disease that has a survival rate of over 99.9% for anyone under 50 years old and a 99.5% survival rate for anyone under 70. In fact, even those over 70 who contract the virus have a survival rate of 94.6%. These stats come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To put it bluntly, contracting the coronavirus is not anywhere in the ballpark of a death sentence for the vast majority of Americans, so why the outsized panic?

It’s simple. By stoking illogical fear over the novel disease, Leftmedia outlets, working on behalf of the Democrat Party, have been able to convince millions of Americans to willingly allow for their God-given rights and liberties to be trampled upon by authoritarian-minded government officials. “All for the greater good,” which for the Leftmedia means getting rid of President Donald Trump.

Hence, the constant bad news on COVID propagated daily by the Leftmedia, despite the fact that, on balance, there is more good news regarding the virus in recent months than bad. Good or even alternative news runs counter to the narrative — a narrative that Big Tech’s leftist thought police have worked to promote and protect via their censorship campaign.

Three Ivy League professors, two from Dartmouth and one from Brown, noticed the constant negative media coverage of COVID and decided to do a little research into the numbers, which resulted in a paper titled, “Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News?” The researchers note, “Ninety one percent of stories by U.S. major media outlets are negative in tone versus fifty four percent for non-U.S. major sources and sixty five percent for scientific journals. The negativity of the U.S. major media is notable even in areas with positive scientific developments including school re-openings and vaccine trials. Media negativity is unresponsive to changing trends in new COVID-19 cases or the political leanings of the audience.” In short, the mainstream media has convinced the majority of Americans to believe the worst about COVID and to ignore any good news as unreliable or wishful thinking.

Is the MSM simply giving Americans what they want? Perhaps in part, but don’t underestimate Big Tech censorship that silences or “fact-checks” any COVID story from non-mainstream media that fails to toe the “COVID panic” narrative. It may be less about what consumers are demanding and more about what media sources consumers are allowed or encouraged to access.

In any case, it’s clear that a political agenda is fueling the Leftmedia’s narrative surrounding COVID.

One obvious example of this comes from the San Francisco Chronicle. On November 2, the day before the election, it ran an article titled, “Record 61,000 children in the U.S. infected with coronavirus last week.” Joe Biden made President Trump’s response to COVID the centerpiece of his campaign, ridiculously asserting that Trump was responsible for more than 200,000 American deaths. The bulk of the Chronicle story focuses on the increasing number of children catching the novel virus in California, only to note in the second-to-last paragraph the following fact: “Two children have died in California [from COVID].” Think about that for a moment. Only two children have died from COVID, and yet the state has closed schools and largely shut down its economy. How many children have died due to California’s overreaction to the novel virus? How many suffered in other measureless ways?

As if to prevent the entire fearmongering purpose of the story from being undercut by facts, the author concludes, “But while the chances for death and serious complications are minimal for children, researchers are concerned about the explosive growth in childhood cases seen over the past weeks.” What was clearly a good piece of news — that children are not dying or seriously threatened by the coronavirus — was spun into a negative story. Keep the panic going, while at least implicitly blaming the Bad Orange Man.

And now, with Trump’s Operation Warp Speed leading to the development of two COVID vaccines, the Leftmedia is still stirring panic over a virus on the verge of being defeated for no other purpose than to keep providing cover for totalitarian-minded government officials who continue cracking down on Americans’ civil liberties.

The Left Is Guilty as Charged

Harold Hutchison

If one thing has become clear in the five-plus years since Donald Trump first announced his campaign for the presidency, it's that the Left has unequivocally revealed its true colors. In fact, in the battle over the 2020 election, one pattern of conduct by leftists is a fundamental admission of doing everything they've ever been accused of by grassroots Patriots.

What pattern is that? Let's start with the way Big Tech has handled the evidence-backed claims of both voter fraud and failing to follow the rules. Even though the red flags are obvious to experienced fraud investigators and casual observers alike, Big Tech has been gaslighting the American people for nearly a month over this issue via censorship. If, for example, we wanted to examine or share the complaints filed by former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, we'd see the websites that hosted those complaints labeled as "dangerous sites."

It's a pattern of behavior that mirrors the treatment of a certain bombshell story recently reported by the New York Post and then systematically suppressed by Big Tech.

Next, we see the targeted harassment of lawyers who were representing the Trump campaign. One firm, Porter Wright, dropped its representation of the president altogether. The loathsome Lincoln Project vowed to target others intent on determining how badly the integrity of this election was compromised.

Even the alternative news outlets are being targeted. One America News Network was demonetized by Google. Parler is now the target of media hit pieces. CNN is going after Newsmax. All this is happening as these platforms are giving grassroots Patriots new voices while Fox News increasingly lets them down.

The common theme is plain to see: The establishment is trying to reassert control by going after upstart alternative news sources. In the early years of the Internet, these media and tech powers had it easy. The only conservative voices they needed to worry about at the time were those permitted by gatekeepers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN.

But the combination of talk radio, Fox News, and a vibrant Internet broke that paradigm. And the establishment hates it, because deep down, it knows it loses a fair fight on the field of ideas. The establishment knows it can't beat the NRA in an honest debate, so New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his ilk have been abusing power with the express intent to silence other voices. The same goes for past attacks on Gab, the current bans and censorship of social media, and even the dismissive rants of Old Media. To say that these leftist powers are frightened of having their bankruptcy of ideas revealed is a charitable explanation.

There's also a less charitable explanation, one that fits the rhetoric we've been hearing from the Left. The pattern of censorship confirms what people like Kurt Schlichter and Dennis Prager have been saying for years: The Left hates our guts, thinks we don't deserve to be heard, and is intent on destroying those of us with the courage to speak out.

Either way, these actions are an admission that the Left is afraid to discuss the issues of the day in good faith. That admission should speak volumes.

Trump Lawyer Jenna Ellis Receives Threats: ‘You Deserved to Be Raped’

Jenna Ellis, a legal advisor to President Donald Trump and senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign, has received threats, late night phone calls from unfamiliar numbers, and public calls for her disbarment, she told Breitbart News exclusively Wednesday.

Via direct message (DM), Ellis told Breitbart News that she had received “Hundreds of DMs and messages etc threatening me.”

Some threats have been public, like attempts to have her disbarred and encouraging the public to file Bar complaints.

Others have been more direct — and less subtle.

She added: “CNN reporter messaged today accusing me of my bar license being lapsed. Unknown number has called my cell dozens of times between midnight and 4am to blow up my phone and try to get through the DND [do not disturb].”

Ellis provided Breitbart News with a screen grab of text messages from an unknown person who attempted to provoke her to respond, ending with: “You’re a f**king c**t. You’re the reason people despise humanity. You deserved to be raped.”

Other Trump attorneys have been harassed, including by the Lincoln Project, a group of Never Trump Republicans who have encouraged the public to harass law firms taking up the president’s case.

The mainstream media has defended these efforts; the Washington Post, for example, published an op-ed Nov. 12 titled “Yes, going after Trump’s law firms is fair game.” Trump’s lawyers in Pennsylvania withdrew the following day, reportedly because of threats.

Joe Biden has not said anything about the threats against Trump’s legal team, as scholar Jonathan Turley has noted.

“When such actions were taken against lawyers representing civil rights groups and others in the 1960s, it was correctly denounced as an outrageous abuse of our legal system,” Turley tweeted this week. “Now it has become a campaign supported by politicians, lawyers, and the media.”

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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