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author David Zweig asserts that the supposed science supporting the imposition of mask mandates isn’t as solid as the left would have us believe. For starters, he brought up a large-scale study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which analyzed the spread of COVID-19 in schools.
Zweig writes:
A few major news outlets covered its release by briefly reiterating the study’s summary: that masking then-unvaccinated teachers and improving ventilation with more fresh air were associated with a lower incidence of the virus in schools.
However, the summary left out an important factor:
Distancing, hybrid models, classroom barriers, HEPA filters, and, most notably, requiring student masking were each found to not have a statistically significant benefit. In other words, these measures could not be said to be effective.
The author points to similar results found in European nations such as Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and others. Each of these nations has not required children to wear face masks. The article notes that “there’s no evidence of more outbreaks in schools in those countries relative to schools in the U.S.” //
Even more interesting is the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) has provided guidance regarding mask-wearing that conflicts with the CDC’s recommendations and has found that forcing students to wear masks may actually have a detrimental effect on their development. //
Over the course of several weeks, I also corresponded with many experts — epidemiologists, infectious-disease specialists, an immunologist, pediatricians, and a physician publicly active in matters relating to COVID — asking for the best evidence they were aware of that mask requirements on students were effective. Nobody was able to find a data set as robust as the Georgia results — that is, a large cohort study directly looking at the effects of a mask requirement. //
The notion that the CDC would suppress information demonstrating that their narrative regarding masks for children lacks merit is telling. The reality is clear: The CDC and the left want your kids wearing masks whether they work or not. Why else would they hide this information?
What is already known about this topic?
Early observational studies among nursing home residents showed mRNA vaccines to be 53% to 92% effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection.
What is added by this report?
Two doses of mRNA vaccines were 74.7% effective against infection among nursing home residents early in the vaccination program (March–May 2021). During June–July 2021, when B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant circulation predominated, effectiveness declined significantly to 53.1%.
What are the implications for public health practice?
Multicomponent COVID-19 prevention strategies, including vaccination of nursing home staff members, residents, and visitors, are critical. An additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine might be considered for nursing home and long-term care facility residents to optimize a protective immune response.
Two Canadian doctors recently made the argument that the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine is effective enough to warrant a single-dose regimen when communities have a limited supply of the shots. Their letter, published in mid-February when Canada was experiencing a delay in vaccine shipments, states that the vaccine had an efficacy of 92.6% beginning two weeks after the first dose, and before the second was administered. The authors based their analysis on documents Pfizer submitted to the FDA.1 //
Research out of Israel published in The Lancet found that the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was 85% effective two to three weeks after a single dose.3 Another study found that after one dose of the vaccine, between days 14 to 20, it offered 57% effectiveness for symptomatic COVID-19, 74% for hospitalization, and 62% for severe disease.4
Hawaii, which has had a very restrictive mask-mandate (indoors and outdoors) is getting hit by Delta at exactly the time you’d expect if you were looking at past trends.
The proof? – Hawaii’s largest previous spike happened in August of 2020, the exact month they are seeing a spike this year.
It’s not just Hawaii, though. Many midwestern states are now seeing the same trend play out. //
https://mobile.twitter.com/kylamb8/status/1426191289603792903/photo/1
Mask mandates are not working. The virus has its waves — regardless of whether a state has a mandate in place or not. That means that Florida, which has born the brunt of the criticism, is being largely vindicated. No mask mandate was going to magically fix their situation. If masks were effective, Hawaii, which is literally a group of islands in the middle of the ocean, wouldn’t be seeing their largest spike to date. //.
The correlation between mask mandates and spread does not exist. That may make the fact-checkers on social media uncomfortable, but the data is on my side, and all I can do is share that data. Anyone that doubts that COVID is seasonal and can’t be defeated by mask mandates can check back in three months. We will have seen the same spikes in the same states at around the same time, whether those states have a mask mandate or not.
The virus cannot be “crushed” from that perspective. It can only be managed by vaccinations, natural immunity, and a realization that certain segments of the population are just not statistically vulnerable. Getting the elderly, the obese, and those with other comorbidities vaccinated should be the priority, not making eight-year-olds mask up in school. Common sense needs to prevail.
RedState reported on Rowe’s original Facebook post some days ago. That led to this a hit piece over at The Bulwark, which RedState also wrote on. //
Charlie Sykes
@SykesCharlie
“Mike Rowe—the famous real man, dirty-jobbing, tough guy—is trying to pioneer a new lane in political discourse: anti-anti-anti-vaxx.”
Mike Rowe's Dirty Lies - The Bulwark
thebulwark.com //
AG
@AGHamilton29
Mike Rowe went line by line responding to the recent hit piece from JVL: https://facebook.com/116999698310182/posts/4564421360234638/?d=n
When you write out of anger and try to caricature everyone who disagrees with you, you end up with some very weak and easily refutable arguments. (Ht @Bmac0507)
10:37 PM · Aug 8, 2021 //
https://m.facebook.com/116999698310182/posts/4564421360234638/?d=n
Health officials have lied to us. They have failed us. They have blown up their own credibility over and over. They have constantly moved the goalposts. It is not unreasonable to point out that their behavior has driven skepticism of the vaccine. In fact, it’s an extremely important thing to point out when talking about combating vaccine hesitancy to the extent one believes it must be combated. //
John R
28 minutes ago
There's no need for confusion about why the powers that be do what they do in response to this pandemic. There are two rules. (1) policies must promote solutions from drug companies (explains suppression of cheap, safe, effective early treatment so that there could be an Emergency Use Authorization >> $ billions to drug companies, who then spread the wealth to politicians, lobbyists, medical journals, supposedly public agencies, etc. Explains also why now the Fauci pivot to early treatment with patentable drugs from Merck and Pfizer now that the vaccination campaign is winding down/ failing to deliver on its promise; again, ignoring cheap generics). (2) consolidation of power to government, international corporations (crushing small business), quasi government organizations etc. //
Avatar
cafeblue32
3 hours ago edited
The real issue is that the left cannot stomach anyone who speaks up for the working class and they must be slapped down. Trump, DeSantis, Cruz, Rand Paul, and other conservatives and now sensible apolitical guys like Rowe.
They simply shut us down, ratcheted up the fear, and told us to trust the science.
This is what is amazing to watch. Science is a process and a method to arrive at a conclusion, and is not the conclusion itself. True science is never settled and is always met with skepticism. When they accuse you of being "anti-science" for not blindly accepting their premises, what they mean is that you are anti-political science.
There is no "the" science. There is just science. The Science™ is a term used by people demanding control using the Expertise Fallacy
A new study has found that individuals that have previously contracted COVID-19 show a more potent antibody response than those who were solely vaccinated for the respiratory virus.
Conducted by a research team at Rockefeller University in New York, the analysis found “that between a first (prime) and second (booster) shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, the memory B cells of infection-naïve individuals produced antibodies that evolved increased neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2,” but also that “no additional increase in the potency or breadth of this activity was observed thereafter.”
Meanwhile, researchers determined that not only do recovered COVID-19 patients possess neutralizing antibodies up to a year after infection, but that such infection simultaneously assists in offering protection against developing variants.
“Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection produces B-cell responses that continue to evolve for at least one year,” the study read. “During that time, memory B cells express increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations found in variants of concern.”
The analysis later goes on to conclude, “Memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination.”
Moreover, the results suggest that “boosting vaccinated individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines would produce a quantitative increase in plasma neutralizing activity but not the qualitative advantage against variants obtained by vaccinating convalescent individuals.”
I’m reminded of a different life, ages ago, when a statistics professor of mine made the statement “Statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do.” The CDC might not be lying, but its exaggeration of the data and its relevance to the US health situation certainly borders uncomfortably close on deceit. The picture the CDC seeks to paint is that its whiplash-inducing U-turn over the last week was the result of sound scientific evidence – but the evidence is neither extensive nor does it unanimously point towards what the CDC cherry-picked from it (without, of course, mentioning as caveats the reasons why those pieces of evidence might not apply to the current situation. The data, quite simply, does not support the bold assertions of the CDC. There are perhaps two findings that support an increased risk for young adults with fewer or no comorbidities from Delta, and some evidence suggesting that, and that Delta might be slightly more infectious.
What the data shows is that – contrary to the CDC’s clumsy messaging – vaccines work, and while this new increased risk to young adults should encourage vaccinations among that age group, there is no need to advocate for extreme mitigation based on overstated evidence and exaggerated risks.
A tremendous number of government and private policies affecting kids are based on one number: 335. That is how many children under 18 have died with a Covid diagnosis code in their record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the CDC, which has 21,000 employees, hasn’t researched each death to find out whether Covid caused it or if it involved a pre-existing medical condition.
Without these data, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided in May that the benefits of two-dose vaccination outweigh the risks for all kids 12 to 15. I’ve written hundreds of peer-reviewed medical studies, and I can think of no journal editor who would accept the claim that 335 deaths resulted from a virus without data to indicate if the virus was incidental or causal, and without an analysis of relevant risk factors such as obesity.
My research team at Johns Hopkins worked with the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data from April to August 2020. Our report found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia. If that trend holds, it has significant implications for healthy kids and whether they need two vaccine doses.
Rather than acknowledge science, Dr. Makary says the CDC continues to use 'flimsy evidence' to push the COVID vaccine upon children. //
A team of Johns Hopkins researchers recently reported that when studying a group of about 48,000 children, they found zero COVID deaths among healthy kids, but the Centers for Disease Control doesn’t care. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-side-effects-hospitalization-kids-11626706868]
Dr. Marty Makary is a medical expert and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Carey Business School. His research team “worked with the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data from April to August 2020.”
After studying comprehensive data on thousands of children, the team “found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia.” Rather than acknowledge this scientific reality, Makary says the CDC continues to use “flimsy evidence” to push the COVID vaccine upon children. //
Makary says “a tremendous number of government and private policies” regarding the vaccination of children are dependent upon one questionable data point. The CDC claims 335 children under the age of 18 have died with a COVID diagnosis in their record. However, Makary reports that, “the CDC, which has 21,000 employees, hasn’t researched each death to find out whether Covid caused it or if it involved a pre-existing medical condition.”
“Without these data, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided in May that the benefits of two-dose vaccination outweigh the risks for all kids 12 to 15,” Makary notes. “I’ve written hundreds of peer-reviewed medical studies, and I can think of no journal editor who would accept the claim that 335 deaths resulted from a virus without data to indicate if the virus was incidental or causal, and without an analysis of relevant risk factors such as obesity.” //
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky claims 200 child hospitalizations and one death can be prevented over four months if one million adolescents are vaccinated. Makary’s unconvinced. He says that, “[T]he agency’s Covid adolescent hospitalization report, like its death count, doesn’t distinguish on the website whether a child is hospitalized for Covid or with Covid.”
This is a problem, because there’s an obvious difference between these patient categories. Hospitals often test patients for COVID as a matter of routine, even if there’s nothing to suggest they’re infected with the virus. But by Walensky’s metrics, Makary says “An asymptomatic child who tests positive after being injured in a bicycle accident would be counted as a ‘Covid hospitalization.’”
A new report published by an American Medical Association journal revealed forcing children to wear face masks leads to adverse health effects. JAMA Pediatrics, a top-rated monthly journal published by the AMA, found wearing face masks increases the amount of carbon dioxide in inhaled air to unhealthy levels.
The study measured carbon dioxide levels in 45 children ages 6-17 while wearing masks. The normal content of carbon dioxide in the air is 400 parts per million (ppm), with anything above 2000 ppm considered unacceptable by the German Federal Environmental Office.
The JAMA report measured averages of 13,120 to 13,910 ppm of carbon dioxide in the inhaled air of children wearing masks, which is over six times higher than the unsafe threshold. The study further pointed out this measurement was after only three minutes of wearing a mask. Children forced to wear masks at school find themselves wearing masks for hours, five days a week.
When pressed on what level of transmission would require agency action, Powell said the agency has broad authority from Congress to prevent the interstate and international transmission of disease, and there’s a need for “enforceable public health measures.” Legally, the agency has the power to try to reduce transmission to zero, even if that may not be practical in the coronavirus’ immediate future, she said.
Percival, for the state of Florida, pounced on that statement.
If that’s true, “it’s unclear what they cannot do,” he said. “They can bar your doors. … That is an astronomical power.” //
“Where does this mask efficacy theory come from?” Merryday said. “We’ve had masking and social distancing for a long time and we had a pandemic in the middle of it.”
Powell responded that neither masks nor social distancing are cure-alls, but that they reduced the number of people who died. //
What’s never mentioned to the judge is what “evidence” is available that the CDC is going by. The reason they can’t provide that is 1) because their own studies show mask mandates are statistically useless (the judge points that out) and 2) because they have no affirmative evidence that masks reduce the spread of COVID-19. If they did, they’d be announcing it from the rooftops. That they aren’t is dispositive on its own. //
John R
3 hours ago
The Greek word from which we get the word "hypocrite" means "actor," "pretender," from the idea that stage actors wore masks. Such an appropriate way to sum up the last year. Wear a mask, pretend you care and are doing good. So easy.
Senator Rand Paul
@RandPaul
·
Jun 8, 2021
Great news! Cleveland clinic study of 52,238 employees shows unvaccinated people who have had COVID 19 have no difference in re-infection rate than people who had COVID 19 and who took the vaccine.
Senator Rand Paul
@RandPaul
This information frees up millions of doses of vaccines for those not yet infected in places with vaccine shortages like India.
No point vaccinating those who’ve had COVID-19: Findings of Cleveland Clinic study
news-medical.net
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Software is meant for professional use only and it is not recommended to be sold or provided to patients. If the practitioner does provide the software to a patient, it is the practitioners responsibility to show the patient how to use the software and prescribe the patient treatment protocols. PDI cannot provide medical advice. ///
Used by some specialists in treatment for POTS.
Hesperian Health Guides has been kind enough to remove copyright restrictions on the digital distribution of this version of the book. Thus, even if you don’t buy the paperback copy, or in addition to the paperback (“two is one and one is none”), you can still have a copy saved on a computer, laptop, tablet, etc. Here you go:
Download Where There Is No Doctor – PDF
https://www.shtfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Where-there-is-no-Doctor-book.pdf
Earlier this week, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis published findings from a study indicating that people who experienced mild cases of COVID-19 may, in fact, have a long-term — perhaps lifelong — antibody protection against re-infection.
“Democrats are now wearing Binkies to wean themselves off masks.” As The Bee reported:
With the CDC finally relaxing some guidelines around mask-wearing, Democrats are facing the dread of parting with something that has been giving them feelings of safety and security for over a year.
To help them cope with the loss, many Democrats are turning to baby pacifiers to help wean them off the masks.
“The binky is a perfect bridge toward a maskless future,” said one Democrat.
“He then quickly popped the rubber nipple back in his mouth for a few minutes before continuing. “I think it’s important to be open and vulnerable about the trauma we have all experienced in the last year.”
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Med Hypotheses. 2021 Jan; 146: 110411.
Published online 2020 Nov 22. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.110411
PMCID: PMC7680614
PMID: 33303303
Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis
Baruch Vainshelboim⁎
Abstract
Many countries across the globe utilized medical and non-medical facemasks as non-pharmaceutical intervention for reducing the transmission and infectivity of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Although, scientific evidence supporting facemasks’ efficacy is lacking, adverse physiological, psychological and health effects are established. Is has been hypothesized that facemasks have compromised safety and efficacy profile and should be avoided from use. The current article comprehensively summarizes scientific evidences with respect to wearing facemasks in the COVID-19 era, providing prosper information for public health and decisions making.
Remember when Dr. Fauci emphatically told Americans not to wear facemasks when the coronavirus pandemic hit our shores more than one year ago?
If you don’t recall, allow me to jog your memory. During a “60 Minutes” interview on March 8, 2020, Dr. Fauci said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
In the same interview, Fauci also said:
“While masks may block some droplets, they do not provide the level of protection people think they do. Wearing a mask may also have unintended consequences: People who wear masks tend to touch their face more often to adjust them, which can spread germs from their hands.”
Fauci was far from the only government official downplaying masks once upon a time.
On February 27, during a congressional hearing, Dr. Robert Redfield, then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responded, “No,” when asked if Americans should wear facemasks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Two days later, then-U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams tweeted, “They [facemasks] are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching coronavirus.”
That was then. This is now.
So, what happened? Somehow, almost every infectious disease expert did an abrupt 180 and got fully on board the facemask bandwagon. By late spring 2020, in the blink of an eye, wearing a facemask became a requirement to participate in society.
However, the question remains: Do facemasks actually prevent the spread of COVID-19?
According to a recent study by Stanford University, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis,” the answer remains, “No.” //
“Clinical scientific evidence challenges further the efficacy of facemasks to block human-to-human transmission or infectivity. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 246 participants [123 (50%) symptomatic)] who were allocated to either wearing or not wearing surgical facemask, assessing viruses transmission including coronavirus. The results of this study showed that among symptomatic individuals (those with fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose etc…) there was no difference between wearing and not wearing facemask for coronavirus droplets transmission of particles of >5 µm. Among asymptomatic individuals, there was no droplets or aerosols coronavirus detected from any participant with or without the mask, suggesting that asymptomatic individuals do not transmit or infect other people.”