A growing number of universities, businesses and hospitals in recent weeks have reinstituted mask mandates and social distancing requirements, and a new report warned that broader mandates may be coming this fall.
At the same time, the Biden administration is pushing for the public to get COVID-19 booster shots for the fall and winter seasons — even though President Joe Biden ended the COVID-19 public health and national emergencies in May, as did the World Health Organization (WHO), citing an overall low level of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.
Meanwhile, recently released documents from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reveal that public health officials privately questioned the effectiveness of masks and the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promoting their use.
While some experts have openly called for the widespread use of masks to return, experts who spoke with The Defender questioned the need for mandates and the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses.
“Masks are not effective against the spread of viruses like COVID-19,” said Brian Hooker, Ph.D., senior director of science and research for Children’s Health Defense (CHD). “The virus is much too small to be blocked by a cloth/paper mask and even N95 masks have very limited effectiveness in reducing transmission.”
Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and member of CHD’s scientific advisory committee, told The Defender that while medical professionals may “benefit from short periods” of mask-wearing before disposing of them, “Regular people who use these masks and are not trained in their use probably get no benefit and may well be at greater risk.”
Is threat of new mandates being used to push COVID boosters?
CBS News reported that several new COVID-19 variants have surfaced in recent weeks and are spreading across the U.S. These include the EG.5 variant, “estimated to be the ‘dominant’ strain in the U.S.,” FL.1.5.1 and a “highly mutated” strain, BA.2.86.
These strains have caught the attention of public health authorities and the WHO, which on Aug. 9 declared EG.5 (“Eris”) a “variant of interest,” even though the WHO acknowledged there’s no evidence the strain leads to more severe disease than its predecessors.
According to CNN, the CDC no longer reports aggregate COVID-19 case counts, but still urges people to “wear a mask with the best fit, protection, and comfort for you.”
Yet, CNN also reported there were “four new hospital admissions for every 100,000 people” in the U.S. for the week ending Aug. 12, “which is considered low.”
The CDC continues to recommend universal masking in areas where 20 or more people per 100,000 are hospitalized with COVID-19, and masking for “high-risk” individuals where between 10-19.9 people per 100,000 are hospitalized with COVID-19.
CNN cited a “growing number of hospitalizations” and increased virus levels in wastewater as “an early indication of a COVID spike.”
Universities, hospitals push mask mandates citing reports of ‘positive cases’
Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia, announced Sunday it is reinstating a mask mandate, social distancing and bans on large gatherings as a precaution and for a two-week period, citing “reports of positive cases among students at the Atlanta University Center” — but not the university’s main campus.
Rutgers University, which also requires indoor masking, announced it is maintaining its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for the new academic year, and that students granted a medical or religious exemption may still be barred from campus attendance.
Rutgers previously announced that, as of Aug. 15, it would begin disenrolling students who had not complied with its vaccine requirement. In June, a federal appeals court heard arguments in an ongoing lawsuit supported by CHD challenging Rutgers’ policy.
According to No College Mandates, 90 U.S. universities require COVID-19 vaccines.
In New York, several hospitals reinstated mask mandates, including Upstate University and Community General hospitals in Syracuse and Auburn Community Hospital.
In California, Kaiser Permanente on Tuesday announced the reinstatement of a mask mandate for its Santa Rosa facilities.
Also in California, Hollywood studio Lionsgate reinstated mask mandates on Monday, until further notice, for employees on the third and fifth floors of its five-story headquarters in Santa Monica, affecting nearly half the company’s employees. The policy change came in response to several positive COVID-19 cases among its employees.
According to Deadline.com, all Lionsgate employees are required to perform a daily self-screening before coming to the office and must stay home if they exhibit any symptoms or have traveled internationally in the last 10 days.
And in an Instagram post Tuesday, actor Jamie Lee Curtis posted a photo of herself wearing a cloth mask, accompanied by a message reading “COVID is on the rise. SO MANY friends now are really sick. BE MINDFUL. WEAR A MASK if required or even if you feel unwell and are out in public spaces,” and suggesting masking will “be back.”
Some medical experts also recently spoke in favor of masks. A Royal Society report published Thursday found “clear evidence … that stringent implementation of packages of NPIs [non-pharmaceutical interventions] was effective in some countries in reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”
NPIs include masks, social distancing, lockdowns and travel restrictions.
In an editorial published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a group of Washington doctors called for mask mandates to return to healthcare settings.
Cardiologist Dr. Jonathan Reiner told CNN members of “high-risk” groups should “take some precautions and wear a mask in crowds,” while Dr. Trish Greenhalgh, a primary healthcare expert at the University of Oxford, tweeted on Aug. 15 that “it looks like it’s once again time to MASK UP.”
[…]
Previous transportation mask mandate struck down, but decision vacated
A federal judge in Florida, in April 2022, struck down the Biden administration’s previous transportation mask mandate, following a lawsuit filed by the Health Freedom Defense Fund. CHD supported the suit.
The U.S. Department of Justice appealed the ruling in June 2022, but in June 2023, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals vacated the decision and dismissed the case as moot.
[…]
CHD Senior Counsel Ray Flores told The Defender that while the federal government traditionally exerts its authority only over federal employees, “the transportation case was different.”
[…]
Masks ‘do not prevent the spread of respiratory viruses’
Recently released documents show that some key public health experts expressed reservations about the effectiveness of masks.
A November 2021 letter obtained by The Functional Government Initiative following a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., MPH, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, argued the CDC was promoting flawed mask data and excluded data which did not fit its narrative.
Osterholm, along with seven colleagues who co-signed the letter, asked the CDC to reconsider its claims regarding the “efficacy of masks and face coverings for preventing transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” adding that “the information and recommendations as provided may actually put an individual at increased risk of becoming infected.”
A meta-analysis published in Cochrane in January found masks were largely ineffective in reducing the spread of COVID-19. Cochrane has been described as “the gold standard” and “major source of high-quality, reputable meta-analyses.”
The study was authored by Oxford University senior associate tutor in epidemiology Dr. Tom Jefferson and 11 other researchers, who identified “78 relevant studies” conducted “in low-, middle-, and high-income countries” during health emergencies, and assessed the effects of different types of masks, including surgical masks and N95/P2 respirators.
The researchers found surgical masks “may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness,” while N95/P2 respirators “probably [made] little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu … and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness … or respiratory illness.”
A 2022 study published in Cureus by Beny Spira, Ph.D., coordinator of the Bacterial Genetics Laboratory at Brazil’s University of São Paulo, analyzed mortality and morbidity rates in Europe during the winter of 2020-2021, finding that “countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage.”
Spira told The Defender “If you compare the Nordics with southern Europe … the difference in mask wearing was gigantic,” he said. Sweden, which did not mandate masks, had lower levels of excess deaths compared to countries with mask mandates.
Notably, in 2020, Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said, “We see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport,” adding there were “at least three heavyweight reports … which all state that the scientific evidence is weak.”
As of April 2022, Sweden had recorded fewer COVID-19-related deaths per million people than the U.S. — and 53 other countries. A Swedish government commission that investigated the country’s COVID-19 response found the no-lockdown strategy was “fundamentally correct,” and that, at most, masks should have been “recommended.”
Spira said masks “certainly will not help, because the best available studies … randomly controlled trials, have time after time shown that masks do not work. They do not prevent the spread of respiratory viruses.”
Spira has completed an updated study confirming his initial findings, but “most journals don’t accept this material,” he said.
Mask mandates pose ‘particular risk to children’
A September 2022 study published in Environmental Research concluded that “Wearing of [surgical masks] raises CO2 content in inhaled air quickly to a very high level in healthy children … that might be hazardous to children’s health.”
The study’s lead author, Harald Walach, Ph.D., founder of the Change Health Science Institute in Germany and professional research fellow at Kazimieras Simonavicius University in Lithuania, told The Defender “We have been highly critical of mask mandates, and our study vindicated our original skepticism.”
“Masks do not appear to have changed the infection dynamics,” Walach said. “A lot of the problems are really home-made, as the vaccination campaigns might have led both to the emergence of more dangerous strains of the virus and immunologically compromised individuals that are much more susceptible.”
“For instance, if one looks at deaths and mortality data during 2020, with no vaccines present, one sees that the mortality rates were much lower — at least in Germany,” Walach said. “After the vaccination campaign started, death tolls rose. At the very least, this shows that the vaccination campaign did not do what it was meant to do: to prevent excess mortality. It rather exacerbated mortality.”
Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus and senior research scientist in epidemiology (chronic diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Defender: “There is no evidence that wearing masks contributes appreciably to source control of respiratory virus infections. This has been shown in all of the studies of source control.”
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender that while the Cochrane analysis “found that masks are ineffective … 17 studies, including three large randomized trials, have demonstrated that viricidal nasal sprays and gargles (iodine, xylitol) are very effective in reducing the spread of the virus,” suggesting their use be encouraged.
For Dr. David Bell, a public health physician, biotech consultant and former director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund, mask mandates pose a particular risk to children.
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/politics-mask-mandates-return/
We have come to the point where those that request, we wear masks are warned once to step away then violence will be resorted too. I really don't care what these egg heads say but I've watched them change reports in the Lancet the day after being challenged by me in the September Newsletter. So, they care what I have to say. Well listen carefully then, you will now have to fight for every inch, and I assure you this will not be a defensive war like you got Putin waging in the Ukraine. You will be hunted in your lairs, if you know what I mean, you and your dime store gods. Are you up to it? As I told MI 5 and 6 and Gordon Duff after they burned down Robert David Steel if you are feeling froggish with me jump. they got me good, but the queen dropped dead 2 weeks later, Russia invaded the Ukraine and Gordon Duff got a permanently broken flipper...