The Great Mask Debate

The great mask debate, who would have thought back when 2020 started that this is what everybody would be talking about. Have you seen the social media is have you yelled at someone for wearing a mask for not wearing a mask stuff is crazy right now. And I wanted to take the opportunity to dive into this in striving for a balanced way. And I don't really care about masks that much. That will explain a bit more on that when I'm trying to do more. So is understand how people come to believe something become convinced of something oftentimes off of so little evidence, one way or the other way, what allows a person to be absolutely certain about? So I am going to do my best to present both sides in this. I do have my leanings. I do think the evidence points one direction, more so than the other.

However, I am open to more information and it's interesting as I've dug into this topic, as I began writing on weirder more arcane subjects it's interesting because it's forced me one to recognize like where there actually is some sort of evidence, whether it's circumstantial or otherwise versus where it's just something that is people are saying, and it's not being spread in addition that have to work with my own biases how I may quickly launch into a position and not necessarily recognize the other side. So I'm working with these things in order to better understand, because at the foundation of our health or health sovereignty, we have to be able to make good sense of what is going on in order to be able to make good decisions. And as we've talked about in past episodes, there is this dominant worldview that has many, many things wrong too often.

People just default into trusting the experts, right? And because it's a system that can be gained experts will use that to people's detriment. I think we can all agree that that happens. So let's talk about masks at its very base. This should be a scientific, there should be an answer to it based in science, but like all subjects, there is actually science on both sides. It's, it's really funny. One of the things people jump to right away is saying the science is settled or it's it is science or just thinking the other side has no rationale for their opinion, for their decision. And this happens because of, I guess, polarization and echo chamber only seen one side of the argument. And if you only understand one side of the argument, you actually don't really understand even that side because it's only when we make it two dimensional or three dimensional.

So many things are polarizing to just one side or the other. When oftentimes there is third, fourth, fifth positions we can take. If you don't have these other perspectives, then you really don't truly even know that one. And I know we're all busy. If we can't dive into all the science around every single subject that comes up to us and most people never read a single scientific paper. So they must rely on these other things. But as in all things in the masturbate, there is science on both sides. So one of the things that I've noticed is that our CDC here in the U S a the world health organization, they did not recommend masks up until a certain point past the beginning of the pandemic. Why is it? They did not recommend mass when they do now. I believe the CDC, the CDC was either April or may, then the who wasn't till I think early June when they officially switched their position.
If these are scientific organizations, why did they have this opinion to begin with? Was it based on science? And the only valid reason why they started shift is because there is new emerging, scientific evidence, right? That's only valid reason. It shouldn't be done for politics. It shouldn't be done for any other reason, besides new science coming to light. But the previous position of these organizations is that mass do not work there's papers on both of their websites that say clearly masks, according to random controlled trials, do not work. In addition, they do say there is a plausible mechanism by which masks could work. So it's, it's interesting that the data does not back up them working yet. There's this way by which, I mean, logically it does make sense. Some sort of mask will block stuff from coming out of your nose, your mouth, whether you're coughing, sneezing, just talking, breathing, it's going to block some stuff.

We'll get into the deeper details of that in here. It's going to block some stuff. And if there's less of that stuff, getting out then less spread of the virus. So it's definitely logically plausible that this works, but once again, random control trials, these tend to be kind of the gold standard of scientific evidence. Can't really do a placebo controlled style with a mask. I don't know how you would do that. Maybe you have some sort of holes in masks and not other ones. I'm not sure. So these aren't placebo controlled, but they were randomized controlled trials and part number of them, the papers I read, I didn't actually go into the detail of the science because I'm also busy and I don't want care to go that deep at this point anyway, but one of them, the, in the hu paper looked at 10 randomized controlled trials, and then the CDC paper had a total of 14.

So it was a bit of a meta analysis looking at the existence of data from these other sources. And I'm sure there's overlap between those two in which trials they were looking at. So we do have randomized controlled trials. Then we do have a plausible mechanism. Now, most of the data that people is looking at, if they actually point to some science, it's funny. I asked for on Facebook people to show me the science that shows that it works, and there was not a single link to a scientific paper in there. I thought that was pretty interesting because I requested that specifically, there was rationalizations and thoughts in some people to follow in different things like this, but no one actually pointed to a scientific paper. Very interesting, but there is science saying this works, and this is mostly epidemiological. This is looking at population studies.
This is looking at Hey, certain countries have far less cases, and these may be masked wearing countries such as Korea, Japan, so that in comparison to non mass Marion countries, such as the U S where people think it is a, it is against the right to be forced to wear a mask. And it's not part of our culture. We of course have the most cases here now. So this is interesting, and this is good data. But once again, this is not. If we look at a hierarchy of scientific data, a randomized controlled trial is going to tell you more than the epidemiological evidence. That's my understanding of it because that's going to show correlation, not causation, but a randomized controlled trial should show causation. Now, another question is this, those randomized controlled trials, we're looking mostly at the influenza virus, maybe some other viruses as well.

Is there some sort of difference between the coronavirus Corona viruses? Because it's not just this new one, but the new one versus old ones, influenza and whatnot, from what I could gather, say, micron size. So same size particles, so that shouldn't have a difference in the mass. There there's talk of these viruses, staying airborne and getting on surfaces, but no way it's not surfaces. So there's a lot of confusion about those topics, but there shouldn't be any real reason that these are working differently in the actual mechanisms of them. Because if virus particles are virus protocols, now, of course there's asymptomatic carriers and transmitters we'll touch on that a little bit more and then long incubation time. So that is a factor that could be looked at in here.

So a couple, it's interesting because people are convinced because it is hard to read a scientific study. I, I get it. Most people do not do that. Even looking at an abstract abstracts can be misleading or headlines of scientific papers. Sometimes. Oftentimes, unless you are a scientist work at a school, you don't have access to papers though, here in the Corona virus, anything on that topic tends to be open and available. So memes are being spread and I've seen some interesting ones as ones that look convincing on both sides of the argument. One of the ones showing the, the mechanism by which it worked. I thought it was good. It is in analogy, pissing your pants. If you have a person that is not wearing pants and you're not wearing pants, they can piss on you quite easily, even accidentally, right? If they're wearing, if you're wearing pants, then you're not likely to get the urine on you.

Less likely. If they're wearing pants, then it's not going to get past them. We have to be careful when looking at analogies on whether they are actually appropriate or not. So it's a good concept, easy to grasp logical, but does it actually fit for masks? We'll get into more of that. Another one I saw was a Petri dish, a person coughed into a Petri dish without a mask that coughed into a Petri dish with a mask, the mask one had nothing growing there. The unmasked one had Duff growing there. However, this is bacteria. This is not viruses. Is there a difference in those a particle size, perhaps it's interesting to look at does that actually matter? Then I asked the person, what kind of masks were using this? Because not all masses are equal, something else we'll be talking about, but I thought that was an interesting one, going back to the CDC and the who they flip flop on this and Dr. Fauci, this is something I do have a problem with. He in the beginning said, mass, aren't going to do anything mass. Aren't going to do anything. This was the official statement from a person. Many people believe then he switches to everyone should be wearing masks. And he specifically said he was lying to people. He didn't use those words, but that is what he was saying. He was saying he lied to people because he wanted to preserve the masks for the healthcare workers. Now, a big part of the problems we're having in society is because people lack trust in their government. So if a government official is lying to people and that may be for a noble reason, but understand that erodes trust. So should we believe him now? Should we have believed him back then? Should we believe anything else he's saying? What about other officials who have similarly flip-flopped on this and other issues? It's not just about the mass because the masks, the way I see it, there's layers of what should be scientific questions. So we have the deadliness of this disease, which is less than 1% significantly less, depending on what you look at, how many people are possibly asymptomatic with this, a lot of shenanigans with the testing. So we don't really have a clear answer on that, but we do know it is less than 1%.

So if this thing is not major and sure it's worse than a flu but is it that much worse? Are we going to forever more wear masks in order to prevent flu? Cause well, we have a vaccine for the flu and yet it still claims tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives per year. So somewhere on the order of what is going on with this, despite that thing. So do we always wear mask forevermore? If what we're trying to do is prevent death and spreading of disease. And once again, we have incubation asymptomatic people and whatnot. So that might be a call against that. But if we are really trying to do it, then, is there any reason to only mandate masks for this one thing versus everything else? And as I said, a bunch of testing shenanigans going on, which further complicate this issue and make it is, is this even worth doing, it's not just mass for no mass, but looking at this other stuff and that this mass discussion is built on these previous discussions.

And I think that's one of the reason people are very polarized on this topic because you, the two main paradigm seem to be, you believe this thing is deadly. And we got to watch out, we all got to do our part to spread it, or that this thing is mostly overblown. You've in a hoax different layers or degrees of that stuff. And these two sides from that position, then that makes sense to take the appropriate masker nomax position compared to that. Now I've also seen people talk about that. If you wear a mask, there could be negatives and positives as this one negative, but many people just mistakenly believe a mask is going to protect them completely. Then they may not engage in other appropriate behaviors, such as washing their hands, or let's say supporting their immune system. Okay.

Then also people with their master fiddling with it, they're touching their face. They can be spreading germs viruses that they pick up in touching surfaces and whatnot. In addition to that, but on the flip side of that, people may have the mask on and that keeps them more conscious, more aware of what is going on. So we can see points on both sides of that.

Now, overall, I would say that masks are very low intervention thing. You know, it's not taking a pharmaceutical drug whether prophylactically or as treatment. So it's low risk in that way, but there are people talking about harms of this. I saw some people talking about and show a pulse oximeter. I've now seen that both ways. People saying like, Hey, here's my pulse oximeter. It drops my oxygen saturation. I can't breathe in this thing. And I've seen another person saying like, Oh, Nope, that doesn't happen to me. Is this happening to some people? I personally, I got a postdoc seminar. I figured I could use it for some other things, working with breathing exercises. So it wasn't just to run this experiment, but I got a postdoc seminar and I wore a mask in my house for half an hour, which was not fun, but I did it in order to conduct this little experiment for myself and my oxygen saturation was exactly the same.

Now that is true. But when I wear a mask, it does feel stuffy to me. I did notice a slightly lightheaded. I'm pretty sensitive to different things. So I didn't know this, these physically now could I do a whole bunch of stuff and just power through it? Absolutely. But I am noticing these feelings going on in my body. And here's another place where we see memes. One meme. I don't recall the person, but a runner that set some sort of record wearing a mask. That's impressive. If this person can do this, then you can wear a mask when you're outside or shopping or whatnot. Makes sense. I've also seen people talk about, some people have doing exercise or whatever else dropped dead, wearing a mask or fainted or various things like this. Could they both be true? People want to attach so quickly to one side or the other.

Is it possible that some people have difficulties breathing with a mask on mean people have asthma or all kinds of other things. So some people may be, this does change their oxygen saturation. So just because something is true for you or true for another person, we shouldn't automatically rush to judge that this is true for everyone. I've also seen people say, Hey, Oh, if you can't breathe in mass, well, you know, doctors are fainting and dropping dead in the operating rooms when they're doing lung surgeries. No, they're not for the most part, but I also saw some reports of some have fainted from doing exactly that. Is it possible that this is both ways can depend on a whole bunch of different factors? There is logic on both sides. There is science on both sides. There is a rational reason to believe either side. I think if people got this and this is true, not just a mass, but just about anything, then we might be able to have better discussions, which is important. One of the logical things against mass was, well, look at hospitals. Have we done? Who where's the mass do the S infectious patients to wear a mask? Or is it the doctors and the nurses, the hospital staff that wears masks makes sense to me. So much of this is that, Oh, mass aren't for me, it's for stopping, it's spread out to other people, but we have that hospital example, which is interesting to think about.

And once again, masks are not all mass. This is a generalization. Does a bandana equal a properly fitted in 95 mask? No, not even close. Now may have been Dan at do something. Yeah. Let's say you cough mucus out. Yeah. That's going to catch it obviously, but the, some of the viruses getting through it may block some, even the worst mass may block some of the virus, But yeah, it's not going to stop it all. That's for sure. We know that much. And some of the models that are made. So another layer of the science is that models are made based on whatever assumptions we've seen. Models be very wrong with the coronavirus. Thus far, I personally am looking at any model and distrusting it in the beginning just because this is an easy way from what I've seen that some sort of agenda can be pushed. I'm reminded of John Perkins, the economic Hitman. He made economic models in order to deliver in an agenda in order to get loans from the IMF for certain countries that would then bankrupt the countries, be able to control them in different ways. That was through the use of models. We've seen models of this virus, millions of people should be dead right now, according to the models. And we are not there. Not yet. At least Another logical thing is you have a bandana usher. It covers your thing, but if you cough or sneeze or breath, it just sprays out the sides because it's not properly fitted. So again, we can't make it.

Okay. All the assumptions based on every small thing. So now let me get into the most worrisome part of this masturbate. If it were just mass, I would not be covering it. I would not be concerned about it so much because as I said, low intervention, low risk. If we're just that, not a problem. However, I've seen this messaging before, this is very much the same sort of messaging that is used for vaccines. It's not about your protection. It's about other people's protection.

That is a large part of the vaccine debate right now. Oh no, there's, there's no debate. They're just crazy loony. Anti-Vaxxers polarizing the topic so that we can't actually have a adult discussion about this. It's a similar sort of messaging and Oh, the vaccine's not here yet. But if we get this messaging out, you got to do this for everyone. And we can put mandates, California has now mandated them all through the state. Cuomo and Biden are talking about if they were president or the president should be mandating it all across the nation. We may see that whether or not that actually happens in areas who's to say, but once again, mandates look at where this messaging is leading. And I'm really worried about that because ultimately health sovereignty, if you want to choose to get a vaccine, that's fine. I support your decision to do that.

I do not think you should be forced to take a vaccine. I do not think they should be slipping vaccines into people that have not do not have informed consent that do not know the risks and rewards of vaccines. This amounts to you, medical experimentation, this violates the first principle of the Nuremberg code. And we see examples of other countries, especially where informed consent was not a thing. And they talk about wanting to do away with informed consent. One good way to do that is just through social pressure, which we see playing out with the masks because here's some facts we don't yet have a COVID vaccine. Coronavirus vaccines have been torturously difficult. They've never cured the common cold because of this. And in fact, they cause a immune activation so that when you have exposure to a Corona virus after getting the vaccine, it makes you worse.

This has been the experience with the vaccines thus far, and yet they're moving forward on this. We are an operation warp speed for this working on getting the vaccine far, far faster by magnitudes than has ever occurred with the vaccine in existence. So even though they may go through these trials, we'll see if there's shenanigans involved in the the data with those trials as often happens in science, then it's still going to be an experiment on people because what's a phase three trial going to have a thousand people. Well, what if there's a one in 10,000 risk with this vaccine, once it's pushed out to these wide populations, generally with these trials, they get healthier volunteers. What if you have existing? Cormobidities what if you have existing problems that it's not being tested in this vaccine and now they're mandating it. That is why I am extremely worried about masks.

That is why I don't like what I'm seeing with the mask here. And personally, yes. If a store wants to ask me to wear a mask and I need to go in that store, that's fine. That is their location. They should be allowed to do that. Just like they have no shirt, no shoes, no surface. Right? am I gonna try to not wear shoes in there? No. And I'm in California. So things have been strong here. Like every store, every restaurant, every place I've been to is requiring these sorts of things, but requiring me to wear a mask outside. That's where I draw the line personally. I don't think it's good because fresh air is good for you. If the mask is blocking things from coming out, how much is it blocking things from coming in? I haven't actually looked at what is the micron size of say the essential oils put off in the forest or just the trees around that is that mass now blocking these from getting in.
And thus that is impacting my immune system. Similar sort of things we say, like we know vitamin D is very good for this thing, as it is good for health in general immunity in general hormone system, in general, bone health, all these different things. So it's closing the beaches. I can understand that prevent the spread, prevent people getting around, but are we actually doing more harm than good with many of our interventions? Is it possible that mass do have this very subtle thing? Once again, overall, I think it is an extremely low intervention thing and sick people should be doing it. I think that is definitely warranted, but healthy people. I've probably been under the influence of this virus. My wife had COVID toes, the only one and only symptom that she had a, it doesn't seem to be a bad otherwise. So she had it. I'm guessing I had exposure to it whether I develop antibodies and not haven't done the testing don't know. And of course, there's that whole debate where whether you can get infected or not, I've seen a little bit of science on both sides of that. There's science on both sides of asymptomatic
Carriers. Okay.

Although I think that leads one way that when the, who officials said that it was very rare, then walked back that statement. But if you actually look at what she was saying, so the data we have, these studies published and unpublished that really are looking at this doing contact tracing following people around found that asymptomatic transmission was quote unquote, very rare. However, there are models and I guess more epidemiological studies that are saying this, which aren't actually really looking at the minute details of the cases. So once again, which science do we believe? Well, I have my opinion that one too.

So this is the mask debate. If you want to jump in on this, got comments over at the blog. healthsovereign.com, find this episode put in your points there one side or the other, that's heavy civil debate about it. The, I do have a little bit of an issue just talking about these subjects. I want to be as much as possible accurate in my statements. And I don't think an audio podcast is the best way to cover science because it's tricky subject. And then to have to reference every single thing I said in the show notes for this show, I will have some of the studies I've come across regarding that, but I think this is a tougher way to do it. And written form does seem to be a better way to do. And that's why I liked doing a lot of writing as well, really easy to reference things to back up what you're saying, and I've done some of that around mass.

I just thought it'd be worth going into more detail here, but yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts, whether you think that mass should be mandated or not, whether you are personally format or not, what are your favorite memes or favorite pieces of science that back up one way or another? I think this is an interesting thing to look at. What we see with the coronavirus is it's an acceleration of so many things. Mostly things that are going wrong in our society. It's just a match. That's lighting gasoline and all of that. This is just one of the many, many things going on. So if you want to join me in the comment section [email protected], let's keep this debate going or let's end it. Let's hopefully get to a clear resolution at the end. I'd love to do that with you.