The COVID Response. What We Got Wrong.

Part VI: The Masks

Photo of a WHO mission to China in 2020 

At the beginning of the COVID crisis, in the early months of 2020, there was almost uniform agreement among scientists that the virus was an airborne pathogen – i.e., that, among other ways, it could be spread in the air. Thus, if public health officials had told us back then to mask up, it would have made sense to me.

But that wasn’t what we heard from the CDC. Instead, they said there was “no need” for us to wear masks. Yet, as you can see from the photo above, frontline workers were wearing them.

Several months later, the CDC reversed their position and began recommending masks. And soon after that, they became mandatory.

Why was that?

We know now that the CDC was concerned that there could be a shortage of masks available for frontline workers if the general public was masking up. And since frontline workers had a much greater chance of becoming infected, and since their work was, as described, critical to the health of the larger community, they decided they could best avoid such a shortage by claiming that the public should not be wearing masks.

I get that. As a public health policy matter, agencies like the WHO and the CDC are charged with protecting the public’s welfare – not, as some might suppose, with providing the “science” and letting individuals decide how to respond. That being the case, I can understand why they may have come to the decision to tell frontline workers to do one thing, while telling the public to do something else. The citizenry is too unthinking to sort through complicated issues like public health to make sensible decisions on their own. If you want compliance, it’s much more effective to tell them what you want them to believe, tell it from a position of authority, and repeat it X number of times until most of them believe it with every fiber of their non-thinking brains.

(By the way, I share the view that the public is too unthinking to make smart decisions about complicated things. I also agree that if you want large-scale compliance with almost any issue, the best way to do it is to create an emotionally compelling narrative, coated with attractive little white lies (or big black lies). Rinse and repeat. The difference between me and the CDC is that I think it is immoral and maybe even unconstitutional (What do I know? Constitutional law is complicated!) for the government to do that. What democratic governments should do – i.e., are morally bound to do – is spell out the facts, as they are known honestly, and allow the public to make decisions with as little rhetorical bullshit as possible.)

And perhaps, had the CDC and the government continued to repeat the inconsistent recommendation that frontline workers should wear masks but the public should not, the public might have believed it.

But then, on April 3, 2020, the CDC changed its position. Masks, they said, should be worn by the public. Three months later, 31 states had turned that recommendation into a mandate. And then in January 2021, one of the very first things Biden did as president was mandate masks for federal workers, government officials, and all citizens using federal buildings or on federal property (including outdoor spaces!).

This cured the inconsistency problem. But by that time, the CDC and other public health agencies had done a good bit of work on the efficacy of wearing masks and they knew that the typical size of the airborne COVID particles was so small that only the N95 masks were dense enough to be worth recommending. (They are called N95s because they can block 95% of the virus particles.) They also knew that, of the several types of masks, cloth masks were the least efficacious. In some studies, they were shown to have efficacy rates below 20%. Overall (I’m saying this from scanning all the studies I could find), the average efficacy was around 50%.

So, why didn’t they (the CDC, other health agencies, and the government) come out and tell us that? Why did they recommend masks generally?

I can think of three reasons:

1. They may have believed that there weren’t sufficient N95 masks available to meet the surge in demand.
2. They may have felt that if they recommended N95 masks, the government would have to pay for them because they were so much more expensive than cloth masks, and that would make compliance an issue.
3. They didn’t want to come right out and admit that they were purposely misleading the public with their initial recommendation.

So, for more than two years, the CDC and our government (also WHO and most other governments) continued to promote the fake-science idea that cloth masks are effective.

And because that bit of misinformation was repeated ad nauseum, it worked. Most Americans came to believe that wearing a mask was not only a sign of intelligence, but also a sign of virtue. (You were protecting others.) And that not wearing a mask was a sign of ignorance and malfeasance. (Nancy Pelosi made an issue of this by fining Senate members that came to meetings maskless.)

Eventually, it became apparent that cloth masks didn’t work. People that wore them were getting COVID. And they were probably passing it on to others.

Aware that the truth was getting out, and worried about being exposed for their intentional misrepresentation of the facts, the CDC finally adjusted its position. In January of this year, its website was “updated,” acknowledging that cloth masks offer only limited protection. Of course, they didn’t come right out and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It was worded like this:

“Loosely woven cloth products provide the least protection, layered finely woven products offer more protection, well-fitting disposable surgical masks and KN95s offer even more protection, and well-fitting NIOSH-approved respirators (including N95s) offer the highest level of protection.”

The Bottom Line: Cloth masks were not effective against the original coronavirus, and they were even less effective against the highly contagious Omicron variant (which can be carried by much smaller droplets that can linger indoors for hours). Leana Wen, an emergency physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, put it this way: “Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations.”

The CDC should have done what Fauci kept insisting he was doing: reporting the latest studies and making recommendations that were based on those studies in a clear and transparent way. Instead, they began with what I’m sure they felt was a little white lie, but then were obliged to perpetuate that white lie for nearly three years.

And they did it while evidence was piling up that made their statements and pronouncements not just increasingly disingenuous, but also dangerous to the American public.

It would have been better for everyone if they had reported the “science” as it arrived and made transparent recommendations based on the latest data. Had they done it that way, they would have admitted that N95 and surgical masks were much safer than cloth masks. They would have said that if you could not get hold of or afford N95 masks to wear a combination of surgical and cloth masks. And they would have told us that social distancing was the best way to avoid contracting COVID and spreading it to others.

I don’t think all the misinformation about mask wearing did as much damage as, say, the stay-inside mandates. Not by a long shot. But it did damage to the credibility of the CDC and the government and the major media. The trust most of us had in these institutions is shaken. For some of us, it is gone.

The COVID Response. What We Got Wrong.

Part V: The Treatments 

Today, I’m going to take on yet another topic that was front page news for months… and then, simply disappeared.

Do you remember when, early in 2020, President Trump talked about certain medications that held out hope for treating COVID? Three of those he mentioned the most in tweets and White House briefings were ivermectin, remdesivir, and hydroxychloroquine.

The CDC and the mainstream press attacked him viscously for this. They accused him of witch-doctory. They said he was putting lives in danger by encouraging people to take them. Do you remember that?

There was a huge outcry, in particular, against hydroxychloroquine. That was the one that was going to kill people that took it. Do you remember? Well, Trump was merely reporting on early studies on these drugs. Since then, lots of new data has been collected. And though subsequent studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine is not useful in treating COVID, those early studies were showing positive results. Here’s one example from the NIH.

As for ivermectin and remdesivir – they are not miracle cures, but Trump never said they were. Recent findings are mixed, but some have shown them to be “somewhat” to “very” effective in mitigating the symptoms of COVID.

One major study, for example, found that a three-day course of remdesivir given to non-hospitalized patients who were at high risk for COVID-19 progression resulted in 87% lower risk of hospitalization or death than a placebo. And though the FDA keeps insisting that ivermectin doesn’t work against COVID, many of the studies they point to on their website show that it does. Click here.

We now know that none of these drugs are dangerous, if taken as prescribed. And some of them have become recommended treatments by respected medical establishments all over the world. So, where was the CDC and the mainstream media as these positive results started to come out?

When I continue with this series on fake COVID news, I’ll tell you why I think we were scared into an irrational and ultimately damaging response to the virus.

The COVID Response. What We Got Wrong.

Part IV: Shutting Down Outside Activities

Do you remember that, beginning in March of 2020, on the advice of the WHO and the CDC, the US began issuing mandatory stay-at-home orders? California was first, on March 19, and was soon followed by 42 states and territories.

We were all so terrified of COVID, and knew so little about it, that almost nobody objected.

And do you remember that, although we were allowed to go shopping for “essentials,” there was a total ban on outdoor activities, including concerts and sporting events?

I was a bit surprised by that. Being outdoors – even in a crowd – seemed safer than being in a small indoor space with people you didn’t really know.

But what seemed absolutely insane to me was when they closed down the beaches and parks. Being surrounded by people in an outdoor stadium felt like it had some level of risk. But being outside on a beach or in a park, where it was easy to distance yourself from others? What was the point in that?

There was no point because it never did make sense.

Yet, the mandates were issued and enforced without a shred of evidence that they worked. On the contrary, studies done soon after the outbreak – early in 2020 – showed that being outside greatly reduced the risk of infection. And by a very significant degree.

But those studies were ignored. They were ignored by the CDC. And they were ignored by the mainstream press. Instead, we were shown hypothetical, mathematical models of the virus spreading outdoors at alarming rates.

And then, just like the other falsehoods we were told to believe, the obviously idiotic lie about the danger of being in outdoor spaces was no longer front-page news.

Beaches and parks were gradually and quietly opened, though outdoor venues continued to be shut down in most places. That seemed somewhat sensible, despite the fact there had been evidence since the beginning that the risk of attending outdoor concerts and sporting events was actually quite low.

For example, a study of 64 college football games during the 2020 season involving 1,190 athletes found zero spread of COVID during game play based on three postgame PCR tests over the course of a week – likely because of the outdoor setting and short duration of close contact, researchers said. And another study published in Nature magazine in November of that same year showed that the vast majority of transmissions were happening indoors.

Those studies were conducted early in the pandemic. Why didn’t we hear about them then? And why did we continue to keep outdoor activities shut down for more than two years? (California, the first state to do it, was also the last one to open them up again in March of this year.)

Looking at the 2020-2021 mandates now, it’s obvious that they were not just unnecessarily severe, but also irrational.

And yet we accepted them.

But the truth will out, as the Bard said. And when the public began to be aware of the facts, what did the CDC and the government and the major media do? Did they correct the inaccuracies? Did they investigate how and from where the misinformation had come?

No. They simply stopped talking about it. And we stopped hearing about it.

If you check the CDC’s COVID guidelines now, you will find no mention of the danger of going to parks and beaches or attending outdoor events. Instead, you will find a recommendation to “spend time outside when possible, instead of inside,” advice they should have published two years ago. “Viral particles spread between people more readily indoors than outdoors,” they now say, “because the concentration of viral particles is often higher [indoors] than outdoors, where even a light wind can rapidly reduce concentration…. You are less likely to be infected with COVID-19 during outdoor activities because virus particles do not build up in the air outdoors as much as they do indoors.”

The COVID Response. What We Got Wrong.

Part III: The Pandemic of the Unvaccinated 

Remember the “pandemic of the unvaccinated”?

That was the phrase Biden used on Sept. 9 of last year in a speech at the White House. He said: “This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And it’s caused by the fact that… 80 million Americans have failed to get the shot.”

It was a phrase he got from CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who, two months earlier, said: “We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage because unvaccinated people are at risk. Communities that are fully vaccinated are generally faring well.” She also claimed that 97% of the hospitalized COVID patients were unvaccinated.

That became the rallying charge for the administration and the major media. The implication was clear. Vaccination skeptics were not just endangering their own lives but endangering the lives of everyone they came in contact with.

And that had a logic to it. When the vaccines were rolled out, we were told that they would be highly effective in protecting us from contracting the virus. And if we couldn’t contract it, we couldn’t spread it. So, we all had a moral obligation to be vaccinated. Right? Case closed.

But that 97% figure never felt right to me. For one thing, if the vaccines worked as promised, shouldn’t it be 100%? And even allowing for 3% “due to error,” that number seemed too low to me. I knew several people that had been vaccinated and were infected and heard about several more.

Could it have been misinformation? Disinformation? Unresearched speculation? But if so, why? We will probably never have a convincing answer to that question. But one thing we do know is that the vaccines failed to protect vaccinated individuals from contracting COVID, and it did not prevent them from spreading it. If you got your information from the mainstream media back then, this would have been a complete shock to you. But, in fact, this was known by anyone that was actually “following the science.”

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President Cynthia Cox, who conducted an analysis of the numbers, told The Washington Post a few weeks ago. The analysis showed that people who had been vaccinated or boosted made up 58% of COVID deaths in August. And the rate has been on the rise. 23% of deaths were among vaccinated people in September 2021, and the vaccinated made up 42% of deaths in January and February of this year.

So, what’s next?

The latest info begs the question: If the vaccines are not effective in protecting us from catching COVID and protecting us from spreading it, are they any good at all?

And the answer to that, the new argument goes, is that vaccines won’t prevent you from getting the virus – but if you get it, the symptoms will be much less severe.

Is that true? I hope so. But I did a preliminary look at the data supporting this claim, and I have some questions. I’ll get to that in a future issue.

From Bill Bonner: Who’s More Anti-Democratic? The Red or the Blue? 

Bill Bonner has an evenhanded view of US politics. As he explains in this essay, he believes both parties are equally culpable in running a rigged system that is steadily destroying the economy.

About Capital Punishment… 

I’ve always been opposed to capital punishment. My logic was simple. If I believed murder was evil, how could I justify punishing murderers by murdering them?

Also, there was the question of wrongful conviction. Since DNA became a reliable forensic tool, there have been reports of hundreds of people sentenced to death that were later exonerated.

But I have modified my view on this in recent years. I’ve been reading about (and watching documentaries on the subject of) serial killers and mass murderers. And if there is one thing I’ve concluded about them, it’s that, however intelligent or rational they seem, at some level they are all insane. (How can they not be?)

Of course, this begs the question: If they are insane, isn’t it doubly wrong to convict them?

No. I don’t think sanity should be considered in cases of mass and serial murders. The level of damage these people do – not just to their victims, but to the families and friends of their victims – needs to be recognized and addressed. Everyone today is concerned with social justice. If social justice has any meaning at all, it means that sometimes we must punish people for the damage they do to society.

In Florida, thanks to the “work” of his defense team, the monster that killed all those people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was given life in prison, instead of the death penalty. I’ve followed the trail, and I’ve listened to the statements of the family members of those killed by this guy, and that research left me feeling that this guy should be put to death.

If you have never watched any of the pre-sentencing presentations by family members, this one, coming from the last of the fathers to speak, should give you an idea of why I feel as I do. Click here. 

“While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you buy your own form of misery.” – Groucho Marx

Why This Young Black Woman Stopped Hating the Police 

After the Freddie Gray killing in 2015, there was a great deal of anti-police sentiment in communities all over America. One of the accusations heard repeatedly was that the police were “systemically racist.” And the most-often cited evidence for it was the fact that Blacks die from police shootings at a disproportionately higher rate than their percentage of the population (12% or 13%). In an essay I posted at the time, I pointed out that there was a problem with this arithmetic. A denominator problem, I called it. It’s the same problem that was responsible for the miscalculation of the mortality rate of COVID when that first broke.

When it comes to getting arrested, studies show that being a young Black male puts one at a greater risk of harassment and intimidation than being a Black female or a white man or woman. But those same studies show that it is not true of one’s chances of being shot and killed by police. Those chances are smaller.

I was surprised to learn this when I read about it for the first time. I was also surprised to learn that the person that headed up the largest study of this kind was a Black sociologist from Harvard. In this clip, a young Black woman talks about making the same discovery.

The Dumbbell Prize for Economics: Were They Serious? 

I thought it was a joke. I thought my colleague was kidding me. I opened the morning newspaper. It was true!

Ben Bernanke had won the Nobel Prize for Economics!

This was the same guy that almost single-handedly initiated the ridiculously stupid government bailout of Wall Street after the 2008 stock market meltdown. This was the same guy that got on national TV on a Friday and said that unless Congress passed the bailout bill immediately, America would likely not have an economy left by Monday.

He was also the guy who, prior to that, had been saying the reported problems with sub-prime lending were nothing to worry about. He was the person that came up with the shibboleth of Quantitative Easing. And he was a mentor for Janet Yellen and James Powell who continued with the same foolish policies.

And he was the man who had the unmitigated gall to write and publish a book about his recklessness called The Courage to Act.

For some conversations about all of this, click here and here and here.