Panic porn has taken over even the medical community that should know better. Dr. Ted Noel is an anesthesiologist who has rounded up plenty of data and studies about whether these annoying face masks are doing any good. He concludes his American Thinker piece:
Of key interest, in one CDC
study, 85% of COVID victims report nearly always wearing face masks. One study claiming benefits had
to be withdrawn after its conclusions were contradicted by continuing
experience. Others have major
confounding variables. Mask advocates ignore significant downsides such
as reduced personal
performance, severe
psychosocial consequences, and difficulty
breathing. And the Danish Mask Study,
a “gold standard” randomized, controlled study, showed no benefit to mask
wearing in the general population.
Difficulty breathing is something I
didn’t quite appreciate during the thirty-six years I wore a mask on a daily
basis in the operating room. After all, masks were a part of life. But I always
dropped my mask the moment I left the OR, and almost every other OR staff
member did the same. It’s really simple. Masks increase your work of breathing.
If you’re wearing a properly fitted N-95, all your air has to come in and out
through that filter material. That’s work. And it makes you short of breath.
Do a simple experiment. Fold a bath
towel a couple of times and try to breathe through it. Make sure you aren’t
breathing around it. The filtration from the fabric creates resistance to air
flow. Now do it for several minutes. That’s what breathing through an effective
mask feels like. You’ll get short of breath, and as soon as you can, you’ll
take it off. What you felt was increased work of breathing. And that’s why the
movies often show someone being strangled with a pillow.
Most Americans intuitively
recognize that masks don’t reduce infections. But they go along with the virtue
signaling to be good citizens. And, to make their own life a bit better, they
use a single thickness gaiter over their mouth and nose like a train robber. Or
they use a face shield that does nothing at all other than “covering” their
mouth and nose without restricting air flow. Often you see them with a mask
over their mouth but not their nose. And of course, President Biden doesn’t
wear one in the Oval Office.
Returning to Einstein, since a
single mask doesn’t help in the general populace, why should anyone think that
double masking might help? Or quadruple, as Dr. Segal suggests. Such
suggestions fall under the logical designation of “magical thinking.” Or as
Albert Einstein is reputed to have said, insanity.
The full article is here. I wear my mask around my chin as a small protest. I’ve been asked to wear it over nose and mouth only once – at a medical clinic.
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