patrick.net

The story is bizarre:

Everyone will remember that Corona astrologers and public health authorities, from Anthony Fauci to Christian Drosten, advised against masks early on. They pointed to longstanding public-health guidelines against community masking, which they claimed was powerless against viral infection. Then, beginning in April 2020, these very same people started singing a different tune. They had only played down the utility of masks to preserve their availability for healthcare personnel, they said. In fact everybody should wear masks; they would prevent infections, perhaps even make lockdowns unnecessary.

They proceeded to impose mask mandates upon the better part of the world. Lungs everywhere filled with new microplastics, oceans accumulated a new kind of trash, all of it to no effect whatever. Older public health doctrine against masking, it turns out, was totally right. Mandates plainly have no effect on infection curves. This is because SARS-2 is primarily transmitted by aerosols; it works like a gas that fills indoor spaces. Only N95 or FFP2 respirators have any chance of stopping the inhalation of these microscopic particles, but the discipline required to fit and seal a respirator properly is both inconsistent with the low quality of commonly available models, and incompatible with use outside of a controlled hospital environment. Thus, even respirators are totally worthless.

Background: Mandatory use of face covering masks (FCM) had been established for children aged six and above in Catalonia (Spain), as one of the non-pharmaceutical interventions aimed at mitigating SARS-CoV-2 transmission within schools. To date, the effectiveness of this mandate has not been well established. The quasi-experimental comparison between 5 year-old children, as a control group, and 6 year-old children, as an interventional group, provides us with the appropriate research conditions for addressing this issue.

Methods: We performed a retrospective population-based study among 599,314 children aged 3 to 11 years attending preschool (3-5 years, without FCM mandate) and primary education (6-11 years, with FCM mandate) with the aim of calculating the incidence of SARS-CoV-2, secondary attack rates (SAR) and the effective reproductive number (R*) for each grade during the first trimester of the 2021-2022 academic year, and analysing the differences between 5-year-old, without FCM, and 6 year-old children, with FCM.

Findings: SARS-CoV-2 incidence was significantly lower in preschool than in primary education, and an age-dependent trend was observed. Children aged 3 and 4 showed lower outcomes for all the analysed epidemiological variables, while children aged 11 had the higher values. Six-year-old children showed higher incidence than 5 year-olds (3•54% vs 3•1%; OR: 1•15 [95%CI: 1•08-1•22]) and slightly lower but not statistically significant SAR and R*: SAR were 4•36% in 6 year-old children, and 4•59% in 5 year-old (IRR: 0•96 [95%CI: 0•82-1•11]); and R* was 0•9 and 0•93 (OR: 0•96 [95%CI: 0•87-1•09]), respectively.

Interpretation: FCM mandates in schools were not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 incidence or transmission, suggesting that this intervention was not effective. Instead, age-dependency was the most important factor in explaining the transmission risk for children attending school.

The White House just announced that the mask mandate is to be continued on planes and public transport because (pick one)
A) it is necessary to slow the spread and stop disease
or
B) It is necessary to satisfy Congress (and the American public) that the emergency powers should remain in place due to ongoing risk to public health posed by the coronavirus - as shown by the need for the public to continue to wear masks.

Don't be fooled.
Next up -- emergency powers end June 1, 2022 - unless Biden can show due cause to continue them. If we all wear masks on planes, there must be an emergency, right?

After a Federal judge in Florida nullified the mandate from the CDC (which the TSA and other entities relied on to issue their mandates) —> it looks like MASKS ARE COMING OFF IN THE AIR!

Those of you who have had a chance to travel during the pandemic know how awful the experience is. In the last hour:

A TSA spokesperson has said: "TSA (Transportation Security Administration) will not enforce its Security Directives and Emergency Amendment requiring mask use on public transportation and transportation hubs at this time…”

U.S. Stops Mask Requirement on Planes After Judge’s Ruling
Court in Florida deals blow to Biden administration’s efforts
CDC says it won’t enforce order for masks on public transport ...

U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa, Florida, vacated the mask requirement nationwide Monday and directed the CDC to reverse the policy put in place in February 2021. The ruling was handed down in a lawsuit filed last year by the Health Freedom Defense Fund, a nonprofit group that says it focuses on “bodily autonomy” as a human right.

Health Freedom Defense Fund, the lead plaintiff in the case that resulted in the lifting of the federal Travel Mask Mandate issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement that it would appeal:

The Justice Department issued a statement in response to the ruling stating that it will appeal if CDC determines that the mask order “remains necessary for the public’s health[.]”

DoJ’s statement is perplexing to say the least and sounds like it comes from health policy advocates not government lawyers. The ruling by the US District Court ruling is a matter of law, not CDC preference or an assessment of “current health conditions.”

If there is in fact a public health emergency with clear and irrefutable science supporting CDC’s mask mandate, does it not warrant urgent action? Why would DoJ and CDC not immediately appeal?

HFDF is left with no option but to conclude that the Mask Mandate is really a political matter and not at all about urgent public health issues or the demands of sound science. While DoJ and CDC play politics with Americans’ health and freedoms, HFDF trusts individual Americans to make their own health decisions.

HFDF is confident that Americans possess ample common sense and education to understand that there are real questions about mask efficacy and risk and that CDC’s policy reflects neither.

What is clear is that Americans have already cast their votes about continued masking as evidenced by the multitude of videos and photos taken by passengers on airplanes showing the smiling faces of the vast majority of passengers responding to the overturning of the mask mandate with cheers as they happily exercise their freedom to remove their masks.

HFDF is confident Judge Mizelle’s ruling will stand.

Finally a judge comes in and throws out the mandate. Many people are upset with the judge. But the judge didn't fail you. The CDC failed you. It never ran a trial. It never generated knowledge. It kept us in the dark. It should be no surprise that it lost it's power and legitimacy. It proved it does not deserve the power it was was entrusted by the people. It failed to use science to reduce uncertainty. We should be ashamed of the organization. I certainly am.

Reuters Article, Breathtakingly, Asks You To Pity Mask Sellers, Facing Hard Times After Mask Mandate Struck Down On Flights
Reuters, Like virtually all "legacy" media, is funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

One nation under the CDC
Biden’s fight to save his mask mandate is all about power

April 21, 2022




CDC director Rochelle Walensky removes her face mask in order to spread her droplets to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee

For a brief moment, America was the cheering mission control room in every action movie. You know the one: the flight controllers stand there nervously, waiting to hear from the wayward rocket. Then, suddenly, the radio crackles: “Houston,” says a voice, “this is Gemini One…we did it. A federal judge in Florida just struck down the mask mandate.”

And everyone goes wild.

From out of claustrophobic plane cabins and sterile airports this week came unlikely scenes of jubilation as passengers tore off their masks and breathed freely once again. Public transportation had become a kind of last holdout of the Karens; you could go to a jam-packed music festival mask-free but forget to re-cover your mouth while chewing your Amtrak-issued cheesesteak and you were liable to get chucked off of a moving train. Now, no more. Thanks to Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who voided the CDC’s mask requirement on mass transit, travelers can rip off their suffocating, reeking facial prophylactics for good.

Mizelle handed down her ruling on Monday, and instantly the Biden administration was put in a tough spot. As Politico summed it up on Tuesday, “The White House is still figuring out what to do next, weighing two very big factors: credibility and politics.” ...

Call it the politician’s dilemma: cheap political advantage versus protecting bureaucrats. Ultimately, Biden decided to punt to the CDC, which was as good as heading to court, since no government department ever willingly gives up its own power. Sure enough, the agency chose to appeal. ...

The funniest part about all this is the stated rationale behind it. “The CDC’s credibility,” Democrats solemnly warn, “is on the line.” But then since when has the CDC had any credibility left to lose? This is the same medical bureaucracy that told Americans for months to socially distance only to suddenly discover an exemption for BLM rioters. It’s the same bureaucracy that recommended cloth masks only to announce back in January that they weren’t very effective. It’s the same bureaucracy that said those who are vaccinated don’t need to wear masks only to discover that they do.

Even CNN’s Brian Stelter has said the agency is “a punchline,” and Brian Stelter travels with his own laugh track. I understand this is a novel coronavirus and experts are still scrambling to figure it out. But two years on, it’s hard to escape the impression that the CDC makes decisions chiefly by dropping watermelons off of a building onto a chalk-drawn target.

Note well what Judge Mizelle said in her ruling. She didn’t strike down mask mandates as unconstitutional. She didn’t gut the CDC. She didn’t find that masks were a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment (though some of us, the weary and glasses-befogged, wish she had). All she did was to notice that the CDC had claimed enormous emergency powers while failing to go through proper regulatory channels. The agency can now use those channels if it wishes. It can also call upon the powers of an ancient and mist-shrouded branch of government known as “Congress,” which can enact mask mandates on trains, planes, double-masted schooners, whatever it wants.

The problem is that the Biden administration knows even a friendly Congress isn’t going to do that in an election year. And that’s the cream in the coffee: it is the public, not Judge Mizelle, that has kneecapped the CDC. They aren’t listening to the agency and haven’t been for some time. Yet the Democrats also need the CDC right now more than ever, at least as a matter of principle. With Republicans likely to take control of the House and Senate and with GOP-appointed judges dominating the judiciary, the left is increasingly dependent on the unelected bureaucracy to advance its agenda.

Hence why Biden must now fight to preserve the CDC’s absolute supremacy. No word yet on which Federalist paper makes clear that Dr. Rochelle Walensky gets to run everything. But at least now they can see our faces as we glower in disapproval.

To propose that any government action be immune to judicial oversight – that is, immune to oversight by the formal guardians of the law – is to propose that the officials who perform that action are above the law. As Reason’sEric Boehm wrote in reaction to this authoritarian outburst by Fauci, “This is either a complete misunderstanding of the American system’s basic functions or an expression of disdain toward the rule of law.”

Arnie1974
@Arnie1974
·
Apr 24
Fauci Above the Law: Dr. Death Sets Up Defense Against Being Prosecuted

Dr. Robert Malone: "Tony is finally revealing he has gone full out with the case that the public health system is above the law. That's what he's saying. And I wonder whether this is a foreshadowing of his defense in the event that... Ron Johnson finds himself head of the Subcommittee on investigation because Tony Fauci has to be held accountable, and he's already kind of gaming the system by saying, 'Hey, I'm above the law.' That is quite literally what he is saying. He is saying not only is he above the law, so is the CDC and the entire HHS and public health infrastructure in the United States. This cannot be allowed to stand."

Mask Study Finds No Impact on Covid Infections From Mask-Wearing and an INCREASE in Deaths

on thursday afternoon, a mandate to bring back masks and mandatory hand sanitizing in all public spaces, indoor and out, emerged PR health secretary carlos lopez to whom authority to set covid regulations and intrude upon everyone’s lives and livelihoods has been delegated by the governor. ...

“turned the hornet’s nest upside down” is an apt choice of phrase.

from what i saw, it pretty much looked like this:

While no cause-effect conclusions could be inferred from this observational analysis, the lack of negative correlations between mask usage and COVID-19 cases and deaths suggest that the widespread use of masks at a time when an effective intervention was most needed, i.e., during the strong 2020-2021 autumn-winter peak, was not able to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Moreover, the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences.