BEND, Oregon, April 30, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has walked back its mask mandate for outdoor sports competitions after a high school track athlete, forced to wear a mask while running, collapsed just before crossing the finish line.
800 meter runner Maggie Williams, a student at Summit High School, collapsed just as she was approaching the finish line, crashing to the ground as she struggled to breathe through the cloth mask she was obliged to wear per state rules at the time.
Despite competing outdoors in the fresh air and engaging in strenuous activity, the OHA required athletes to wear face coverings. Williams explained she “was pushing so hard and everything went blurry and I just fell,” according to a Breitbart report. “But luckily I fell at the right spot and crossed the line with my head [when the time is taken],” she added, maintaining a sense of humor after the incident.
Williams’ coach, Dave Turnbull, expressed deep concerns with masking athletes at the time of Williams’ fall, which he said resulted from “complete oxygen debt.”
“This is what I am worried about, and I said this at the beginning of the season. You get a kid running the 800 with a mask on, it is actually dangerous. They don’t get the oxygen that they need. This rule needs to change.”
Turnbull subsequently petitioned the OHA to change their ruling and safeguard the health of his athletes, sending the department images of Williams “hitting the ground” because of the mask.
“I warned them of this in a meeting over a month ago. Respiration requirements in events from 400 [meters] to 3K are far too high for masks,” Turnbull explained. “Moreover, carbon dioxide isn’t fully removed from the mask upon inhalation. The very reason we wear the masks to protect others is now a liability for the athlete when they increase respiration to the levels these athletes need.”
Turnbull questioned the sources used by the OHA to construct their guidance, asking the department to “[l]ook at the science of COVID transmission outside. It has been non-existent. Why are track athletes still required to run in a mask? What metrics are you following?”
About a week later, the OHA announced that new guidelines “will allow people to take off face coverings when competing in non-contact sports outdoors and maintaining at least 6 feet of distance from others and the other virus protective protocols.” They added that masks will still be required during training and before and after competitions.
A report entitled “Mask Mandates Do Not Save Lives,” published by American Thinker in March, draws attention to the statistics of deaths reportedly caused by COVID-19 — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) data — and compares the deaths in U.S. states which have mask mandates with those that did not impose them.
Representing the figures as COVID-19 deaths per 10,000 people in each state, the average deaths for states with a mask mandate (40 states in total) was 13 deaths per 10,000 population. The states with no mask mandate (the remaining 10 states) averaged 12.6 deaths per 10,000 population. While people in the latter category were not required to don face coverings, they were free to do so.
Already, mask mandates can be seen to not only not provide any extra protection but, per the CDC’s own data, there is reason to believe that masks may pose their own health risk.
Compounding this concern are the data from states which imposed face mask rules earliest, under the impression that “a greater length of time under the rule of mask has been an effective way of assuring low death rates.”
PETITION UPDATE (8/27/2020)
Thank you for continuing to SIGN and SHARE this petition, which asks policymakers at all levels of government to reverse mandatory mask orders within their borders.
Facebook has restored the share link for this petition, saying that the decision to block it was a 'mistake...'
Please share with your Facebook friends, but we should all take heed of this warning: when an organization or individuals have to beg, plead and cajole just to express objective truths, it may be time to start looking for other social networking platforms.
Facebook needs to treat its users with respect, no matter their political persuasion. Moreover, Facebook needs to treat objective reality and facts with more respect.
One-size-fits-all oppressive government mask mandates must stop!
Healthy adults and children should not be forced - by the state - to wear masks when the risk of infection is low and the benefit of wearing a mask is highly questionable.
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PETITION UPDATE (8/25/2020)
Facebook is actively censoring this petition, saying that some people find it 'abusive.'
How anyone could find alternate facts about oppressive mask mandates 'abusive' is incredible...that is, impossible to believe.
This is exactly the kind of censorship which Big Tech is getting a bad reputation for.
The fact that Facebook calls differing opinion and objective reality "abusive" says a lot about Facebook and their agenda to silence reason and logic, not just conservatives and Christians.
But, people are more intelligent than Facebook give them credit for.
And, the more this continues, the more reasonable people will look alternate platforms to share their thoughts and connect with their friends and family. The more that happens, the less revenue Facebook will generate.
All of us have a decision to make, and the time is coming where we might have to tell our Facebook friends that we are moving to another platform.
We are encouraging people to continue SIGNING this petition and SHARING it via other platforms such as Parler and Gab, and to share the link below with your family and friends on Whatsapp, Telegram, Threema and Signal.
Thank you!
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One-size-fits-all oppressive government mask mandates must stop!
Healthy adults and children should not be forced - by the state - to wear masks when the risk of infection is low and the benefit of wearing a mask is highly questionable.
Please SIGN this petition which asks policymakers at all levels of government to reverse mandatory mask mandates within their borders.
Public health policies should be based on science and logic, not on the type of political posturing and virtue-signaling which led Joe Biden to recently call for a national mask mandate.
And, public health policies certainly shouldn't lead to a situation where more people could become sick.
But, that is exactly what these mandatory mask mandates are doing.
Here are four inconvenient facts about masks:
1) Masks** are largely ineffective at stopping the transmission of viruses.
The vast majority of masks worn by the public are made from material which cannot filter-out viruses because virus particles are too small to catch or obstruct. Wearing cloth masks to stop a virus is like putting a bee in a bird cage to keep it from flying away.
Wearing a mask for long periods of time ensures that the wearer has a warm and moist receptacle around his or her mouth, on which viruses and bacteria can land and accumulate.
Thus, masks are actually likely to have little effect in stopping the spread of COVID-19 acting as a barrier, but could actually make things worse acting as a receptacle.
2) Mandates which call for masks to be worn outdoors are both absurd and oppressive.
3) There are clearly documented hazards of wearing masks for long periods of time.
4) And, since school is on everyone's mind...
Notwithstanding the above information on the ineffectiveness of most masks against viruses, we don't know if asymptomatic children can even transmit the virus.
But, it was a reported in an article in the July 21, 2020 Uk Times that: "There has been no recorded case of a teacher catching the coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the world, according to one of the UK government's leading scientific advisers."
And, we also know that children are extremely unlikely to get seriously ill or die from COVID infections. In any case, children cannot possibly be expected to wear a mask properly in a way that would cut transmission.
There are still a lot of unknowns about COVID-19, but we have grown in our understanding of this disease since the beginning of the crisis.
The knowledge we have gained should allow government and health authorities to make more nuanced policies than the current one-size-fits-all mask mandates.
Where are the legislative hearings in county commissions, and state, provincial or federal legislatures before these drastic actions are mandated? Where are the open and transparent debates among experts that provide our representatives with the necessary information to make good policy decisions?
The real pandemic is the panic and the resulting tyranny that is being caused by dictatorial governors, corporate media and the monopolistic Big Tech.
The truth is that COVID-19 is like a bad cold for most people; this is not ebola or the plague.
Of course, the very elderly and those with serious health conditions should take precautions or be quarantined, but the rest of society should begin the long process of returning to normality.
The frenzy to force everyone to wear a mask, at all times, has gone beyond all comprehension, and goes against science and logic.
Please SIGN this petition which asks policymakers at all levels of government to reverse any mandatory mask order within the borders of their county, state, province, or country.
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Explosion in mandatory masking isn’t driven by science, but fear', PART I - https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/explosion-in-mandatory-masking-isnt-driven-by-science-but-fear
'Explosion in mandatory masking isn’t driven by science, but fear', PART II - https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/explosion-in-mandatory-masking-isnt-driven-by-science-but-fear-part-ii
OSHA Document on Surgical Masks and Respirators stating that surgical masks do NOT prevent airborne particles (e.g. viruses) from being inhaled - https://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3219.pdf
'PETER HITCHENS: Face masks turn us into voiceless submissives - and it’s not science forcing us to wear them, it’s politics' - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8537489/PETER-HITCHENS-Face-masks-turn-voiceless-submissives.html
**Here, we are referring to the masks worn by the vast majority of the public, not to specialist masks or respirator-type masks.
***Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
The American Thinker reported that, on average, the ten earliest states to adopt masking rules registered a slightly higher number of deaths than the forty-state average, coming in at 13.3 deaths per 10,000 population. This is, again, compared to an average of 12.6 deaths per 10,000 population among the states which imposed no mask mandate, suggesting that face masks do not prevent deaths.
In a follow-up article, author Spike Hampson noted that seven more states decided to relax mask requirements towards the end of March. Data from March 24–31 shows that those 17 states without mask mandates vastly outperformed the 33 states with mandates, regarding transmission of the virus.
According to Hampson, the 33 pro-mask states recorded “21.0 daily new cases per 100,000 people,” whereas in the “17 mask voluntary states [there were] 14.2 daily new cases per 100,000 people.”