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April 14, 2021 (American Thinker) — On March 17, American Thinker posted an article entitled “Mask Mandates Do Not Save Lives.” By comparing COVID death rates in states with no mask mandate to states in which masking was mandatory, the article was able to show that, on average, states in which masking was voluntary had lower death rates than states requiring it. The difference was marginal, so the conservative conclusion was that required masking had not saved lives.
Since that study did nothing to control for potentially confounding considerations like population density or age structure, more sophisticated studies of the question are in order. What it highlighted, however, is the ongoing failure of our governments to provide measurable evidence that masks save lives.
At the time that article was written, there were only ten states that had no mask mandates, but since then, seven additional states have lifted them. Those states have been heavily criticized for having done so. President Biden has referred to their decision as “Neanderthal thinking,” and a great many high-profile people of a progressive bent have expressed dismay at such irresponsible behavior. However, no evidence has been brought forward to document the measured effectiveness of obligatory masking.
Masking might logically be expected to influence the death rate only indirectly. If masks diminish the appearance of new cases, then — other things being equal — fewer cases should mean fewer deaths.
On March 31, NPR posted an article entitled “How Severe is Your State's Coronavirus Outbreak?” It contains an interactive map that for each state allows the viewer to see the rate at which new COVID cases have appeared in the preceding week. The rate is expressed as the average daily number of new cases per 100,000 population.
How effectively are mask mandate states containing the spread of the disease relative to the states that don't require masks? We can look at the performance of mask mandate states relative to those states not requiring masks to get a preliminary idea.
There are seventeen states that did not require masks during the March 24–31 week, thirty-three states that did. The following map shows which category each state falls in. The number — usually in the upper right corner of a state — is the average daily new case rate per 100,000 population.
Since this is all about state policy regarding masks, the states are equal in weight regardless of population size. Here are the average daily new cases per 100,000 population for each of the two groups.
33 mask mandate states: 21.0 daily new cases per 100,000 people
17 mask voluntary states: 14.2 daily new cases per 100,000 people
The states not requiring masks are outperforming the mask mandate states by a huge margin. Their rate is about two thirds that of the mask mandate states. This flies in the face of what the American public is being told by the news media: states without mask mandates are not driving the recent (modest) rise in infection rates; mask mandate states are.
Lets break down the data a little more and extract additional detail to see if there is any evidence that masks mandates work. We will start with two separate groups of states, based on the same sort of partitioning that was done in that earlier article entitled “Mask Mandates Do Not Save Lives”: the ten states that have never had any mask mandate and the ten states that implemented the earliest (and longest running) mask mandates. By now, after so many months, the ten most committed mask mandate states should be showing a significantly better performance than the group of states that have never imposed a mandate.
A third group will be those states that only eventually adopted a mask mandate. One would expect that the states in this group will have done better than the group of mask-voluntary states, but not as well as the ten states that adopted the mandate early on.
That leaves a fourth group: those states that had a mask mandate but recently decided to terminate it. Even though they are now misbehaving, they did for a time act responsibly, so maybe their average new case rate will fall below that of the laggardly bunch but still ahead of the incorrigibles.
Here is a summary of the four categories.
Early and still active enforcers of a mask mandate: 10 states
Eventual and still active enforcers of a mask mandate: 23 states
Enforcers of a mask mandate who have abandoned the policy: 7 states
Incorrigible disbelievers in any mask mandate: 10 states
Here is a modified map showing the four categories:
When a standard mean value is calculated for each group, here are the results.
Early mask states: 27.0 daily new cases per 100,000
Laggard mask states: 18.4 daily new cases per 100,000
Masks abandoned states: 12.4 daily new cases per 100,000
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
Masks voluntary states: 15.4 daily new cases per 100,000
Mask-voluntary states are experiencing new case rates so much lower than the rates of mask obligatory states that it is now reasonable to begin asking why and how this is happening. The ferocious criticism levied against states that recently dropped the mask mandate is beginning to look not just wrong, but like a desperate effort to defend the indefensible. The longer some of our governments keep insisting on the wearing of masks, the more authoritarian and the less credible their pronouncements become.
It is particularly noteworthy that the states that recently dropped the mask mandate are experiencing new cases at a lower rate than any of the three other groups. These states were vilified for abandoning the mask mandate, and many supposedly expert opinions contended that their behavior would result in an explosion of new cases. Not only has this not happened, but this group of seven states is outperforming the other three groups by a considerable margin.
Two states were singled out for intense criticism: Mississippi and Texas. Those two states lifted the mask mandates on March 3 and March 10, respectively. For Texas, three weeks passed with no indication of a significant rise in the new case rate. For Mississippi, there was not significant rise even after four weeks. Furthermore, both states have new case rates that put to shame those of states requiring masks.
Some will argue that there hasn't yet been enough time for the COVID cases to develop, but that is simply untrue. According to WebMD, “[s]ymptoms for COVID-19 can start as early as 2 days and as long as 14 days after you are exposed. Research shows that the average time symptoms appear is around 4 to 5 days.” There has been more than enough time for Texas and Mississippi to have experienced the anticipated outbreak. Mask mandate believers must come to terms with this.
It is time to demand rigorously collected and objectively analyzed data showing the degree to which mask mandates allegedly suppress the spread of COVID. Pronouncements by the supposed experts are no longer enough.
It is even time to begin contemplating the possibility that mask mandates have had the opposite effect of that intended.
Reprinted with permission from the American Thinker.