The New York Times, always the last to know.
New York Times- The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?
On the bright side though, their readers are having none of it.
eugyppius- Times readers confront the manifest failure of masks to do anything, cope and seethe
The highest-rated comment is by Stephen Levin. He’s had a look at the fine print and decided to take solace in the uncertainty of the authors – to the applause of nearly three thousand people:
When I was much younger, I asked, “why did all those people drink the poisoned Kool-Aid”?
I’m older and wiser now. I know.
Yeah… no.
They drank the poisoned Kool-Aid because they had rifles pointed at them and were being threatened with immediate execution if they didn’t. Not part of the typical narrative, I know.
Still, I take your meaning and agree with the sentiment.
It was Flavor-Aid. Just sayin’.
A cheap South American knock off? … sorry, I said knock off …
Every time I hear someone say that doctors/nurses wear masks at all times in surgeries, I also point out that they scrub their hands and forearms for 2 minutes with an antiseptic soap and then put on sterile clothing. Then I ask if they sterilized their clothing recently and if they washed their hands when they last went to the bathroom.
…and then in 1981 a fellow named Neil Orr decided over a period of six months to test the efficacy of masks at preventing infection in the operating room, and so designated one OR in a hospital as being maskless. The result? Not wearing masks did NOT cause the incidence of infection to increase. In fact it decreased slightly.
They also wear certain gowns, ect for a short amount of time.
That personal protective equipment is either thrown out or sterilised.
Consider that the covid-pious will wear masks but not remove their shoes in the house which one can only imagine are as filthy as hell.
The folks poo-pooing this “news” need to be the first to the gallows. Take names.
But, but, but … masks … gave the government one HELL of a control mechanism over the Public.
Ohhhhhhhhhhh mommmmaaaaaaaa … you’re all gonna DIEEEEEEEEEEE without wearing your mask. And so … my wife’s school district and UNION still insist that all teachers and children must wear masks … “for their own safety, and that of others”
Heh. You ain’t seen nothing yet in the heel-digging department. Just wait till the day finally comes when the NYT will have to publish something to the effect that the end result of the jabs is somewhere between virtually useless and deadly.
Yeah but according to FILTHY LIBERALS, if you die Vaccin8d, you go to heaven, sooooo
In all the comments that I read, there was no engagement with the actual conclusion of the study: that mask wearing, *as a matter of public policy* is ineffective. This, more than anything, is illustrative of a particular authoritarian mindset, that refuses to consider humanity as imperfect in deriving policy.
Let’s take a simple analogy. We know that Chlamydia, as an STD, has seen a resurgence in college populations in recent years. What should our public policy be? Simple! We shall simply mandate that no college students may have sex for a period of 2 years. With that simple penstroke, Chlamydia is extinguished in the target population. Students are still having sex, you say? How very dare they! They are selfish wreckers, whose refusal to co-operate in our Glorious Plan for the Eradication of Filthy Disease puts all others at risk.
And to those professing their virtue BTL in the NYT, I have but one question. When it was permitted, did you ever go into a restaurant with a mask on, go to your table with a mask on, sit down with a mask on, order your food with a mask on, then take it off for the next two hours while you ate, because You Were Told this was OK?
That’s why it didn’t work. Because you too, enlightened member of the Elohim, “just needed to have a normal meal for once”, while ensuring your Morlock server remained sheathed while they brought you your salmon tataki while you tutted out the window at the girl walking on the sidewalk outdoors with her mask pulled down over her chin because this Was Not Permitted, and you commented as such to your dinner companion, who, like yourself, last studied any STEM related subject in your teens.
Science is, and should be, a factor, in public health policy. But so should *behavioural science* be. And that should have told anyone making policy, that if it depended on 100% perfect compliance, while it might be good theoretical epidemiology, it was DOA as effective policy.
Murder is illegal, that’s why it never happens…..
“That’s why it didn’t work.”
That’s one reason. But the main reason masks didn’t work is that page-wire fences aren’t very good at stopping a load of #7 shot.
Exactly….they didn’t work because they DON’T work against respiratory viruses. That has been known for 100 years.
Like I said on the CBC site when this topic came up, a great many people would be much further ahead if they simply learned to breathe through their noses.
They kept deleting those posts…I don’t know why.
All wearing a mask did for me was to fog my glasses, make my eyes water, make my nose run, and set me coughing. Which gave me all the symptoms of COVID. Needless to say, I ditched the mask as soon as I could.
Had to wear one travelling to and from a family funeral last year shortly before the mask mandate was lifted. The one I chose featured a rather cute (and seriously photoshopped) photo of two masked kitties. I received many complements on my choice.
Long before COVID, all the science (actual science) had concluded that “masks” do nothing to stop aerosols (i.e., particulates suspended in air). Now, studying the hysteria of COVID reactions has re-supported this conclusion. Masks can only help to keep you from spitting on people, no more. The results are the same now, as they were in 2019. Everything in between was politics.