New Study Shows Mask Mandates Had Zero Effect in Florida or Nationwide, But the Lie Continues
Obviously, no amount of evidence, data, trends, facts, studies, or science will ever convince most ‘public health officials’ that masks aren’t doing squat to stop the spread of COVID-19. Cases and deaths continue to spike (yes, many of these are super-sensitive PCR test-driven numbers, but still) despite the fact that well over 90% of the country are complying with their absurd mandates. Yet, predictably, the virus keeps going right on virusing, as highly contagious respiratory viruses, unfortunately, tend to do, especially once cold weather hits.
Nevertheless, those of us who are mask skeptics have a difficult chore in front of us. Given that most of the country is under a mask mandate of some form or another, we can point to spikes all day AFTER these mandates were put in place only to have our opponents simply say, “Look how bad it would have been WITHOUT masks!”
It’s a tough argument to counter given the fact that our overlords have sold masking as a low-cost, easy “solution” that’s totally worth it even if they “save one life,” or something (nevermind the health risks - let’s censor docs who talk about those!). So, how DO we prove that things wouldn’t have been worse without masks? One way is to look at data from the few free states remaining.
In Florida, for example, most counties have so far bravely refused to implement mask mandates while others, usually in high population centers, have done so. Justin Hart and the team at Rational Ground (follow them on Twitter here - it’s worth it) just released a comprehensive data analysis of masked vs non-masked counties in the state. A total of 22 of 67 counties in the state have implemented a mask order at some point during the period of May 1 through December 15. It may not sound like many, but these include almost all of Florida’s largest metro areas. To be more than fair, if an area added a mask order at some point during the outbreak, the study’s authors gave a 14 day period to allow time for cases to begin subsiding. “Cases were summed for both mandate and non-mandate jurisdictions and adjusted per 100,000 people for days the mandates were or were not in effect,” wrote the authors, describing the methodology used.
If masks did even close to as advertised, one would expect to see the counties that went maskless to be absolute dumpster fires next to the counties that implemented mandates, right? At the very least, the numbers should favor the masked areas by more than a percentage point or two. So, how did it go? Yep, it was the Mask Cult’s worse nightmare:
“When counties DID have a mandate in effect, there were 667,239 cases over 3,137 days with an average of 23 cases per 100,000 per day. When counties DID NOT have a countywide order, there were 438,687 cases over 12,139 days with an average of 22 cases per 100,000 per day.”
In other words, counties with mask-mandates in place actually did WORSE than those that refused to implement them. (Yeah, color me shocked.) The authors even accounted for population density in their analysis, suggesting that it didn’t have an impact on the numbers because four of the 12 most populous counties in Florida never had a countywide order. “When the eight DID have an order in effect, there were 64 cases per 1,000. In periods 11 of 12 DID NOT have one, there were 40,” they wrote.
“But that’s just Florida,” you say. “They’re weirdos anyway. Surely masks have worked in the rest of the country.” Well, I’m glad you asked! The good folks at Rational Ground went on to compare national numbers, pitting the states that resisted the urge to impose a statewide mask mandate against those that masked up. How did those compare?
“When states DID have a mandate in effect, there were 9,605,256 cases over 5,907 total days and averaged 27 cases per 100,000 per day. When states DID NOT have a statewide order there were 5,781,716 cases over 5,772 total days averaging 17 cases per 100,000 people per day.”
So there you have it, incontrovertible data evidence that mask mandates do little to nothing to stop or even slightly curb the spread of COVID-19. If masks were the answer, wouldn’t you expect to see a drop in cases not long after mask mandates are implemented? At the very least, wouldn’t you expect to see cases level off and STAY leveled off? What you would NOT expect would be what has actually happened, for cases to spike as they have done since November seemingly all across the country, regardless of whether or not a mandatory masking policy was in place.
Further, wouldn’t you also expect states and areas that MASKED HARRDERRR than anyone else, states like California that have the ‘bold leadership’ to insist the plebes under their control mask up outside on hiking trails and sitting alone in parks, to have the lowest case counts of all? Just look at the latest per capita numbers there compared to Florida and tell me with a straight face that mask mandates ‘work.’ As Dave Rubin adeptly pointed out earlier this month, Florida’s numbers “should be ten times higher” than California’s. I mean, nobody is asking for masks to work perfectly, but hell, shouldn’t we expect SOME performance?
Numbers and data like this get down to the brass tacks. We can pit our doctors, scientists, and epidemiologists against their doctors, scientists, and epidemiologists on the actual science behind whether forcing people to put a moist, bacteria & virus-laden piece of cloth over the holes through which they breathe actually works to contain a virus that’s infinitesimally smaller than its threads (and yes, there are plenty of doctors, scientists, and epidemiologists on Team Reality too, and a bunch of them are on this must-follow Twitter list!), but if mask-mandates aren’t actually WORKING to curb the spread, why do we have them in place?
It’s complete and utter nonsense, of course. You know it, I know it, and the powers-that-be likely know it too. So why do they insist on continuing the charade? Whatever it is, it has NOTHING to do with either public health or real science.
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Rates of depression and suicide are spiking among children and young adults
COVID isn’t killing teenagers, but the response of government officials is certainly taking its toll as suicides increase and mental health declines. It’s no wonder. Every day, the mainstream media blares alert-style updates on the number of new coronavirus infections and deaths, almost as if it were giving the casualty statistics of an ongoing war. However, unlike a war, these “casualty” numbers have a 99.98% recovery rate with almost no lingering discernible damage from the infection. Time, of course, will tell even more. Either way, panic is what the media wants, and panic is what the media is generating.
Meanwhile, the massive collateral damage caused by many of the nation’s governors and their draconian edicts allegedly issued to combat the pandemic has been ignored and dismissed by much of the MSM as inconsequential compared to the “terrible” virus. In fact, those who raise objections to overbearing and illogical lockdowns and business restrictions are declared to be selfish and unconcerned for the health of their neighbors.
And yet nothing could be further from the truth. More and more information is coming in regarding the impact of the COVID response on Americans’ mental health, and the information is extremely concerning. One of the saddest realities that has emerged is the deadly impact the shutdowns have had on those Americans least endangered by COVID — children and teenagers.
With many schools being locked down over fears of being vectors for spreading the virus, students have had to endure seemingly unending and logic-confounding isolation from peers and teachers. And the results, especially for high school students, have been especially devastating.
A study out of the University of Wisconsin found that nearly 68% of 3,243 high school student athletes polled reported greater anxiety and depression levels that usually require medical intervention — a nearly 40% increase over previous studies. Furthermore, physical activity levels of students are 50% lower than prior to the pandemic, a factor that only adds to depression. A recent survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in four teenagers questioned had thought about committing suicide in the past 30 days. All too many have actually done so.
These factors may explain why Tim McGuine, the lead researcher in Wisconsin’s study, concluded, “The greatest risk [to student athletes] is not covid-19. It’s suicide and drug use.”
Democrats have long loved to sell their Big Government programs with claims of doing it “for the children.” They self-righteously proclaim the virtue of their position while vilifying any opposition as uncaring and selfish. Such has been the case with COVID. How many times have Democrats claimed that those who reject their mask claims are “uncaring” or, even worse, want to spread the virus? Similarly, any suggestion that the damage from the lockdowns is worse than COVID is met with a Democrat-led cacophony of ridicule and anger for daring to question “the science.” Meanwhile, children are suffering and dying because of the abuse of authoritarian “do-gooders.”
https://patriotpost.us/articles/76590-covid-isnt-killing-kids-lockdowns-are-2020-12-19
************************************Obama’s Latest Autobiography Rewrites Israeli History to Make You Hate the Jewish State
Obama portrays Britain and then Israel as occupying powers in Palestine, without ever explaining who actually owned the land they were and are supposedly occupying. He makes no mention of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. As The Palestinian Delusion explains in detail, the Mandate directed the British to encourage “close settlement by Jews on the land” for “the establishment of the Jewish national home.” What gave the League the right to do such a thing? The dying Ottoman Empire had ceded Palestine to the League in 1918. Jews had lived in that land from time immemorial, and it was otherwise sparsely populated. It was a perfect place for the Jews who faced discrimination, harassment and worse in Europe and elsewhere to settle.
Thus the common assumption, which Obama fosters, that the Israelis are illegitimate occupiers of a land that belongs rightly to the Palestinians, founders on the facts. There never was a Palestinian state. No Palestinian king, or emperor, or president. There never was a Palestinian nationality or ethnicity distinct from the nationality and ethnicity of the Arabs of the region. Palestine, like Staten Island or Georgetown, was always the name of a region, not a nation-state or ethnonational home.
Obama also claims that the Jews “organized highly trained armed forces to defend their settlements,” without mentioning that in 1919, a Muslim leader, Amin al-Husseini, a member of a prominent Arab clan in Jerusalem, orchestrated a series of attacks on Jews all over Palestine. The following year, he instigated riots in Jerusalem during Passover. Amid mass looting and rapes, six Jews were murdered and over two hundred more injured. A court of inquiry found that “the Jews were the victims of a peculiarly brutal and cowardly attack, the majority of the casualties being old men, women and children.”
This violence was ongoing. In August 1929 in Jerusalem, rioting Arabs murdered 133 Jews and injured over two hundred more, many in their homes. In Hebron, they murdered another sixty-seven Jews, and in Safed, twenty more. The British government-appointed Shaw Commission found that the riots “took the form, in the most part, of a vicious attack by Arabs on Jews accompanied by wanton destruction of Jewish property.” Obama mentions none of this.
His description of the birth of the State of Israel is no more fair or accurate: “As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the state of Israel was officially born.”
The “two sides” were actually tiny Israel against the giant massed forces of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. They didn’t “fall into war”; the Arab League declared war immediately after Israel declared its independence. Obama’s use of the term “militias” to describe the Israel Defense Forces is doubtless chosen for its resonance with the right-wing, racist, white supremacist militias that American Leftists hysterically imagine to be stalking the land.
Even worse, Obama claims that “for the next three decades, Israel would engage in a succession of conflicts with its Arab neighbors.” One would get no hint from his account of the fact that Israel “would engage” in all these conflicts not out of some imperialist or supremacist impulse, but because each and every time, Arab forces carried out an unprovoked attack against the Jewish state. But Obama appears determined to portray Israel as the aggressor, trusting in the general ignorance of his readership.
Obama’s animus toward Israel is so great that he even calls the Temple Mount “one of Islam’s holiest sites,” without ever mentioning its central importance in Judaism.
A Promised Land thus includes a concise primer for Leftists to remind them of why they must hate Israel. As Obama’s dotty old puppet prepares to enter the Oval Office, this is not a good sign for America’s alliance with Israel, or for peace in the Middle East.
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IN BRIEF
Naturally, attorney general candidates won't be asked about Hunter Biden (NY Post)
Trump campaign takes fight over Pennsylvania election, ballot laws to Supreme Court (Fox News)
Georgia Senate runoffs see more than 1.3 million ballots already cast (Fox News)
Tennessee governor enacts restrictions on social gatherings but rightfully forgoes mask mandate (Fox News)
London under full lockdown as UK struggles to contain new COVID strain (National Review)
Overdoses hit record 81,230 in single year (Disrn) | Memo to Pelosi: Overdose deaths far outpace COVID deaths in San Francisco (AP)
After government hack, media mum on ex-cybersecurity chief highlighted for contradicting Trump's fraud claims (Fox News)
New York Times quotes leftist who wants to withhold COVID vaccinations from the elderly since "older populations are whiter" and to "level the playing field" (NTB)
Straight from the source: Bill de Blasio says mission is to "redistribute wealth" in school system (Fox News)
Seattle district claims the U.S. education system is guilty of "spirit murder" against black children (City Journal)
DOJ accuses Zoom executive of leaking user data to Beijing officials (Disrn)
Congress to approve $1.375 billion for border wall in 2021 (The Hill)
"Big Tech was a huge part of why Biden won the election. It will receive its reward." —Keith Koffler
Judge rules San Diego County strip club ruling also protects eateries (Fox News)
NYC restaurants band together to ban Andrew Cuomo from dining in their establishments (Examiner)
Not identifying sex on birth certificates pushed in New England Journal of Medicine (National Review)
Judge rules Wisconsin inmate convicted of sexually abusing daughter has constitutional right to taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgery (Washington Examiner)
Rick Warren and Saddleback Church host "blacks only" worship service (NTB)
Policy: The Left has now fully embraced racism (The Federalist)
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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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1 comment:
I live in one of the masked counties in FL. It's incredibly aggravating. Not just the masks, but that the counties mandating them make a mockery of state law limiting emergency mandates to 30 days by rubber stamping new mask mandates every 30 days. They also refuse to publicly say what criteria they're using to require masks or lift the mandate.
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