Robust Findings that Masks Don’t Work are Ignored by News Media

Imagine that a newly published comprehensive review of mask-wearing by a prestigious medical publication concluded that mask wearing offered us significant protections from COVID. You'd see those findings echoed by most major news organizations. Biden's attorneys would trumpet those findings in Biden's attempt to reverse the 11th Circuit ruling, so that he could make better arguments requiring airline passengers to put their damned masks back on. Well, the opposite has happened.

I personally know Dr. Kristen Walsh. She is a dedicated pediatrician. She is one of the many practicing physicians who read the January 30, 2023 Cochrane Library review of evidence as to whether masks prevented the spread of COVID. Walsh's Feb 1, 2023 article is titled: "New meta-analysis should end discussion of mask mandates in schools." An excerpt:

From where I sit, as a primary care doctor practicing in an academic clinic setting, this review was big, huge science news. It gathered and studied 78 randomized controlled trials, both pre- and mid-COVID, and addressed COVID, flu, and other respiratory viral illnesses. I was surprised (and not in a pleasant way), therefore, to see almost complete media silence after the review was released. I didn’t see anything about it on cable news; no articles in well-known newspapers. The tweet from the Cochrane Database announcing the review only had 68 likes and 24 retweets after 24 hours. “How is this possible?” I thought. “Why does no one care whether masks work or not?” Probably because the answer was pretty much: not.
Upon reading Walsh's Substack article, I did my due diligence, searching the websites of the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC and NPR. As of today, you will not find a single word about the Cochrane Review declaring that there is no evidence supporting the use of masks to prevent COVID.

Why the silence? I would start my answer with the COVID edition of the Twitter files. I would add that we are looking squarely at a sad example of the sunk costs phenomenon: Most legacy news outlets (and their pals in the U.S. Government) are determined to keep riding their severely flawed COVID narrative because they fear the ridicule they would face if they did an about-face. They have shown themselves to be obedient servants to the stern dictates of the Trusted News Initiative, to the Biden Administration and to the U.S. Security State, which has dedicated at least eighty FBI agents to the task of making sure that highly decorated doctors and researchers (and ordinary people) stop thinking for themselves for safety's sake. We are being protected from facts regarding the failures of masks for the same reason that we are being protected from other COVID-related facts and opinions, including the recent shocking revelations of Jordon Walker, Pfizer's Worldwide Director of R&D Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning.

Walsh is not alone in recognizing the import of this comprehensive Cochrane review. Dr. Vinay Prasad's Feb 2 article is titled: "The Cochrane Review on Masks is Damning: Masks have no good data to support them: It is a religion, not a science." Here is an excerpt from Prasad's article:

Let me be clear: The science did not change. Public health experts started lying. We never had good data that mask mandates help, or that mask advice (a softer policy) improves outcomes. Yet it was widely pushed— most likely to distract from true federal failures. After vaccination, not only do we not have evidence. . . Here is the big summary finding. With 276,000 participants in RCTs or cluster RCTs, masking does nothing. No reduction in influenza like or Covid like illness and no reduction in confirmed flu or COVID. That’s stone cold negative. . . . This is why Fauci said what he said initially on 60 minutes. He wasn’t lying. The best evidence showed no benefit. That was before we saw a concerted campaign to promote cloth masking— a bizarre way to treat anxiety. People routinely wore cloth masks outside— something that was less 21st century and more 3rd century, akin to animal sacrifice, and dancing to make the rains come.

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The Pot Shot Version of the Ad hominem Attack

Today I posted the following on my Facebook account:

I often post quotes, article excerpts or videos featuring the writings or conversation of others. I post these because I find them interesting and, sometimes, inspiring. Quite often, people respond in the comments by pointing out that that person once did something they disapprove of. They often write something like "I don't like that person."

I don't understand this way of thinking. There are many brilliant but flawed people out there. In fact, each of us can see one of those significantly flawed people in the mirror every morning. When I share information on FB, it is because I find the information interesting. I am not saying "This is a perfectly well-adjusted person who is always correct and who has never done anything I would ever question." For instance, there are severely flawed artists (e.g., Michael Jackson) whose work I admire greatly. Same thing with writers, podcasters, politicians and activists. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Is this a problem? Hell, yes. Was he also brilliant? Did his genius help establish this amazing (though flawed) country you call home? Absolutely. When I celebrate Jefferson's amazing accomplishments am I trying to say it's OK to own slaves? Some people apparently think so, because they've been renaming schools that bore Jefferson's name. This is performative, not serious thinking.

All of the people I find interesting are flawed. I am flawed, you are flawed. People of prominence often stumble in big public ways. If you've never gone out into the world to attempt something brave and ambitious, you are flawed in that way too. Can we have an understanding, then, that I am already aware that everyone I mention in my posts is a flawed human being, and many of them have fucked up more than once? Sometimes they've fucked up in intensely cringe-worthy ways. Many of them have fucked up, realized they've fucked up and already admitted that they've fucked up. Pot shots are especially strange in those situations. When you watch a movie, do you sit there obsessing that some of the actors are personally flawed human beings? Or do you enjoy the movie on its own merits? Why do you give your favorite actors a pass?

I don't share information about people BECAUSE they are flawed. Rather, I am sharing their work and observations because I have found that work to be interesting or admirable. I work hard to try to make sense of an extremely complex world and my thought process never stops evolving. I often disagree with things I have stated in the past and you have too. We do this all the time and there is no way to stop doing this. That's how people think and that is why we have conversations--to help each other when we fall off the tracks.

It is the easiest, lowest and most ignorant form of criticism to sit back and point out people's imperfections. This insidious pot shot form of ad hominem is ubiquitous on FB. I assure you that I could engage in taking pot shots at others every hour of every day, with very little effort, but it would do nothing to encourage meaningful conversation or human flourishing.

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Why You Need to Invest in Independent News Media

From Michael Shellenberger's article: "Why A Shocking Number Of Crazy-Sounding Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories Turned About To Be True."

The World Economic Forum really does exercise a creepy influence over world leaders and it really does want “A Great Reset” whereby we’ll collectively move to living in low-energy, high-density, and low-privacy environments, having less physical wealth and, yes, eating insects for protein instead of meat.

The FBI really did spy on Donald Trump’s campaign, run brief-and-leak operations, and spread misinformation about the extent of Russian election interference in ways that led nearly all of the media, media platforms, and Democrats to believe that Hunter Biden’s laptop was fake and anyone who talked about it is a conspiracy theorist, and in a way that may have constituted election interference.

Facebook and Twitter really did censor accurate covid information at the behest of the White House and Twitter, and operate secret blacklists to censor and deplatform disfavored voices and opinions, even when their own internal teams said the people being censored had not actually broken any of the platform’s rules.

. . .

A growing number of people understand that they must pay for news and information from trustworthy and independent sources, ones without financials conflict of interest, and who make their values and beliefs explicit, rather than hide them. Ultimately, what threatens elites who are abusing their power, from WEF to the FBI to the White House, are not the people selling conspiracy theories but the ones exposing them.

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Twitter’s COVID Censorship

David Zweig's new article at The Free Press: "How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate: The platform suppressed true information from doctors and public-health experts that was at odds with U.S. government policy." An excerpt:

The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic. Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes.

At the onset of the pandemic, the Trump administration was especially concerned about panic buying, and sought “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation,” according to emails sent by Twitter employees in the wake of meetings with the White House. One area of so-called misinformation: “runs on grocery stores.” The trouble is that it wasn't misinformation: There actually were runs on goods.

And it wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.

When the Biden administration took over, its agenda for the American people can be summed up as: Be very afraid of Covid and do exactly what we say to stay safe.

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