Jenin Younes 
Jeffrey A. Tucker
– April 15, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research
Last week, YouTube took down
an AIER-linked video of a scientific roundtable on Covid held by
Florida governor Ron DeSantis. The stated reason concerned some passing
comments by the scholars that raised questions about the masking of
children.
Said a YouTube spokesman: “We removed AIER’s video because it
included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global
health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread
of Covid-19.”
The ostensibly objectionable remark
came from Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff: “Children should not wear
face masks,” he said. “They don’t need it for their own protection and
they don’t need it for protecting other people either.”
Kulldorff and others were addressing the distressing reality that
children in many jurisdictions are masked, on the streets and in
classrooms, despite presenting nearly zero risk of severe outcomes from
Covid-19 and in the face of substantial evidence that children do not
often spread the disease.
YouTube has taken it upon itself to censor the opinions of esteemed
scientists that depart from the orthodoxy on masks. This is not
surprising given that masks have become dogma – a visible symbol of
compliance and fealty to the medical/political agenda that elevates the
coronavirus above all else.
This dogma was illustrated by Anthony Fauci’s response to the
situation in Texas, which repealed its mask mandate and saw cases
plummet. Asked to explain this result, Fauci responded:
“I’m not really quite sure….It could be they’re doing things outdoors.”
He declined to even consider the fact that perhaps masks are not
effective at controlling spread of the coronavirus. In other words, the
theory that universal masking stops the virus is becoming
non-falsifiable.
AIER’s content has mostly focused on other aspects of lockdowns, yet published several pieces on the topic of masks:
The masking issue is gaining importance both in terms of the
scientific issues involved and concerns for liberty and social function.
First, there are increasing calls for mask-wearing to be a permanent part of our lives. This article,
for instance, suggests that masks should be adopted during flu season,
spikes in coronavirus cases, and when a person is ill. Second, one of
the many journals linked through the National Institutes of Health’s
suite of scholarly works, Medical Hypothesis,
has accepted for publication a devastating analysis of the harms caused
by widespread, universal masking. The citation is: Vainshelboim B. Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis. Med Hypotheses. 2021;146:110411.
True, this is not a conventional journal and that is precisely why it
exists. It was founded out of a concern that valid scientific
observations that depart from current trends will not make it through
the conventional peer review process with a thesis that is radical or
breaks an emergent mold. The journal, published by the Elsevier Public Health Emergency Collection,
has a prestigious editorial board that utilizes high standards in
selecting material for publication, and can provide a home for
unorthodox scientific papers. Indeed, given the state of censorship and
the vast scientific confusions that have followed in the wake of
lockdowns, such journals are needed more than ever.
Tellingly, this paper is written by a single author, which is to say
that one person has stuck his neck out to take responsibility for its
contents. John Ioannidis has demonstrated
that a feature of problematic studies is that they are performed and
reported on by large teams of researchers rather than a single author.
This makes sense: large teams can distribute responsibility for truth
claims. Not so with single author papers. This enhances, but does not
prove, the credibility of published research by single authors.
The well-published and cited
author Baruch Vainshelboim works in the Cardiology Division, Veterans
Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System/Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA,
United States, and has had an affiliation with Pulmonary Institute,
Rabin Medical Center, Beilinson Hospital, Petach Tikva, Israel. He
obtained his Ph.D. (Universidade do Porto) in clinical exercise
physiology in pulmonary rehabilitation and hence has a strong interest
in the relationship between health and masking.
The entire paper is worth reading. It cites most known studies and
knowledge in the scientific literature prior to the Spring of 2020,
including the WHO: “Facemasks are not required, as no evidence is available on its usefulness to protect non-sick persons.”
The author goes on to explain a myriad physiological dangers associated with mask wearing:
In addition to hypoxia and
hypercapnia, breathing through facemask residues bacterial and germs
components on the inner and outside layer of the facemask. These toxic
components are repeatedly rebreathed back into the body, causing
self-contamination. Breathing through facemasks also increases
temperature and humidity in the space between the mouth and the mask,
resulting in a release of toxic particles from the mask’s materials. A
systematic literature review estimated that aerosol contamination levels
of facemasks including 13 to 202,549 different viruses. Rebreathing
contaminated air with high bacterial and toxic particle concentrations
along with low O2 and high CO2 levels continuously challenge the body
homeostasis, causing self-toxicity and immunosuppression.
And some psychological harms of masks:
As described earlier, wearing
facemasks causing hypoxic and hypercapnic state that constantly
challenges the normal homeostasis, and activates “fight or flight”
stress response, an important survival mechanism in the human body. The
acute stress response includes activation of nervous, endocrine,
cardiovascular, and the immune systems. These include activation of the
limbic part of the brain, release stress hormones (adrenalin,
neuro-adrenalin and cortisol), changes in blood flow distribution
(vasodilation of peripheral blood vessels and vasoconstriction of
visceral blood vessels) and activation of the immune system response
(secretion of macrophages and natural killer cells). Encountering people
who wear facemasks activates innate stress-fear emotion, which is
fundamental to all humans in danger or life threatening situations, such
as death or unknown, unpredictable outcome. While acute stress response
(seconds to minutes) is an adaptive reaction to challenges and part of
the survival mechanism, chronic and prolonged state of stress-fear is
maladaptive and has detrimental effects on physical and mental health.
The repeatedly or continuously activated stress-fear response causes the
body to operate on survival mode, having sustained increase in blood
pressure, pro-inflammatory state and immunosuppression.
And the conclusion:
The existing scientific evidences
challenge the safety and efficacy of wearing facemask as preventive
intervention for COVID-19. The data suggest that both medical and
non-medical facemasks are ineffective to block human-to-human
transmission of viral and infectious disease such as SARS-CoV-2 and
COVID-19, supporting against the usage of facemasks. Wearing facemasks
has been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and
psychological effects. These include hypoxia, hypercapnia, shortness of
breath, increased acidity and toxicity, activation of fear and stress
response, rise in stress hormones, immunosuppression, fatigue,
headaches, decline in cognitive performance, predisposition for viral
and infectious illnesses, chronic stress, anxiety and depression.
Long-term consequences of wearing facemasks can cause health
deterioration, developing and progression of chronic diseases and
premature death. Governments, policy makers and health organizations
should utilize proper and scientific evidence-based approach with
respect to wearing facemasks, when the latter is considered as
preventive intervention for public health.
This article represents a new challenge to the pro-masking position. It argues that masks are not merely a “talisman,” as the Journal of the American Medical Association said
in April 2020 (before the authors were forced to retract three months
later). The situation is far worse: masks are not just useless, but
actively damaging to individual health and social well-being.
To be sure, anyone is free to challenge the conclusions, attack the
extensive footnotes, take issue with the interpretation, or otherwise
blast what is clearly a hypothesis. However, the journal editors chose
to publish this unconventional perspective because it is consistent with
vast amounts of the consensus at this time last year, before the orthodoxy suddenly changed, and the evidence that has accumulated during the past twelve months. In addition, taking this position today involves serious professional risk: NYU communication professor Mark Crispin Miller is being investigated
merely for suggesting that his students think critically about masks by
reading studies that conclude masks are not an effective means of
curbing the spread of respiratory viruses as well as those that reach
the opposite conclusion.
The paper appears in the midst of an ongoing effort on the part of
Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden, and others to normalize and universalize mask
wearing, even as many states are repealing their mask mandates with
public support. The evidence that doing so has had any effect on the
trajectory of the virus is scant at best. The most commonly cited study
from the CDC barely finds a 0.5% difference in transmission rate over
20 days and 1.8% after 100 days. The longer the time the more variables
are a concern; a simply and extremely weak correlation between two data
points stretches credulity, especially when used to push a radical
masking of the population.
In addition, many aspects of our emergent mask culture are
implausible, such as the idea that you don’t catch or spread Covid while
seated and eating and can thereby be unmasked but standing and walking
are too risky and therefore require masks. As to wearing them outdoors
or even alone on a hike in the woods, does one even need to comment?
Given that masking of healthy populations for long periods of time is
a new policy, it is astounding that the media and scientific journals
decided within a matter of months that the efficacy of the practice
could not be questioned or studied, nor its adverse effects discussed.
Anyone who thinks that “science” is settled after a year of
implementation of a mechanism that ostensibly reduces disease spread
does not understand the meaning of the word. Science is a process, by
which new information and evidence are incorporated as they are
discovered. Anthony Fauci and Andrew Cuomo are exploiting the term
“science” to convey to the public that certain beliefs cannot be
questioned, and they are being assisted by big tech platforms like
YouTube, which obviously seek to control the parameters of the
discussion.
No matter how many times these people repeat the word “science,” they
are promoting precisely the opposite of science: dogma. By contrast,
Dr. Baruch Vainshelboim is pushing us to think more broadly and
fundamentally, in a way that connects with pre-2020 intuition, and for
this he deserves immense credit, as does Medical Hypothesis for
having published this paper. Both make a courageous attempt to analyze
the costs of adopting universal masking, which is to say advancing real
science.
Jenin Younes is a graduate of Cornell University and New York University School of Law.
Jenin currently works as an appellate public defender in New York City.
She enjoys running, restaurants, and reading in her free time.
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Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research.
He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and nine books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
Jeffrey is available for speaking and interviews via his email. Tw | FB | LinkedIn
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