by Sam Jacobs

All of this raises an important central question: Why do the elderly, those with underlying health conditions and the obese simply sequester themselves or take reasonable precautions rather than shutting down the world economy?

Indeed, there is mounting evidence that government intervention has, surprise of surprises, actually made things worse. As of November 18, 2020, there have been 34,058 COVID deaths in the state of New York. Of these, over 6,500 (or approximately one in seven total deaths) were nursing home deaths that were a direct result of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s policy of forcing nursing homes to accept COVID patients and lock them down with the vulnerable and uninfected.

This is a concrete example of government lockdown measures killing people. But you won’t hear about it in the controlled media.

What about the omnipresent masks that we are now seeing everywhere to the point where someone without a mask is seen as the strange one. They must work, of course!

But there is scant evidence that masks prevent the transmission of COVID or any other respiratory infection. In every randomized clinical trial ever conducted, there have been inconclusive findings that mask wearing aided in suppressing transmission of respiratory diseases. Studies generally rely upon fitted N95 respirators that must be sterilized after every use or surgica masks that should be thrown away. We have more evidence that typical masks cause headaches than that they prevent against COVID.

Compare this to what you see on your average trip to the grocery store: People wearing unfitted cloth masks that get occasionally cleaned — maybe. Many people don’t even bother to pull them up over their noses. Thus, most mask wearing is useless and little more than a form of social control or forced act of “solidarity.”

There’s magical thinking involved in the current mask mandates: If cases go up, it’s because people weren’t good little boys and girls and didn’t wear their masks. If they go down, everyone has been well behaved and gets to pat themselves on the back for wearing their face diaper.

Some evidence suggests that masks make people feel magically protected from the virus and thus they do not take common-sense precautions against all disease, such as handwashing, keeping fingers off the face, covering their nose when they sneeze and the like.

What this means at its root is that people are trading effective measures for ineffective theater. Mask reuse likewise increases infection rates and who among us isn’t guilty of that?

What’s more, studies suggest that people who wear the cloth masks, that are now virtually required to do anything outside one’s home, lead to an increase of flu-like symptoms — and thus create lots of COVID paranoia where there ought not to be any.

It was only in March that many experts were urging people not to wear masks at all, with this article from April likewise urging people to not wear masks.

There are also the “soft” effects of mask wearing. There is significant evidence to suggest that children living under COVID will have their emotional and psychological development severely stunted and warped thanks to mask orders. As if you needed another reason to pull your kids out of public school.

Indeed, we have a mountain of troubling data about the social effects of mass mask wearing that go back decades. Put simply, masks make people stupid, pliant and anti-social. Examples of findings from mask studies include:

• A 1976 study where people were more likely and required less pay to carry a sign reading “masturbation is fun” if they were masked.
• A 1979 study found children were more likely to take more than their allotted amount of Halloween candy if they were masked.
• A 1989 study found that masking led people to abandon defense mechanism and revert to more primitive psychological states.
• Studies conducted in 2005 and 2017 found neurological evidence inhibit both impulse control and identity formation, decreasing prefrontal cortex activity.
• Repeated studies have found that masking reduces blood flow to the brain.

A number of public figures have backed off of masking as a panacea, instead pushing it as an act of “social solidarity.” Sure, masks might not actually do anything — but what about feelings? British politicians Michael Gove and Nicole Sturgeon are indicative of this trend.

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https://blog.libertasbella.com/covid-19-lockdowns-liberty-and-science/