ASTONISHINGLY, the New York Times, one of the most zealous supporters of the Covid-19 regime, has published an editorial against masks. When I saw the online article titled ‘Mask mandates did nothing: will any lessons be learned?’ I was so surprised that I decided to buy the international edition for hard evidence.
As a representative of the Workers of England Union, I continue to defend workers against disciplinarian employers who persecute critical thinkers who refuse to follow their stupid policy. And it really is stupid. There has never been a scientific argument for covering our faces to banish microscopic viral particles. It’s like wearing a string vest to prevent mosquito bites. The policy is at best to alleviate anxiety in a society deliberately scared by state propaganda; at worst it is a blunt exertion of control by managers over staff and service-users.
Last week I was visiting a hospital in Scotland, where pandemic culture lingers. Each time my close relative moved wards, I had to go through the process of asserting myself as a mask refusenik. To make lives easier, I declared myself exempt. On the third ward I was told by an officious nurse that there are no exemptions as there had recently been cases of Covid-19. Good evidence, I thought, that the policy was futile. Luckily this was my last visit.
Many TCW readers will be aware of the latest Cochrane systematic review, by Tom Jefferson and colleagues, which clearly demonstrated that masks (surgical blue or N-95) don’t work. The team included 78 studies in their analysis, and the findings were the basis for the New York Times editorial by Bret Stephens. It’s worth quoting liberally from his article. Noting that US states with mask mandates fared no better than those without, Stephens averred: ‘Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as misinformers for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.’
However, he observes little sign of any forthcoming apology. Indeed, Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is doubling down. Ludicrously, Walensky tries to invalidate the Cochrane review (a methodology regarded as the highest level of scientific evidence) by stating that merely six of the included studies were specifically on Covid-19. Unimpressed, Stephens suggests that ‘if she ever wonders why respect for the CDC keeps falling, she could look to herself, and resign.’ Remember, this is the New York Times!
Under Walensky, the CDC urged the public to ‘trust the science’, but according to Stephens ‘it is turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science – conspiracy theorists and quack-cure peddlers – by so badly representing the values and practices that science is supposed to exemplify’. Well, I for one would trust conspiracy theorists who saw Covid-19 as a globalist coup and natural healers and ivermectin advocates over Big Pharma shills.
Stephens argues that ‘mask mandates were a fool’s errand from the start’. He concludes: ‘The last justification for masks is that, even if they proved to be ineffective, they seemed a relatively low-cost, intuitively effective way of doing something against the virus in the early days of the pandemic. But “do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy. And the people who had the courage to say as much deserved to be listened to, not treated with contempt. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.’
That the masks don’t work is now palatable for the mainstream media. I wonder how long we will wait for similar admissions about the ‘miracle of science’ injections.
