Video: UK Health Security Head Admits Use Of Face Masks Was Never ‘Evidence Based’

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[–]youfuckingtwat 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

never

This is disinformation. It's obviously taken out of context. Find the link to the rest of the discussion and you'll see that she's discussing the rational for lockdowns, and the limited info in those early days on the effectiveness of different kinds of masks for COVID prevention. You'll remember that there were numerous studies (showing their effectiveness) throughout 2020 and 2021: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=effectiveness+face+masks+during+covid&va=t&t=ha&ia=web

[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

there were numerous studies (showing their effectiveness)

All junk science. Studies on mask effectiveness are based on taking a new mask, gluing it down over an air-input pipe to ensure there is absolutely no air leakage around the edges, and seeing whether or not it blocks virus-sized particles. Well that's just great, except that no actual human being glues the mask to their face. In real life, there is always air leakage around the edges of disposable masks. Even tightly fitted disposable masks don't stay tightly fit all day.

Virus particles are at least 10-100 times smaller than the gaps between the fibres in surgical and N95 masks. To combat that, during manufacture the fibres in N95 masks are charged up with thousands of volts to give them an electric charge of about 10 nanocoulombs, making them into a permanent electret. The electric field attracts microscopic particles to the fibres and traps them. Well, that's the intention, but in practice the electric charge leaks away over time, or when exposed to moist air, or when touched. That's why you're not supposed to re-use masks, or wash them, or even spray them with alcohol. After some hours, the electric charge is completely gone.

That's not a problem for laboratory tests which only last a few minutes, maybe an hour. But the test conditions are nothing like real-world use:

  • humans exhale moist air, which causes the electric charge to disperse even faster than it would normally;
  • they are often required to wear the masks for many hours at a time, not just a few minutes;
  • they frequently need to touch the mask to adjust it, or to take it off to eat or drink;
  • if they are wearing it outside they may get caught in rain.

Even if the mask was perfectly effective at blocking viruses at the start of the day, it won't stay that way.

CC u/binaryblob u/Zommy

[–]youfuckingtwat 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Thanks, though:

All junk science.

99.99% of medical science professionals vs. misinformation you kindly list here.

Even if the mask was perfectly effective at blocking viruses....

That was not the capability or purpose of the masks, which are meant to help with social distancing. If someone coughs COVID 3 feet from you, your mask will help you avoid contact with that cough. It's been common at the anti-vax disinformation websites to try to convince morons that only one of the preventative measures (social distancing, masks, vaccine, quarantine, lockdowns &c) would not fully stop transmission of the virus, so therefore abandon all of them and join in the anti-science disinformation brigade. We know that the combination of preventative measures HELPED reduce transmission when they were used. Medical science research has assessed these factors.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

99 dumb studies doesn't disprove 1 good study. It doesn't work that way.

[–]youfuckingtwat 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

indeed

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

99.99% of medical science professionals

A gentle reminder that most published scientific papers are wrong:

  • most published studies are false
  • data dredging
  • p-value hacking
  • publication bias (studies that get the wrong result are buried and never published)
  • biased, lazy and incompetent reviewers
  • censorship of outsiders and political interference
  • outright fraud e.g. the Surgisphere fraud
  • undisclosed conflict of interest
  • insufficient detail given to replicate the study
  • the ongoing replication crisis
  • bad or misleading use of statistics
  • failure to allow for relevant differences between the control and experimental groups

and many more, some innocent mistakes, some not even a bit innocent.

This has been a huge problem in medicine for many decades, and doctors and scientists have written widely about this. This is not some "wacky conspiracy theory". The wacky conspiracy theory is that criticisms of the bad science is "a conspiracy theory".

[–]youfuckingtwat 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

All of which is disinformation

Consider who paid for this bullshit to be spread to the most gullible voters in the US

[–]binaryblob 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If you are a misinformation bot, you are such a skilled one that perhaps you should just rule the world, because you make more sense than most.

I think you make an excellent argument. I never believed masks worked, because I think the virus was everywhere in the air at its height in cities.

This year's flu is also not to be recommended, btw. What a fucking nightmare.

[–]Bigs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

But there were literally over 100 before the plandemic showing they didn't work at all, so no, I'm not interested in bullshit 'studies' created to further the narrative.

[–]youfuckingtwat 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You should wonder why wealthy investors paid billions to develop disinformation websites and disinformation articles in order to convince people like you that science is somehow bad, and how that worked with 10% of the US, and partially worked with 30%. You should wonder how those new websites helped the billionaire investors much richer, by extending COVID illnesses and deaths (for those infected by the non-mask-wearing assholes), extending lockdowns, killing small businesses, and killing part of the middle class. It increased extreme income inequality, which created much wealthier billionaires. Scientific research had proven that masks were very helpful. If you distrust the scientific peer reviewed research, also avoid modern medicine, technology, and secular thinking; move to the woods, live in a tent, and live on berries.

[–]passionflounder 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Cuck-muzzle mandates were largely psychological. Their general use furnished a constant reminder that we were in "unprecedented" times. They also reinforced the premise that a centralized authority could credibly micromanage how individuals behaved and set the table for the future creation of a new criminal class.

[–]binaryblob 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

Cuck-muzzle mandates

Man, what a literary piece of art.

Masks probably work, if everyone follows the instructions to the letter, which they literally can't.

The real lesson humanity should have learned is that apparently humanity is a shit species and the most effective way (for a technologically underdeveloped species) to deal with a pandemic is to infect everyone once a pandemic is declared and just see who lives or dies. This also accomplishes a genetic pool strengthening.

I really doubt the numbers regarding "saved lives", even more how many high quality years of life have been saved.

I don't doubt that vaccines can theoretically work, but in this case it spread across the world before the vaccines were developed and a natural infection is still probably the best (although most unpleasant) way to get protection.

[–]weavilsatemyface 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Masks probably work, if everyone follows the instructions to the letter

Not a chance.

Surgical masks are not designed to prevent viruses getting through. They don't even prevent smoke particles getting through, and they are tens of times larger than viruses. The smallest smoke particles are typically 2.5 micrometres in diameter. Covid virions are typically 60-140 nanometres in diameter so the biggest Covid virus particles are nearly 20 times smaller than the smallest smoke particles. Trying to block airborne viruses like Covid with a surgical mask or a cloth mask is like trying to block mosquitoes with a tennis net.

So forget surgical masks. They're designed to stop droplets, not airborne viruses, and frankly even in the limited use of surgery under controlled conditions, there is no evidence that they reduce or prevent infections (citations supplied on request). Surgical masks, even in surgery, have no discernible effect on infection rates.

N95 masks are better, and if used correctly and tightly fitted, they may even be moderately effective for an hour or two. I say may because there is no good evidence that they actually are effective in the real-world, but theoretically based on laboratory tests where the edges of the mask are glued down over an air intake, so as to give a perfect and permanent fit, they seem to block virus-sized particles.

So I'll allow that, if N95 masks are used perfectly, they might block some percentage of airborne viruses for a limited time. Whether that corresponds to a lower risk of infection is another question: theoretically, even a single virus getting through could be enough to infect you. In practice, that's not likely, but if we're going to accept that masks theoretically block viruses under perfect conditions when we know that in practice the conditions are never perfect, then it's only right to also accept that theoretically even a single virus getting through could infect you.

So the big question is, even if you use a N95 surgical mask perfectly, and it blocks (say) 90% of virus particles, does that reduce the risk and severity of infection? Very likely not by much. Look at it this way: suppose somebody is firing a machine gun straight at you. If you block 90% of the bullets, you'll still be just as dead as if you blocked 10% of the bullets.

(The analogy with a virus with a 99.99% survival rate is not perfect.)

There's another catch. When you inhale, any viruses in the air you breath are just as likely to be exhaled again before they can latch onto cells in your nose or lungs and infect them. But if you are wearing a mask, some percentage of those exhaled virus particles will be caught in the mask, where you are likely to re-inhale them on the next breath, giving them a second chance to latch onto a cell. We know that masks can become contaminated with bacteria and fungi, and that you can then breathe those bacteria in from your own mask. So it's theoretically possible that wearing a mask for long periods of time might increase your chance of viral infection. Which might explain these results.

CC u/Zommy

[–]Bigs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

There are good reasons we've NEVER had an accepted coronavirus vaccine. One of those reasons is previous attempts have created antibody-dependent enhancement of disease or ADE - for a brief period it seems to protect, but it actually makes the disease WORSE.

If I could find that out 3 years ago then there is zero chance the powers that shouldn't be didn't know that.

[–]binaryblob 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

One of those reasons is previous attempts have created antibody-dependent enhancement of disease or ADE - for a brief period it seems to protect, but it actually makes the disease WORSE.

If you post such statements, please add a citation.

[–]Bigs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was able to find loads about it at the beginning, same as (to my own surprise) I found plenty of studies showing masks don't work - at all, for anything - and then saw those same studies vanishing off the net.

I was looking at the mask studies as I presumed they must do something and was trying to build a case for them, but found the total opposite. Every study done found they were pretty useless, even at what they were intended for, which is to stop staff accidentally spitting into open wounds during surgery. When actually studied, infection rates were identical with or without the masks. Many of the studies were done with dentists, who also found they make zero difference.

Studies looking at other uses, such as stopping or reducing flu infections found them also totally fucking useless.

Now it's surprisingly hard to find those studies, as they've been systematically removed. I saved a number of links and they soon turned to 404s, with my favorite being a page saying 'If you are looking for the study showing masks are ineffective against influenza infection, it has been removed due to the ongoing pandemic."

They literally censored real-world data because it went against the narrative.

So should I bother trying to find the studies proving previous coronavirus attempts create ADE? Nah.

Look for yourself, and be sure to use Google, so you can waste your time instead of mine.

Or just ask Fauci:

https://youtu.be/ZrWAqpPGAxQ?si=DuJXXlAvqIwGby24&t=188

"Certain diseases" include coronaviruses, and that lying weasel knew that full well.

[–]ShoahKahn 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The only 'evidence' they needed was that they worked as the NPC COMPLIANCE PROJECTION DEVICES they were intended as; and worked wonderfully as such.

https://i.imgur.com/VXEYLLt.jpg