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Coronavirus advice: why masks aren’t a good idea

Like France and other European countries, the UK is now advocating Wearing face Masks during the coronavirus pandemic, especially on public transport.

This Daily Mail article explores what is reopening in England and adds (emphases mine):

Firms will be told they must provide staff with face masks to be worn at work, on public transport and when shopping. But wearing face coverings will not be compulsory

Thank goodness for that.

Metro had more:

The Government is now advising ‘that people should aim to wear a face-covering in enclosed spaces where social distancing is not always possible and they come into contact with others they do not normally meet, for example on public transport or in some shops.’ The advice continues: ‘Homemade cloth face-coverings can help reduce the risk of transmission in some circumstances. Face-coverings are not intended to help the wearer, but to protect against inadvertent transmission of the disease to others if you have it asymptomatically.’

Note that a ‘face-covering’ is not the same as a surgical mask or respirators used as part of PPE, and the advice stands that such equipment should be reserved for those who need it. Face-coverings should not be used for anyone under the age of two, or on those who may struggle to manage them correctly. People are urged to always wash their hands before putting them on and taking them off.

What a palaver!

This is what schools in Asia look like today, reminiscent of a 1970s film with John Travolta:

One thought did cross my mind about the barriers, so I was happy to see someone on Twitter mention it:

However, masks, including homemade face coverings, are not a good idea. The same goes for making them mandatory.

This woman yells that she cannot breathe with it. The mask is around her neck as she and her small child are apprehended by police somewhere in the United States:

The same Twitter user posted a two-part video, allegedly from a nurse, who explains in layman’s terms why masks do more harm than good in healthy people. In short, most hospital masks — which is why there has been a shortage of the correct ones during the pandemic — are there to keep bacteria from travelling. A bacterium is much larger than a virus droplet, therefore, wearing ordinary hospital masks for COVID-19 are useless, especially if you are healthy:

Ann Barnhardt’s website has more in ‘**UPDATED WITH TESTIMONY OF A FIREMAN** FACE MASKS ARE GENUINELY, SCIENTIFICALLY USELESS: Multiple RNs check in’. Don’t miss the photo of the man wearing an adhesive sanitary towel!

Excerpts follow.

A nurse wrote to Ann Barnhardt to say (emphases in the original, those in purple mine):

Hello Ann,

I listened to your Podcast Episode #110. Wonderful as always, and strengthens my resolve and fight. Thank you. One thing I don’t think people know about masking is that when we don a mask if we have any virus we breathe it back inside over and over again increasing viral load and weakening our own immunity, so we get sicker, which seems to be the point.

I’m an RN, graduated 2002 from (major, redacted) school of nursing. When i started my career as an ER nurse, one requirement was TB mask fitting. They fit a duck bill mask to your face and put a plastic cylinder with a vent opening over your head and sprayed a concentrated sucrose mist.  If you could taste just a bit of sweetness through mask, you were at risk for contracting TB. So again, what the hell are cloth or surgical masks gonna do?… umm make ourselves sick – that’s it. Any honest doctor/nurse/scientist/virologist knows this mask thing is bullshit.

God bless Ann keep it up. Thank you.

Another nurse wrote in to corroborate the first nurse’s comment. The second nurse says, in part:

Bottom line – if it isn’t fit tested then there’s no guarantee that the “viral particles” are being filtered out. So this mask wearing that we are all “required” to do is…..wait for it….BEE ESS.

I laugh when I see the general public wearing N95s they bought at Home Depot. Unless you fit test it (an N95), you have no idea if it’s actually “working”.

It’s all a mind game.

The fireman said, in part:

Having conducted countless N95 quantitative tests for medics on base when I was still in the military, I can echo that not being fit tested for an N95 pretty much renders it useless.

The proper fit varies from person to person not only by size of the mask, but by brand. So you can’t just say you need a medium, but a medium in brand X. So optimally, your employer would have to buy the right size and right brand for each employee that they attained an acceptable fit factor in. Good luck with that. N95’s are probably the hardest masks to get a proper fit on.

This is all smoke and mirrors.

On masks, Barnhardt concludes:

And remember, folks, this ONLY applies to N95-level masks. Putting a few ridiculous layers of gauze, or even more ridiculously, FASHION FABRIC (I’ve even seen DENIM – that’s just going to give you elevated Carbon Dioxide levels – absolutely STUPID. Carbon Dioxide inhalation is a common method of stunning hogs at slaughter) serves ABSOLUTELY NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER EXCEPT to signal TOTAL SUBMISSION TO THE LIE and to THE TOTALITARIAN REGIME.

It isn’t a “sanitary barrier.” It doesn’t block viruses, and certainly not this common cold virus. COLD VIRUSES CANNOT BE CONTAINED ANY MORE THAN MANKIND CAN AFFECT THE GLOBAL WEATHER. Such a contention is PURE, HUBRISTIC, LYING BULLSHIT.

Regarding the pandemic regulations in general, she rightly thinks these can damage susceptible children (red used in the original):

Finally, let me just put out there the call for one and all to sit in stillness and think about the intense psycho-spiritual damage that is being done to CHILDREN with each passing day that this facemask psy-op goes on.  How many children are now deeply terrified of OTHER HUMAN BEINGS in se, because of this, with the mask being a visible, frightening vector of this terror?

How many children are right now, as we speak, telling themselves internally, in simple, childish terms that they themselves could not yet articulate, but feel with tremendous force, that OTHER PEOPLE ARE SOMETHING BAD, AND THAT TO LOVE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING IS SOMETHING BAD THAT THEY MUST NEVER DO? Because other human beings are dangerous and will hurt you if you get anywhere near them.

Agreed. The unknown psychological damage right now could end up being terribly manifest in the months ahead.

Let’s now go to Technocracy, which has an article with quotes from Dr Russell Blaylock, a physician: ‘Blaylock: Face Masks Pose Serious Risks To The Healthy’. It is scientific, with medical terms and health conditions described the way they would be in medical school.

Blaylock notes America’s Center for Disease Control’s about-face with regard to masks (emphases mine):

As for the scientific support for the use of face mask, a recent careful examination of the literature, in which 17 of the best studies were analyzed, concluded that, “ None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”Keep in mind, no studies have been done to demonstrate that either a cloth mask or the N95 mask has any effect on transmission of the COVID-19 virus. Any recommendations, therefore, have to be based on studies of influenza virus transmission. And, as you have seen, there is no conclusive evidence of their efficiency in controlling flu virus transmission.

It is also instructive to know that until recently, the CDC did not recommend wearing a face mask or covering of any kind, unless a person was known to be infected, that is, until recently. Non-infected people need not wear a mask. When a person has TB we have them wear a mask, not the entire community of non-infected. The recommendations by the CDC and the WHO are not based on any studies of this virus and have never been used to contain any other virus pandemic or epidemic in history.

He summarises the possible dangers of mask wearing to healthy people:

Several studies have indeed found significant problems with wearing such a mask. This can vary from headaches, to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accumulation, to hypoxia, all the way to serious life-threatening complications.

He discusses these dangers in terms of the type of mask worn:

There is a difference between the N95 respirator mask and the surgical mask (cloth or paper mask) in terms of side effects. The N95 mask, which filters out 95% of particles with a median diameter >0.3 µm2 , because it impairs respiratory exchange (breathing) to a greater degree than a soft mask, and is more often associated with headaches. In one such study, researchers surveyed 212 healthcare workers (47 males and 165 females) asking about presence of headaches with N95 mask use, duration of the headaches, type of headaches and if the person had preexisting headaches.2

They found that about a third of the workers developed headaches with use of the mask, most had preexisting headaches that were worsened by the mask wearing, and 60% required pain medications for relief. As to the cause of the headaches, while straps and pressure from the mask could be causative, the bulk of the evidence points toward hypoxia and/or hypercapnia as the cause. That is, a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an elevation in blood C02 (hypercapnia). It is known that the N95 mask, if worn for hours, can reduce blood oxygenation as much as 20%, which can lead to a loss of consciousness, as happened to the hapless fellow driving around alone in his car wearing an N95 mask, causing him to pass out, and to crash his car and sustain injuries. I am sure that we have several cases of elderly individuals or any person with poor lung function passing out, hitting their head. This, of course, can lead to death.

A more recent study involving 159 healthcare workers aged 21 to 35 years of age found that 81% developed headaches from wearing a face mask.3   Some had pre-existing headaches that were precipitated by the masks. All felt like the headaches affected their work performance.

As for the elderly and infirm, masks can pose far greater problems:

Unfortunately, no one is telling the frail elderly and those with lung diseases, such as COPD, emphysema or pulmonary fibrosis, of these dangers when wearing a facial mask of any kind—which can cause a severe worsening of lung function. This also includes lung cancer patients and people having had lung surgery, especially with partial resection or even the removal of a whole lung.

He goes on to explain the dangers of low oxygen levels in the bloodstream — hypoxia — which can debilitate the immune system:

While most agree that the N95 mask can cause significant hypoxia and hypercapnia, another study of surgical masks found significant reductions in blood oxygen as well. In this study, researchers examined the blood oxygen levels in 53 surgeons using an oximeter. They measured blood oxygenation before surgery as well as at the end of surgeries.4 The researchers found that the mask reduced the blood oxygen levels (pa02) significantly. The longer the duration of wearing the mask, the greater the fall in blood oxygen levels.

The importance of these findings is that a drop in oxygen levels (hypoxia) is associated with an impairment in immunity. Studies have shown that hypoxia can inhibit the type of main immune cells used to fight viral infections called the CD4+ T-lymphocyte. This occurs because the hypoxia increases the level of a compound called hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), which inhibits T-lymphocytes and stimulates a powerful immune inhibitor cell called the Tregs. This sets the stage for contracting any infection, including COVID-19 and making the consequences of that infection much graver. In essence, your mask may very well put you at an increased risk of infections and if so, having a much worse outcome.5,6,7

People with cancer, heart conditions and strokes must be very careful if they choose to wear masks:

… cancer grows best in a microenvironment that is low in oxygen. Low oxygen also promotes inflammation which can promote the growth, invasion and spread of cancers.8,9  Repeated episodes of hypoxia has been proposed as a significant factor in atherosclerosis and hence increases all cardiovascular (heart attacks) and cerebrovascular (strokes) diseases.10

In addition, when we wear masks, especially for hours at a time, we are breathing in our own bacteria, creating an incubator effect for the sinuses and lungs. For someone unknowingly harbouring COVID-19, he says, their recovery time might be prolonged, because their own immune system is compromised by cytokine storms, which occur when the body goes into overdrive trying to fight off illness:

When a person is infected with a respiratory virus, they will expel some of the virus with each breath. If they are wearing a mask, especially an N95 mask or other tightly fitting mask, they will be constantly rebreathing the viruses, raising the concentration of the virus in the lungs and the nasal passages. We know that people who have the worst reactions to the coronavirus have the highest concentrations of the virus early on. And this leads to the deadly cytokine storm in a selected number.

He reminds readers that COVID-19 is relatively benign for most of the population, therefore:

we need to protect the at-risk population by avoiding close contact, boosting their immunity with compounds that boost cellular immunity and in general, care for them.

One should not attack and insult those who have chosen not to wear a mask, as these studies suggest that is the wise choice to make.

Lisa Williams, a reporter for the Telegraph, described six things no one says about wearing a mask.

She felt cut off from people because they could not see her face, but the mask was also uncomfortable to wear:

The mask tickled my nose, felt hot and damp almost instantly, and I was constantly having to reloop it back around my ears. I found it a challenge to wear one for this short trip, let alone while performing heart surgery.

It also distracted her:

It feels suffocating, and the noise of your breath on fabric becomes distracting. You never realised your breathing was so LOUD.

Furthermore, one size does not fit all:

Although many masks have a degree of stretch, there is a big difference in how our heads are built and the average mask does not account for this.

While she says that homemade fabric masks could be useful, I rather doubt that — unless they are for short periods of time — because fabric is often treated with chemicals that should not be near our mouths or noses, or the fabric is much too thick. As Ann Barnhardt and Dr Blaylock say above, they can give us potentially fatal C02 levels.

In conclusion: beware of — rather than wear — masks unless instructed to do so by a medical professional, or mandated by law.



This post first appeared on Churchmouse Campanologist | Ringing The Bells For, please read the originial post: here

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Coronavirus advice: why masks aren’t a good idea

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