Masks for Your Health; Masks to Control You

Pushing masks for psychological control reasons

There has been a spate of articles in Chinese state-run media lately about new virus outbreaks in China and soothing commentary about how health authorities have everything well in hand. It is, after all, the cold and flu season.

Through all the folderol from China Daily and Xinhua et al, there is a common thread that serves Chinese Communist Party objectives, and that is masks.

Meanwhile in the US, the Democrat Party and other authoritarians emulate the Chinese by continuing to push masks, too.

Let us examine the topic.

CHINESE MEDIA REPORTS FEATURE MASKS

Photos of mask-wearing Chinese have become a staple in Chinese media from early 2020 to the present day. The science behind masks is never discussed, but the implication of continuing stream of photos is that “masks work.” A few examples along the way:

A masked woman on a Beijing escalator in the South China Morning Post on 10 February 2020

Masked pedestrians in Shanghai in The Strait Times on 2 April 2020

A HAZMAT-suited medical worker in Yinchaun takes a saliva swab from a masked woman in China Daily on 28 Oct 2021

Masked employees making daily food deliveries in Shanghai in China Daily on 13 April 2022

A masked medical worker injects a masked senior citizen in a Beijing hospital in Global Times on 13 December 2022

Fast-forward to 2023, and here are a couple of recent headlines from Chinese media concerning viruses and masks, as the CCP keeps the gaslighting about wearing masks and the fear-mongering about COVID going.

From South China Morning Post on 28 November: China calls for people to ‘minimise personal movement and visits’ as respiratory illness cases surge [features a mask-wearing child]

From China Daily on 17 December: New COVID strain poses low risk [an embedded picture depicts masked sick children awaiting diagnosis and treatment at a Beijing hospital]

Masks, masks, and more masks! People wearing masks have become a staple of Chinese media reporting. The Chinese people have been conditioned to wear masks through the CCP’s blending of fear of the COVID virus with psychological reflexive response to communist control over everyday lives.

DEMOCRATS SUPPORT MASKS

Not to be outdone by the communists, Democrat-dominated institutions in the US have continued to push masks, too:

As reported by Newsweek last month, hospitals in four Blue states, including “California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York, as well as Washington, D.C., have all brought back rules meaning face masks are mandatory.”

A Newsweek article in August listed a number of hospitals, schools and businesses that have already reinstituted mask mandates.

Here is a more recent article in which CDC Director Mandy Cohen advises people to "mask up" again “to protect themselves against respiratory illnesses.”

And the Democrat sycophants in the legacy media continue to push masks, too, with this example from the Today Show being typical of their shtick of quoting “experts” who recommend wearing masks. A quote from the article: “People who have tested positive for COVID-19 still need to wear a mask around others for a full 10 days, according to CDC guidelines.”

THE TRUTH ABOUT MASKS

Contrary to widespread belief that masks work, there is increasing evidence that masks have no utility whatsoever in protecting against the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses. Various studies have borne out those truths.

The Brownstone Institute published an article way back in December 2021 that should have been a red flag about the uselessness of, and possible harms from, the wearing of masks. The article cited, linked, and summarized the conclusions of “167 studies and pieces of evidence that showed the ineffectiveness of masks, as well as the potential harms from wearing them over extended periods of time. An example of one of the conclusions from a 2010 study (!): “Results obtained in the study show that common fabric materials may provide marginal protection against nanoparticles including those in the size ranges of virus-containing particles in exhaled breath.”

A peer-reviewed study by Norwegian researchers published by the Cambridge University Press on 13 November 2023, entitled “Association between face mask use and risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection: Cross-sectional study,” determined that regular mask-wearers had a 74-75% higher risk of testing positive for COVID than those who didn’t wear masks. From the report: “The crude estimates show a higher incidence of testing positive for COVID-19 in the groups that used face masks more frequently, with 8.6% of participants having never or almost never used masks, 15.0% having sometimes used masks, and 15.1% having almost always or always used masks reporting a positive test result.”

In January 2023, the Cochrane Library posted the results of a study that analyzed 78 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving “physical interventions (screening at entry ports, isolation, quarantine, physical distancing, personal protection, hand hygiene, face masks, glasses, and gargling) to prevent respiratory virus transmission” of various viruses including COVID-19. The conclusion: “The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection.”

On 3 November 2023, the British Medical Journal published a study entitled, “Child mask mandates for COVID- 19:  a systematic review.” The effort screened 597 studies of which 22 were used in the final analysis, drawing the following conclusions: “Real- world effectiveness of child mask mandates against SARS- CoV- 2 transmission or infection has not been demonstrated with high- quality evidence. The current body of scientific data does not support masking children for protection against COVID- 19.” [Emphasis added]

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In addition to the Chinese, some Americans and others have also become veritable “mask-o-philes” due to relentless government pressure (gaslighting) from the CDC, NIH, and state public health agencies to wear masks. Public health agencies in many countries around the world implemented mask mandates in early 2020 as COVID-19 was spreading far and wide and strongly encouraged people to wear masks especially in public places. That messaging continues to this very day in some countries without any scientific evidence produced that proves that masks actually work.

The residual effect of that masking pressure remains in various parts of the US, too. This is what the US Center for Disease Control Public “updated” on their website in August 2021: “Masking is a critical public health tool and it is important to remember that any mask is better than no mask.” Despite the above studies showing the ineffectiveness of masks, that CDC link is still active two years later!

Surely the communist Chinese are aware of those mask studies – as many Chinese citizens are almost certainly also aware. The question is why do Chinese state-run media continue to show Chinese wearing masks (seemingly everywhere)? The only satisfactory answer can be for gaslighting purposes and to maintain the fiction that masks actually have utility (the only real utility being to psychologically browbeat people to accept more authoritarian controls by the communists).

Are some Americans in positions of authority once again exhibiting their authoritarian impulses given the “inefficacy of wearing masks”? Is the mask-wearing propaganda psychologically preparing Americans to head down the path of authoritarian social controls being blazed by communist China? We follow the advice to “mask up” at our collective peril - in more ways than one!

The end.