THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News

           THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   9/26/2023

Cherry-picking, fact-checking COVID-iocy

People have “moved on” from bad memories of COVID-iocy: Mask mandates and policing of such minutiae as an unmasked paddle-boarder arrested when ashore, enforced masking while walking to a restaurant table with masking expected in between the actual placing of food or drink in one’s mouth, people kicked off airline flights for their child’s uncontrollable aversion to the face-covering.

The lunatic anecdotes are endlessly, depressingly not that far in the rearview mirror as the pandemic’s patron saint of “Science” himself, Dr. Anthony Fauci, though no longer at an official podium, continues to render irrelevant opinions in his gravelly, obfuscating voice.

Readers, my suspicions and doubts arise when it comes to “statistics” presented on this page “proving” that Republicans and Trump supporters got people killed with their anti-vax, anti-mask attitudes. I smell the same kind of bogus science that told us Republican states had as much gun violence as Democrat states, conveniently leaving out the fact that inflated gun deaths in Democrat-run cities, like Austin in Texas, skewered state figures higher to justify the headline.

I recall that when these “COVID” studies first came out, their methodology, population samples and conclusions were found flawed and manipulated to produce the ideologically-preferred, anti-Republican narrative—while age-adjusted fact-checking and complete lack of “control samples” disproved the results.

The “unmasked Trump-sters kill grannies” narrative suffered when study after peer-reviewed study has concluded that, whether applied to groups, states, countries, or school districts—masks and mandates produced little, if any, quantifiable evidence of protection and/or suppression of COVID infections and deaths.

It was no surprise to read of the Cochrane report, cited on this page, that similarly concluded that the inefficacy of masks and mandates was proven in so-called “meta-data” from a multitude of scientific studies. Then, the ideologically-driven backlash by pouncing fanatics, whose philosophical existence is threatened by data—the “science” which I thought had no agenda—that undermines their never-to-be-questioned justifications for population control policies and mandates.

Yes, the “woke” Cochrane editor capitulated to the COVID-iots screaming for retraction, and insisted on diluting the previously impeccably-conducted conclusions with doubt. Truthfully, the real “scientific” sin was that the study “had been weaponized by the far right to suit their own ideological bias.” So much for “science” and the scientific method now denigrated for “poor wording” and “flaws.”

The controversies and debates of 2020-2021 are fresh in my memory as numerous columns cited the flaws and manipulated studies rolled out to intimidate mask mandate skeptics. They would point to school districts that had differing policies, cherry-pick preferred results and tell us that we were putting the health, even the lives, of children in jeopardy if we so much as removed a mask to kiss our own kids.

They’d find nearby Indian villages in that nation, with or without mask mandates, and draw conclusions with the weight of civilization hanging in the balance over skewed results of villagers with dirt roads and worshipful bovines wandering about. They’d ignore the best-in-Europe results from Sweden that eschewed mandates, and school and business shutdowns—all to selectively obsess over assigning guilt for our maskless “sins.”

Relevance? “It sure looks like mask mandate and vaccine requirement plans are in the works,” by Matt Funicello, Redstate.com. Nothing changes the immutable, scientific fact that viruses are a thousand times smaller than the materials in masks, with loose-fitting paper disposables being the worst, and the much-touted “N95, etc.” ones leaving you unprotected the minute you have to put food or drink in you, go to sleep or socialize with family. Oh, and now we’re told high-tech masks have chemical pollutants requiring a half hour of airing out.

Look up: “Secret Letter to CDC: Top Epidemiologist Suggests Agency Misrepresented Scientific Data to Support Mask Narrative,” by Megan Redshaw, theepochtimes.com. Also at that website: “The Dirty Secret About How Masks Really ‘Work’” by Clayton Baker. “The dirty secret is this: Masks don’t work by controlling the virus. Masks work by controlling the people. If we’re talking about stopping the spread of the virus, masks simply don’t work.

“But if we’re talking about stoking fear, instilling blind obedience to state authorities, sowing discord between citizens, and publicly ‘outing’ skeptics and dissidents—in other words, creating an authoritarian, even totalitarian system of public health—then masks work very well indeed.

“By this late date, it has been established beyond honest scientific doubt that masking is ineffective at stopping the contraction and spread of COVID-19. This is true both at the microscopic level and at the population level.” (Dr. Harvey Risch). Expecting a mask to block the virus is like thinking a chain-link fence will keep mosquitos out of your yard.

I’m just getting started on these topics and won’t stop until the COVID-itarians admit that not only were pandemic policies overly restrictive but were, on the whole and in every policy case, counterproductive, socially and economically destructive, and even deadly to the health and well-being of children and adults. “Why Won’t COVID Lockdown Artists Admit They Were Wrong?” (Stephen Moore, townhall.com) Why, indeed.

THE one “must read” article at https://donpolson.blogspot.com/ is “Why won’t Biden close the border.”