[Craic] Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses
Arthur Blomme
art at integralshift.ca
Wed Mar 29 10:48:47 PDT 2023
Hi Allan
We discussed Visionary City Planning last Saturday. Lots of interesting
things to discuss on this topic. I have long been a fan of Buckminster
Fuller who presents some interesting insights on this matter.
I myself, prefer not to live in "the darkness" of blind faith.(lol) I
went to Check the source of this graph but could not find it. This
graph would be more valuable to me if it was compared to increases in
all cause mortality. Increases in all cause mortality of circa 16%
reported in Europe and the USA are highly correlated to the rollout of
the vaccine in those countries and not to the virus. International
science reviews are generally suspect of statistical reporting from
Canadian government Sources for many documented reasons. So i wanted to
dig deeper into this statistical reporting. If you want I can provide
sources.
Naomi Wolfe was at one time a respected leftist writer until she started
reporting on Global empire and the military industrial complex. The
article below is how she recently reported on the masking issue and this
particular study from The Cochrane view.
I am not trying to convince you, Allan. I am only presenting factual
information to people highly propagandized by a narrative controlled by
big Pharma and the billionaire oligarchs who own the media.
Resurrection is Transcendence.
Art
Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf <https://naomiwolf.substack.com>
cross-posted a post from The New Normal
<https://michaelpsenger.substack.com?utm_source=cross-post&utm_campaign=676930>
<https://substack.com/profile/28216063-dr-naomi-wolf>
Dr Naomi WolfMar 26 · Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf
Incredibly important expose of how we in the free world were brutalized
by scientifically nonsensical forced masking.
How Zeynep Tufekci and Jeremy Howard Masked America
<https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=834349&post_id=108714591&utm_source=cross-post&isFreemail=true&utm_campaign=676930&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3MTY0Mjg5OCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTA4NzE0NTkxLCJpYXQiOjE2Nzk4NDYyMDYsImV4cCI6MTY4MjQzODIwNiwiaXNzIjoicHViLTgzNDM0OSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.C23faIxXYrzDwKzireNiI0P-kc8gn-Y6fB9nbS0meGM>
Zeynep Tufekci and Jeremy Howard played a decisive role in
shifting CDC guidance and ushering in mask mandates across
America. Zeynep’s role in the COVID story goes far deeper than
most realize.
Michael P Senger <https://substack.com/profile/82753189-michael-p-senger>
Mar 26
<https://substack.com/profile/82753189-michael-p-senger>
<https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=834349&post_id=108714591&utm_source=substack&isFreemail=true&submitLike=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3MTY0Mjg5OCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTA4NzE0NTkxLCJyZWFjdGlvbiI6IuKdpCIsImlhdCI6MTY3OTg0NjIwNiwiZXhwIjoxNjgyNDM4MjA2LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItODM0MzQ5Iiwic3ViIjoicmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.0pD_QroczOqyr6oaxoz_giTinl3VNkD95jadRfQ8U-A&utm_medium=email>
<https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=834349&post_id=108714591&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&isFreemail=true&comments=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3MTY0Mjg5OCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTA4NzE0NTkxLCJpYXQiOjE2Nzk4NDYyMDYsImV4cCI6MTY4MjQzODIwNiwiaXNzIjoicHViLTgzNDM0OSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.C23faIxXYrzDwKzireNiI0P-kc8gn-Y6fB9nbS0meGM&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email>
<https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=834349&post_id=108714591&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3MTY0Mjg5OCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTA4NzE0NTkxLCJpYXQiOjE2Nzk4NDYyMDYsImV4cCI6MTY4MjQzODIwNiwiaXNzIjoicHViLTgzNDM0OSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.C23faIxXYrzDwKzireNiI0P-kc8gn-Y6fB9nbS0meGM>
Save
<https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=834349&post_id=108714591&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&action=save&triggerSave=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3MTY0Mjg5OCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTA4NzE0NTkxLCJpYXQiOjE2Nzk4NDYyMDYsImV4cCI6MTY4MjQzODIwNiwiaXNzIjoicHViLTgzNDM0OSIsInN1YiI6InNhdmUtcG9zdCJ9.gk-Pf5Ep4eIrLbJ8_QJi9SwjVEtqyB7wgieHi7urOys>
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After three years of speculation, an authoritative study has finally
confirmed
<https://www.city-journal.org/new-cochrane-study-on-masks-and-covid>what
humanity gained from all those mask advisories during COVID:
approximately Zero. That was the verdict of a recent Cochrane review
<https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full>,
often referred to as the “gold standard” in evidence-based medicine,
which included results from 78 peer-reviewed RCTs with over 6,000
participants. Across the populations studied, masks, regardless of type,
had made “little to no difference” in preventing COVID or flu.
The Cochrane review seemed to settle the matter once and for all. Mask
opponents had their trump card. But alas, the pro-mask establishment
responded with a trump card of their own: a New York Times op-ed by
sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, /Here’s Why the Science Is Clear That Masks
Work
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/opinion/masks-work-cochrane-study.html>/,
highlighting a statement
<https://www.cochrane.org/news/statement-physical-interventions-interrupt-or-reduce-spread-respiratory-viruses-review>of
clarification from Cochrane’s editor-in-chief, Karla Soares-Weiser, that
the review’s conclusion had been “open to misinterpretation, for which
we apologize.”
This new trump card was a disaster for mask opponents—the proverbial
queen of spades—and it quickly went viral among mask devotees, newly
reassured in the righteousness of their talismans. Though the title was
a lie—and contradicted by the text of the op-ed itself—as was widely
known in the age of “the science,” an op-ed from Zeynep, with her
preternatural charisma, was worth decades of scientific evidence. Soon,
news about the Cochrane review, and the years of meticulously-collected
data and evidence it represented, was drowned out by mainstream
headlines about Soares-Weiser’s little statement of clarification.
Yet Zeynep’s op-ed brought new attention to a question that’s been a bit
of a mystery since COVID began. Where exactly did all these mask
mandates come from? Why did the US CDC suddenly reverse its longstanding
guidance and begin recommending masks for the first time in modern
history in April 2020?
As it turns out, in a role that Zeynep failed to disclose in her op-ed,
it was Zeynep herself and her colleague Jeremy Howard who’d been the
deciding factor in initiating that reversal in the CDC’s longstanding
guidance on masking. The story of how they did it, and of Zeynep’s
larger role in the COVID saga, goes much deeper than her recent op-ed.
Background
Jeremy Howard is a computer scientist and artificial intelligence
expert. Something of a Sinophile, Howard is proficient in Chinese and
repeatedly
<https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1240366575871504387>advocated
<https://www.fast.ai/posts/2020-03-09-coronavirus.html>for
<https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1252948919228813312>the
<https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1246845276524077059>use
<https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1274059240257155073>of
information <https://www.fast.ai/posts/2020-03-09-coronavirus.html>and
expertise from China during COVID. Howard was part
<https://web.archive.org/web/20230325033915/https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardjeremy/>of
the China-friendly WEF Young Global Leaders program for six years and a
member of the WEF’s Global AI Council for three years.
Zeynep Tufekci was born and raised and worked as a programmer in Turkey
before beginning an academic career
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/business/media/how-zeynep-tufekci-keeps-getting-the-big-things-right.html>in
the United States, where she soon became something of a celebrity writer
in the fields of sociology and technology.
Zeynep was consistently ahead on the hot-button topics among the global
elite. When Donald Trump won the election in 2016 and the American
political class became terrified of Russian disinformation online,
Zeynep had already been writing on that topic for years; long before
COVID, Zeynep had also been writing about pandemics
<https://medium.com/message/ebola-the-real-reason-everyone-should-panic-889f32740e3e>.
Pandemics and censorship—those were Zeynep’s fields. Both involved tough
questions about the suspension of citizens’ rights, a subject from which
Zeynep didn’t shy. As she wrote in Wired in 2018, “/It's the
(Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech
<https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-tech-turmoil-new-censorship/>/.”
In Zeynep’s view, social media “invalidates much of what we think about
free speech—conceptually, legally, and ethically”:
*The most effective forms of censorship today involve meddling with
trust and attention, not muzzling speech itself.*As a result, they
don’t look much like the old forms of censorship at all. They look
like viral or coordinated harassment campaigns…
*Even when the big platforms themselves suspend or boot someone*off
their networks for violating “community standards”*—an act that
*/*does*/*look to many people like old-fashioned censorship—it’s not
technically an infringement on free speech,*even if it is a display
of immense platform power. *Anyone in the world can still read what
the far-right troll Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet has to say on the
internet.*What Twitter has denied him, by kicking him off, is
attention.
This idea that foreign disinformation justified the censorship of
American citizens was always an intellectual sleight of hand. “Putin’s
regime helped Trump in the 2016 election. Therefore, we need to censor
Tim, a ‘far-right’ American citizen.” This conclusion does not logically
follow from the premise. Yet we saw this logical fallacy driving the
federal government’s “anti-disinformation” activities increasingly in
the coming years, and especially during COVID, as has now been evidenced
extensively in /Missouri v. Biden
<https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/faucis-red-guards-lawsuit-reveals>/and
the Twitter Files
<https://mobile.twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1636729166631432195>.
Commentators have generally attributed this domestic censorship regime
to groupthink and bureaucratic excess. It’s thus somewhat rare to see
someone spell out this Orwellian sleight of hand so clearly and in so
few words, as early as 2018, as Zeynep did here.
#Masks4All
Like Deborah Birx
<https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/deborah-birxs-silent-invasion-a-guide>,
Zeynep says <https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1365864995049926658>she
first became alarmed about the new coronavirus when she saw Xi Jinping
shut down Wuhan, China. Zeynep’s first article
<https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/preparing-for-coronavirus-to-strike-the-u-s/>on
COVID appeared on February 27, 2020, in which she stressed the
importance of getting ready for major disruptions during COVID in order
to “flatten the curve.” She was among the first individuals to ever use
the term “flatten the curve” with regard to COVID, though the term had
occasionally been used during prior virus scares. At the time, Zeynep’s
advice on masks followed that of the public health establishment:
However, *don’t worry if you cannot find masks; those are most
important for health care workers…*For non–health care people,
washing your hands often, using alcohol-based hand-sanitizer
liberally and learning not to touch your face are the most important
clinically-proven interventions there are.
Over the next few days, Zeynep’s views on masking appear to have changed
quite dramatically, and this seemingly whimsical about-face would have a
profound impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans and
their children for the next three years. As the New York Times later
wrote
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/business/media/how-zeynep-tufekci-keeps-getting-the-big-things-right.html>:
*Dr. Tufekci, *an associate professor at the University of North
Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science *with no
obvious qualifications in epidemiology, came out against the C.D.C.
recommendation in a March 1 tweetstorm
<https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1234113514354225152>before
expanding on her criticism in a March 17 Op-Ed article for The New
York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html>.*
*The CDC changed its tune in April, advising all Americans above the
age of 2 to wear masks *to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Michael Basso, a senior health scientist at the agency who had been
pushing internally to recommend masks, told me *Dr. Tufekci’s public
criticism of the agency was the “tipping point.”*
Around this time, Zeynep began working with Howard, who founded the
American branch of the movement #Masks4All.
It’s not entirely clear how Zeynep and Howard began working together.
There’s no evidence of their publicly deliberating these subjects,
though they’d interacted in prior years. Zeynep and Howard’s first
public interaction with regard to COVID was when Howard cited Zeynep as
a contributor
<https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1237135957620482049>to his
viral March 9, 2020 article, in which he encouraged readers to shut down
their institutions and cancel events based on China’s apparent success
“flattening the curve” in Wuhan.
But as Howard tells
<https://web.archive.org/web/20200803070708/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1283505175206916096.html>the
story of his initial foray into the subject of masking:
*We had a new deep learning course to teach. I needed a case study
for how to interpret complex evidence, and on a whim, I picked
masks.*I had no interest in masks, and assumed the evidence wouldn't
show anything much. In Feb, no-one was wearing masks in the West,
except for a few Asian expat communities. We were told clearly that
they didn’t work and weren’t recommended. *When I started studying
the data on masks, I was absolutely stunned. It seemed that masks
could be our best tool *to slow the spread of COVID-19 *- but no-one
was talking about it! … except for zeynep, who wrote a brilliant
piece in the NYTimes [on March 17].*
Howard says he’d been inspired by a viral video
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5xy2n941jM>posted on March 14, 2020,
by Petr Ludwig, a founder of the original #Masks4All movement in the
Czech Republic, in which Ludwig encouraged everyone to wear homemade masks.
The internationalization of the #Masks4All movement was based on the
story that the universal adoption of homemade masks in the Czech
Republic had “slowed the spread” of COVID cases there, preventing them
from “growing exponentially” as they had in the rest of the world. This
story was always false, if not a lie—COVID cases continued to rise
<https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/>throughout this period in
the Czech Republic. Today, the Czech Republic is among the 10 worst
countries in the world in terms of its recorded number of “COVID deaths.”
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhNo_IOPOtU>
Yet this falsehood, that masks had stopped the spread in the Czech
Republic, became the original impetus for the global #Masks4All movement
and soon a basis for the imposition of mask mandates across the world.
Howard posted his own #Masks4All video
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoDwXwZXsDI>. According to Howard, he
was then contacted
<https://web.archive.org/web/20200803070708/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1283505175206916096.html>by
an editor at the Washington Post: “Imagine my surprise when a
washingtonpost editor contacted me, told me they’d seen the video, and
wanted me to write an article about it for them!” The WEF Young Global
Leaders helped Howard edit the article, which was titled /Simple DIY
masks could help flatten the curve. We should all wear them in public
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/28/masks-all-coronavirus/>./
In the article, Howard urged Americans to ignore current CDC guidance
and to instead adopt universal masking. Howard gushed about a new law in
the Czech Republic “making it illegal to go out in public without a
mask,” and he cited Chinese CDC Director George Gao—a participant
<https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/the-prophetic-monkeypox-simulation>at
Event 201—who’d advocated masks to stop COVID based on the prevention of
“droplets”:
*George Gao, director general of the Chinese Center for Disease
Control and Prevention, stated, “Many people have asymptomatic or
presymptomatic infections. If they are wearing face masks, it can
prevent droplets*that carry the virus from escaping and infecting
others.”…
*The most important message shared in the Czech Republic has been
this: “My mask protects you; your mask protects me.” Wearing a mask
there is now considered a prosocial behavior.*Going outside without
one is frowned on as an antisocial action that puts your community
at risk. In fact, the community reaction has been so strong that the
government has responded by making it illegal
<https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/24/coronavirus-czechs-facing-up-to-covid-19-crisis-by-making-masks-mandatory>to
go out in public without a mask…
Given the weight of evidence, it seems likely that universal mask
wearing should be a part of the solution. Every single one of us can
make it happen — starting today.
We see Gao’s emphasis on “droplets” reflected throughout Howard and
Zeynep’s work. For example, the “sources
<https://web.archive.org/web/20210427223919/https://masks4all.org/sources>”
section of the official #Masks4All website prominently features another
quote on droplets from Gao:
*The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that
people aren’t wearing masks. This virus is transmitted by
droplets*and close contact. *Droplets play a very important
role—you’ve got to wear a mask,*because when you speak, there are
always droplets coming out of your mouth. *Many people have
asymptomatic or presymptomatic infections. If they are wearing face
masks, it can prevent droplets*that carry the virus from escaping
and infecting others. *– George Gao, director-general of the Chinese
Center for Disease Control and Prevention*
This emphasis on “droplets” is later reiterated in Howard’s
falsely-titled article /To help stop coronavirus, everyone should be
wearing face masks. The science is clear
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/04/why-wear-a-mask-may-be-our-best-weapon-to-stop-coronavirus>/in
the Guardian, as well as Zeynep and Howard’s article /Don’t Wear a Mask
for Yourself
<https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/dont-wear-mask-yourself/610336/>/in
the Atlantic. Howard then went on a media blitz similar to that of Tomás
Pueyo
<https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/tomas-pueyo-returns-the-mba-who-shut>,
and he was booked on ABC’s Good Morning America.
As Howard tells it
<https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1283505203082170368>,
this GMA interview, in which he was joined by NIAID Director Anthony
Fauci, was monumental in that it was the first time Fauci had ever come
to advise mask use by the American public. GMA also repeated the quote
on masks’ utility in preventing “droplets” from Chinese CDC Director
George Gao.
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Howard then discussed
<https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1283505216378134528>masking
with Senator Pat Toomey, who briefed the CDC and President Trump. The
next day, Trump announced that universal masking might be needed.
Howard then began making inroads
<https://web.archive.org/web/20200803070708/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1283505175206916096.html>at
the CDC, which was still reluctant to reverse its longstanding guidance
on masks because “the science wasn’t strong enough.” So Howard “tried to
ratchet up the public pressure.”
I realized that *the biggest thing stopping progress on community
mask use in the US was the CDC wasn’t recommending them. So I
focused on that, and tried to ratchet up the public pressure.*I was
lucky enough to know folks that had first hand knowledge of what was
happening in the CDC, and was told there was a concern that *the
science wasn’t strong enough.*So I reached out to some of the
world's top scientists & asked for help reviewing the evidence. They
said yes!
Zeynep, Howard, and their coauthors then submitted
<https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1283505232886902784>their
preprint, an “interdisciplinary narrative review of the literature on
the role of face masks in reducing COVID-19 transmission
<https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118>,” which quickly
became the most-viewed paper of all time on preprints.org. Their
narrative review begins:
*Wu Lien Teh’s work to control the 1910 Manchurian Plague has been
acclaimed as “a milestone in the systematic practice of
epidemiological principles in disease control,” in which Wu
identified the cloth mask as “the principal means of personal
protection.”*… Masks have continued to be widely used to control
transmission of respiratory infections in East Asia through to the
present day, including for the COVID-19 pandemic.
In their paper, Zeynep and Howard argued that “everyone, adults and
children, should wear masks,” citing as a major benefit masks’ potential
to “shape new societal behaviors” as “symbols of altruism and
solidarity” serving as “a visible signal and reminder of the pandemic.”
*Creating New Symbolism around Wearing a Mask.*
*Ritual and solidarity are important in human societies and can
combine with visible signals to shape new societal behaviors*.
Universal mask wearing could serve as *a visible signal and reminder
of the pandemic.*Signaling participation in health behaviors by
wearing a mask as well as *visible enforcement can increase
compliance with public mask wearing,*but also other important
preventative behaviors. Historically, epidemics are a time of fear,
confusion, and helplessness. Mask wearing, and even mask making or
distribution, can provide feelings of empowerment and self-efficacy.
Health is a form of public good in that everyone else’s health
behaviors improve the health odds of everyone else. *This can make
masks symbols of altruism and solidarity.*Viewing masks as a social
practice, governed by sociocultural norms, instead of a medical
intervention, has also been proposed to enhance longer-term uptake.
Zeynep and Howard conclude their paper by recommending mask “mandates”
as a means of “shaping new societal norms.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have utilized mask
mandates as implementation strategy… Although *the use of
mandates*has been a polarizing measure, it *appears to be highly
effective in shaping new societal norms.*
The CDC officially reversed its masking guidance on April 3, 2020, and
insiders reported
<https://web.archive.org/web/20200803070708/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1283505175206916096.html>that
Zeynep and Howard’s preprint had been a factor.
Having laid the foundation for shaping these “new societal norms,”
Zeynep and Howard then turned their focus toward getting governments to
mandate them. As Howard recalls
<https://web.archive.org/web/20200803070708/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1283505175206916096.html>:
Meanwhile, in the US, *it was clear that CDCgov just “recommending”
masks wasn’t enough. People still weren’t wearing them… We decided
to try and write a letter and get lots of scientists to sign it.*I
wrote the first draft of the letter, and Vincent got to work finding
signatories. He knows just about everyone, so he quickly had sent a
request off to nearly a hundred medical experts to sign our letter.
About 95% of the recipients said YES right away! *We wanted to make
sure that people actually saw this letter, so zeynep and I decided
to write an OpEd about it. USATODAY were kind enough to agree to run
it.*
USA Today published Zeynep and Howard’s op-ed, titled /Over 100 health
leaders to governors: Require masks to help contain the coronavirus
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/14/require-masks-stop-coronavirus-spread-over-100-health-leaders-column/5182076002/>/,
in which they wrote that it was necessary to have “80% of the population
wearing masks to stop the spread of the virus,” and in order to make
that happen, masks had to be mandated:
Getting acceptance for public health actions has historically been
difficult. For example, *during the 1910 Manchurian Plague, Dr. Wu
Lien Teh realized the microbe spread by air and that a simple cotton
mask could reduce transmission. *But many doctors didn't believe him…
*But to be truly effective, they need to be worn by almost everyone.
Recent modeling suggests that we need at least 80% of the population
wearing masks to stop the spread of the virus.*
*To make that happen, just “urging” their use is not enough.*We can
see this in recent survey results showing that *in the majority of
states that do not require masks, fewer than half the population are
using them.*
Over the next three years, mask use exceeded 80% of the population in
countless states and countries, but in no instance did it “stop the
spread” of COVID.
Throughout his advocacy, Howard didn’t merely convince governments to
mandate masks; he proclaimed the “science
<https://www.fast.ai/posts/2020-04-13-masks-summary.html>” on masking to
be clear
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/04/why-wear-a-mask-may-be-our-best-weapon-to-stop-coronavirus>—and
this false claim
<https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/the-mask-debacle>was
repeated by pundits. Further, given Howard had no relevant credentials
in the field, he was forceful. When virologist Angela Rasmussen
questioned his analysis, Howard went so far as to email
<https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1254957405432975360>her boss
to demand a “public retraction” of her critique.
In July 2020, Zeynep and Howard were invited
<https://web.archive.org/web/20200803070708/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1283505175206916096.html>to
present their masking preprint and to advise the World Health
Organization; after this point, Howard largely retired from COVID
advocacy. When WHO officials expressed concern that people wearing masks
might start behaving recklessly, Zeynep advised
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/business/media/how-zeynep-tufekci-keeps-getting-the-big-things-right.html>them,
“No, listen, I’m a sociologist, I know that’s not true.”
Zeynep’s COVID Career
Throughout Zeynep’s work, we see this repeated insistence
<https://kelleyk.substack.com/p/where-us-mask-rhetoric-went-wrong>that
masks have no “plausible” downsides, harms, or risks. Zeynep claimed
<https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1269264469793935362?t=xEj6AZYpf81thWf0D6AFVg>that
the WHO’s list of potential downsides to masking was “not a good list”
and argued <https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1269264815412916224>that
the WHO “just went out of their way to inflate a harms list.” In a later
article
<https://www.theinsight.org/p/on-randomized-trials-and-medicine>, she
complained that people were “looking for harms and finding them even
when no major ones plausibly exist,” and decried doctors who were
focused on “all sorts of alleged ‘harms’ from masks” which she believed
to be “nonsense” and “ridiculous.” She boasted
<https://kelleyk.substack.com/p/where-us-mask-rhetoric-went-wrong>multiple
times about being credited with changing the CDC’s masking guidance.
Though it’s been well known since COVID’s earliest days that the virus
poses virtually no risk
<https://washingtonmonthly.com/2022/04/19/what-sweden-got-right-about-covid/>to
schoolchildren, Zeynep repeatedly advocated child masking, arguing in
her original op-ed
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html>which
was the “tipping point” in changing CDC guidance that “everyone should
use masks” due to “increasing evidence of asymptomatic transmission,
especially through younger people.” In their preprint
<https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118>, Zeynep and Howard
argued that “everyone, adults and children, should wear masks.”
Later, once vaccines were introduced, Zeynep again advocated
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/opinion/coronavius-vaccine-masks.html>in
the New York Times for schools to “mandate masks for all elementary
school children” on the false basis that “even the vaccinated may pose a
danger to unvaccinated children.”
In three obscure tweets
<https://kelleyk.substack.com/p/where-us-mask-rhetoric-went-wrong>,
Zeynep opposed masking toddlers, a practice the CDC advised and which
became mandatory in some states. But it’s hard to square her argument
that masks have no “plausible” downsides with this stance against
masking toddlers. And for someone who’s written about masks frequently
in America’s most prestigious media outlets, one might expect a bit more
vocal opposition to toddler masking, especially given her decisive role
in the CDC’s guidance.
Zeynep’s indifference to harms during the response to COVID wasn’t
limited to masking. Though the policy had no precedent
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdowns-were-a-chinese-import-changchun-shenzhen-mandate-public-health-pandemic-11648045191>in
the modern western world until Xi Jinping’s lockdown of Wuhan and wasn’t
part of any democratic country’s pandemic plan
<https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/masked-ball-cowardice>,
in a since-deleted tweet
<https://web.archive.org/web/20200530034646/https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1253679362488090625>,
Zeynep argued that the United States “should be in full lockdown” in
spring 2020.
<https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1998662-e018-4b44-98c0-e4e329aaeda9_541x334.png>
Later, Zeynep wrote in the Atlantic about /Three Ways the Pandemic Has
Made the World Better
<https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/three-ways-pandemic-has-bettered-world/618320/>,
/citing “mRNA vaccines,” new “digital infrastructure,” and the fact that
we’d “unleashed the true spirit of peer review and open science” as
reasons to be thankful for COVID.
Like Matt Pottinger
<https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/matt-pottinger-the-intelligence-agent>,
Zeynep pushed for more COVID interventions in part based on information
from China, though she simultaneously fashions herself as something of a
China hawk and supports the “lab leak theory” of COVID’s origins. In
debating the lab leak theory, Zeynep noted
<https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1628741722107772928>, “No journalist
or scientist in China can operate truly freely,” and
<https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1534532828985171968>“We know people
are compelled in China on sensitive topics, including threats to
family,” and she joked
<https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1534534826249834500>darkly that
Chinese scientists face a risk their “loved ones will be jailed for a
decade on trumped up charges.”
Yet despite knowing that “no scientist in China can operate truly
freely,” when it came to arguing in favor of more COVID interventions,
Zeynep repeatedly advocated the use
<https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1244631341544738817>of information
<https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1277291016370954243>from
<https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1222662053329924098>Chinese
scientists, apparently without questioning any of it.
For example, Zeynep advocated for increased ventilator use in early
March 2020 based on information from Chinese scientists, noting
<https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1237852375181737984>in a
widely-shared tweet that “Chinese scientists” had advised “many COVID-19
patients need to stay on mechanical ventilators as long as four weeks.”
<https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc9b2d8cd-10c6-4460-baa8-535cf71996de_470x535.png>
Indeed, in journal articles, “Chinese expert consensus” had advised
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7162773/>ventilators as
the “first choice” for COVID patients with respiratory distress. This
advice was slurped up by the WHO and spat out all over the world in the
WHO’s initial guidance
<https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/clinical-management-of-novel-cov.pdf>on
ventilators for COVID patients.
As one doctor later told
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospitals-retreat-from-early-covid-treatment-and-return-to-basics-11608491436>the
Wall Street Journal, “We were intubating sick patients very early. Not
for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic… That
felt awful.”
This guidance proved extremely deadly. A study in JAMA later revealed
<https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765184>a 97.2%
mortality rate among those over age 65 who’d been put on mechanical
ventilators in accordance with this initial guidance
<https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/clinical-management-of-novel-cov.pdf>before
the practice was largely stopped after spring 2020. To put these results
in perspective, patients over age 65 were more than /26 times/as likely
to survive if they were /not/placed on mechanical ventilators. Overall,
mortality among COVID patients in New York hospitals fell
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospitals-retreat-from-early-covid-treatment-and-return-to-basics-11608491436>by
over two-thirds between spring 2020 and summer 2020.
The initial guidance from Chinese scientists advising early intubation
led to the deaths of countless thousands of COVID patients. Yet despite
having specifically advised that “many COVID-19 patients need to stay on
mechanical ventilators as long as four weeks” based on information from
“Chinese scientists”—and despite her knowing that “no scientist in China
can operate truly freely”—no apology or admission of error was ever
forthcoming from Zeynep Tufekci.
*The Cochrane Review*
So far, not so good. Despite having no relevant epidemiological
expertise, Zeynep had played a decisive role in railroading the CDC and
the WHO into changing their longstanding guidance on masking; convinced
state governments to mandate masks for “everyone, adults and children,”
in part as a means of “shaping new societal norms”; advocated the
“old-fashioned censorship” of American citizens for legal speech;
encouraged doctors to downplay potential harms of masking; argued that
America “should be in full lockdown” when the policy had no precedent
other than Xi’s lockdown of Wuhan; wrote falsely that schoolchildren
were at risk from vaccinated adults; celebrated “ways the pandemic made
the world better”; and explicitly advised early mechanical intubation
based on information from Chinese scientists, despite knowing Chinese
scientists cannot “operate truly freely,” with no acknowledgment or
apology after this guidance proved extremely deadly. It’s like she was
just so darn charismatic that no one paid attention to what she was
actually doing.
Nonetheless, we were ready to let bygones by bygones. “Mistakes were
made” as they say. But then, after scientists spent years meticulously
collecting data on masking from countless RCTs all over the world,
Zeynep wrote her op-ed on the Cochrane review.
The op-ed is about what one might expect. The title, /Here’s Why the
Science Is Clear That Masks Work
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/opinion/masks-work-cochrane-study.html>/,
is a lie; Zeynep calls for scientists to “continue to collect data on
mask wearing,” which wouldn’t be necessary if the science were in fact
clear that masks worked. Zeynep relies on a selection of clinical
studies, none of which are RCTs; this same level of evidence would show
that any number of silly things work against COVID, from ginseng to
magnesium to melatonin to fish oil. Zeynep cites a trial from Bangladesh
which found an 11% reduction in COVID cases when villagers were given
masks, without disclosing a re-analysis
<https://twitter.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1570588117090041856>that found
no benefit and attributed that finding to bias.
Zeynep specifically names the Cochrane review’s lead author, Tom
Jefferson, several times. But in an email, Cochrane’s editor-in-chief,
Karla Soares-Weiser, with whom Zeynep spoke, said
<https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/unmasking-the-new-york-times-zeynep>she
specifically took personal responsibility for the wording of the
conclusion and that she’d been “blindsided” by Zeynep.
Perhaps most glaringly, Zeynep appears not to have disclosed her own
conflicting narrative review
<https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118>which concluded that
“everyone, adults and children,” should wear masks—or her past advocacy
for mask mandates—when she contacted Soares-Weiser, eliciting
Soares-Weiser’s clarification statement about the wording of the
review’s conclusion. In short, Zeynep’s op-ed may have been an exercise
in disinformation.
*Conclusion*
With regard to Zeynep and Howard’s masking of America, there are only
two possibilities—neither good—and the truth probably lies somewhere in
the middle. The first is that their advocacy was essentially scripted
theater, a pretext for seemingly-spontaneous actions that a network of
institutional leaders was actually planning to take anyway, unbeknownst
to the public. In that case, the existence of such a “script” is
antithetical to our democratic principles, and it’s imperative that we
determine how such a plan came to be and who was behind it.
The second possibility is that it really was this easy for ambitious
activists with no relevant expertise to convince institutional leaders
to reverse longstanding public health guidance in the early days of
COVID—these being the same leaders who then spent years closing their
eyes and ears to any evidence that their interventions weren’t working,
even from some of the world’s most-qualified scientists. For example,
years later, when asked if the CDC would consider revising its guidance
to mandate masks in schools in light of the Cochrane review, CDC
Director Walensky told Congress, astonishingly, that the CDC’s “masking
guidance doesn’t really change with time.”
Twitter avatar for @MichaelPSenger
Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger
When asked if the CDC will revise its guidance to mandate masks in
schools in light of the Cochrane review showing masks do not curb COVID,
CDC Director Walensky tells Congress its advice on child masking will
never change. “Our masking guidance doesn’t really change with time.”
Image
<https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1625643023882403840>
11:47 PM ∙ Feb 14, 2023
------------------------------------------------------------------------
9,925Likes4,068Retweets
<https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1625643023882403840>
The CDC arguably bears the lion’s share of the blame in this story for
being so malleable. Furthermore, Zeynep and Howard were not the only
ones advocating for masks in the initial weeks of COVID. Matt Pottinger
<https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/matt-pottinger-the-intelligence-agent>had
simultaneously launched his own pro-mask crusade in the White House
based on information from his connections in China; others
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/health/masks-coronavirus-cdc.html>such
as Scott Gottlieb and academics and affiliates of the #Masks4All
movement had pushed for universal masking as well.
Nonetheless, Zeynep and Howard played a decisive role in affecting this
vast shift in scientific guidance that so intimately affected the lives
of every American, which the Cochrane review has now shown to have
afforded no benefit at the population level, for dubious reasons such as
“shaping new societal norms.” Throughout COVID, Zeynep pushed false
information and harmful policies that were far afield of her expertise
based on information from China, despite knowing such information was
unreliable, without ever admitting or apologizing for the errors once
the harms became manifest.
Innocent in the ways of information warfare, Soares-Weiser may have
issued her clarification statement as an attempt to appease opponents of
the Cochrane review. But as the above record makes clear, these are not
the kinds of people one should ever try to appease. History teaches that
this kind of moral cowardice by institutional leaders can indelibly
affect millions of lives.
On 3/25/23 12:53 p.m., Allan Baker wrote:
> Hi Art;
>
> My mask fits well, and I wear it daily when I’m not at home.
> I’m also waiting (impatiently) for my sixth injection.
> No need to try to convince me of the error of my ways - I prefer to live in what some people would call “the darkness”.
>
> Just thought you might be interested in a graph of how many people are dying of COVID here in Ontario each week. The MSM infrequently publish this data.
> The pandemic is still with us - and maybe COVID will become endemic.
>
>
> Stay hopeful;
> Allan
>
>> On Mar 25, 2023, at 11:49 AM, Arthur Blomme via craic<craic at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all
>>
>> Dr. Paul asked for this study on the effectiveness of masking. I had touble sending it to him. so i AM sending the study to the group to see if it works.
>>
>> https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full
>>
>>
>> art
>> _______________________________________________
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