Big Surprise: A Leftist Calls For Censorship… Of Me

 

(The following is a Letter to the Editor (LTE) written by me that was published today in the local daily newspaper of Santa Clarita, The Signal. I was responding to another LTE critical of my last column, “The Great Mask Scam”. You can read that person’s LTE here: Dorio LTE)

Most of the columns and letters to the editor (LTEs) that I write and that are published by The Signal concern political topics, and since I’m a conservative I expect – and get – a lot of umbrage and pushback from leftists who disagree with my views.

That’s fine with me. I believe in open debate in a free society. But that’s a view that apparently isn’t shared by all.

My 2 December column “The Great American Mask Scam” engendered a responding LTE from Gene Dorio (“Fringe-Speak in Baker Column”, 9 December) that illustrates the problem. Rather than making any effort at all to refute the specific assertions of my column, which included six links to verifiable reputable sources, Dorio presumes a position of superior moral authority (“As a geriatric physician…”), makes a claim unsupported by any documentation (“(I) find this commentary disseminates misinformation while pitting science and public health against political bias.”), and then advocates censorship (“Advising and advocating citizens to wear a mask is not a scam, and The Signal might join in to better serve the health and welfare of our community.”).

You don’t get to win at poker by claiming you have the better hand but refusing to show your cards. The same holds true when debating public policy. Dorio is certainly entitled to his opinion, but that’s all it is… an opinion.

To their credit, The Signal’s editors follow a policy of open debate, and in fact noted when they published Dorio’s LTE that they didn’t agree with my column. Such a policy gives the reading public the opportunity to see all sides of an issue, not just whatever seems to be most popular with leftists at the moment. Major kudos to The Signal.

The leftists’ love of censorship and “cancel culture” is one of the biggest dangers facing this country. They can’t be allowed to get away with it.

 

©Brian Baker 2020

 

 

The Great Mask Scam

 

If you’re old enough you may remember that two or three decades ago there was mass hysteria about the danger of second-hand smoke, primarily from cigarettes, and how it was going to cause premature death on a massive scale numbering millions of people. An entire generation was at risk because little kids were going to be dying en masse from their parents’ smoking habit.

Intentional or not, the whole thing turned out to be one big hoax.

How about the AIDS hysteria of the ’80s? Remember that? Everyone was going to be wiped out by AIDS? “Oops, only kidding…”. Turns out only a small portion of the populace was at risk from AIDS, and the predicted mass die-off never materialized.

Well, it’s déjà vu all over again.

The COVID-19 virus started making its appearance in late 2019 (hence the “19” part of its nomenclature). Like the SARS virus, corona viruses are a form of flu. Within a very few weeks the hysteria was ginned up with dire predictions of millions of deaths in this country, generated by badly flawed computer models and Chicken Little worst-case predictions based on nothing more than mere speculation. To this date there hasn’t been any controlled experimentation to support those assertions. In fact, as I’ll soon discuss, what little actual “science” has been applied to this issue has reached very different conclusions. Further, the illness itself has a survival rate of about 99.9% for those who aren’t seniors or have significant underlying conditions, meaning that for the vast majority of people the illness is merely an inconvenience.

In my 18 May column (“The Rape of the Constitution”) I discussed how masks other than containment/filtration systems were pretty much useless in preventing the spread of viruses, and the six months that have passed since then have borne out that statement. All we have to do is look around to see the reality. We were told that masks and social distancing would “flatten the curve” almost immediately and only be necessary for the short term. Well, does “the curve” look flattened to you? Pretty much all domestic venues, whether they mask or not, are experiencing a significant “second wave” of infections. This is in spite of the fact that in those jurisdictions that mandate wearing masks compliance is very high, estimated as being at 80% or better.

Does that make any sense at all to you? It sure doesn’t to me if masks allegedly work as well as they’re supposed to. The icing on the cake is how many of the mandarins mandating masking are regularly caught flouting their own rules. From Newsome to Pelosi to Whitmer to Fauci to Feinstein, on and on, we see those poohbahs ignoring masks while they think no one’s looking. Probably because they know masking is nothing more than a thick slice of baloney.

But that’s merely the observable phenomena. Let’s cut to the tape of “the science”.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in a report issued in May 2020 (Link 1): “In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks”. Remember that COVID is a form of flu.

According to the Europe PMC (Link 2) masks allow contaminates to flow around the edges of common surgical masks, rendering them ineffective.

Pubmed, part of the NIH, also concluded masks were ineffective (Link 3). A September 2020 study published by the National Library of Medicine (Link 4) reached the same conclusion: “Surgical mask wearing among individuals in non-healthcare settings is not significantly associated with reduction in ARI incidence in this meta-review.” The World Health Organization (WHO) states that “At the present time, the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence.” (Link 5)

The recently released Danish study (Link 6) concluded that, “… a recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, incident SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with no mask recommendation.”

As shown by the “real science” and confirmed by simple observation with our own eyes, masking has turned out to be one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on this country. Masks have become the American Burqa, the symbol that one is a True Believer and not a heretic. It’s pure political Kabuki. Further, continuing mask mandates under the premise that they’re going to magically become effective in battling this virus is the very personification of the Einsteinian definition of insanity: repeating the same action while expecting a different result.

It’s past time to accept that the masking emperor has no clothes, put an end to the nonsense, and move on to policies that make actual sense so that our country can start returning to normal. The way to do that is to take actions that only affect the very small percentage of people who are truly vulnerable to this illness and let everyone else get back to living their lives.

Linked Sources:

Link 1: Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures – Volume 26, Number 5—May 2020 – Emerging Infectious Diseases journal – CDC

Link 2: The efficacy of standard surgical face masks: an investigation using “tracer particles”. – Abstract – Europe PMC

Link 3: The operating room environment as affected by people and the surgical face mask – PubMed (nih.gov)

Link 4: Effectiveness of Surgical Face Masks in Reducing Acute Respiratory Infections in Non-Healthcare Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (nih.gov)

Link 5: Advice on the use of masks in the context of COVID-19, Interim guidance – 5 June 2020 – World Health Organization (WHO-2019-nCov-IPC_Masks-2020.4-eng.pdf)

Link 6: Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers: A Randomized Controlled Trial: Annals of Internal Medicine: Vol 0, No 0 (acpjournals.org)

©Brian Baker 2020

 

(Also published today in The Signal)

 

The Big Question on Masks

 

Here in Colorado, on Friday, 9 October, Governor Jared Polis – who bears an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Potatohead – announced that he’s extending the current masking mandate for an additional 30 days.

Well, of course he’s extending it. I can think of very few – if any, actually – examples in history of dictators who have willingly stepped away from power. Further, that conveniently pushed the possible end date beyond Election Day.

How convenient.

Riddle me this: if masks are so effective, why is it that I can nowhere find data on what percentage of people hit with COVID were mask-wearers? If the vast majority of victims were people who didn’t wear masks you’d think that information would be trumpeted from the rooftops because it would be very strong evidence – not actual proof, but evidence – that masking actually works to help stop the spread of the disease.

On the other hand, if a significant percentage of those victims were regular mask wearers yet were still hit with COVID that would be a pretty clear indication that wearing masks is ineffective, and I would expect that data to be suppressed as it would conflict with the entire political dynamic and dogma that’s been imposed on the populace, which has been based so far on speculation and unproven hypotheses.

So, which is it? Is no one even collecting such data? If not, why not? I find that idea hard to swallow, as it seems to fly in the face of normal medical practice and epidemiology. Or is the data being collected, but also being suppressed?

Let’s see the stats.

 

 

 

©Brian Baker 2020

 

 

The Rape of the Constitution; Are Panic and Hysteria Going To Be the “New Normal”?

 

When in panic or in doubt,
run in circles, scream and shout… Children’s ditty

 

Social distancing. Masks. Shelter in place. “Essential” businesses. Terms and concepts that have become all too familiar and common in our lexicon over the past few weeks.

At every government level from the national to the municipal those policies have been imposed on the populace by executive fiat, without debate or legislative action, via the invocation of “emergency” powers of dubious nature and justification.

The current COVID-19 infestation has been portrayed in the most panic-inducing light possible. “Pandemic” is the term of choice, a word guaranteed to induce apocalyptic fears in the general populace. But let’s rationally consider some facts to see if we’re being gaslighted.

I think it’s imperative to first view the current “crisis” in true historical perspective. COVID-19 is, as the name suggests, a corona virus. It’s not something unprecedented. Corona viruses are actually fairly common. Some strains of the common cold are caused by corona viruses, as are SARS and MERS. In fact, the formal name of the current pathogen is SARS-CoV-2, meaning it’s simply a variant of the SARS pathogen, discovered in 2003, that we’ve seen before.

As I write this column COVID-19 deaths in this country just passed the 80,000 mark. Yes, that’s a lot of people and it’s very sad. But during the 2017 – 2018 common flu season “…more than 900,000 people were hospitalized and more than 80,000 people died from flu” in this country. (https://www.healthline.com/health/influenza/facts-and-statistics#5)

Where were the panic and hysteria then? I sure don’t remember any “shelter in place” or “safer at home” or “social distancing”, or masks, or businesses closed down by imperial fiat, or any other impingement on our constitutional rights to live our lives normally. Do you? Why is that?

Per the US Census Bureau our official population is 331,883,986. Assuming 80,000 people in this country have died from COVID-19, that’s a fatality rate of 0.024104%. That’s LESS THAN ONE-FORTIETH OF ONE PERCENT. Why are we completely and utterly destroying everything this country stands for over a ginned-up hysteria that’s a danger to a ridiculously miniscule portion of the populace? Wouldn’t it make more sense – a LOT more sense – to simply encourage those at the most risk – the elderly and unhealthy – to take precautions, rather than impose draconian and, frankly, un-American “emergency rules” of questionable legality (at best) on the general population?

Consider masks. Viruses are nano-scale particles, much smaller than bacteria. Unless one is wearing a mask or containment device capable of capturing or filtering such small particles masks are useless. The viruses can easily pass through the spaces in the mesh or fabric of the mask, or around the edge borders. So unless one is wearing an N95 or better device, masks – especially pieces of cloth – are really just decorative fashion accessories. And virtue signaling devices, of course.

The biggest and most dangerous problem is how dictator-wannabes – like Commiefornia’s Newsom, Colorado’s Polis, Michigan’s Whitmer, and New York’s Cuomo – have exploited this situation to grab power and impose their diktats by imperial fiat on every aspect of how people must live their lives. This is very reminiscent of life under the commissars in the old Soviet Union, right down to the bare shelves in grocery stores and neighborhood snitches. I never thought I’d see something like this in this country in my lifetime. It’s the stuff of old dystopian books and movies.

Many of those tin pot tyrants are bleating about how this is a preview of a “new normal” moving forward. Once we cross the finish line at wherever the constantly-moving goal posts end up – if they ever actually stop moving at all – they envision a restructured social order in this country. Well, though I had plenty of problems with the “old normal”, mostly having to do with the socialist bent of so much of our governance, I think it’s vastly preferable to whatever nightmare political hacks like these would like to see replace it.

As many times as I’ve read the US Constitution I have yet to come across an Exemption Clause suspending our rights in the event of a public health “crisis”. Yet at this time those rights have been completely obliterated as if the Constitution doesn’t even exist. It’s time for those hacks to be reminded that they work for us; we don’t “bend the knee” to them.

I think it’s high time for a good dose of civil disobedience. Otherwise this current hysteria will have set a very dangerous precedent. Think “climate change” hoax. You just know those fanatics, many part of the same cast of characters, are eyeing these events as a precursor to what they can do by ginning up a “crisis” on that topic. Think of the damage they can do if they’re successful.

“Give me liberty…”

 

 

©Brian Baker 2020

 

(Also published today in The Signal)