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Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 9

By August 23, 2021Commentary

The terror campaign run by politicians and public health experts as a result of coronamonomania resulted in many people avoiding needed health care, including persons who were having heart attack symptoms failing to go to an ER and people with known cardiac disease failing to maintain routine checkups.  The predictable result of this terror campaign and resulting care avoidance is more deaths from heart attacks that could have been prevented or treated more quickly.  This meta-review and analysis of studies on the effect of the terror campaign on heart disease finds that there has been a 40% increase in heart attacks outside the hospital accompanied by twice the risk of resulting death.  Congrats to the terror campaigners, I am sure this is just what you hoped for.  But don’t despair, I am also sure some of the people may have tested positive on an ultra-sensitive PCR test, so you can call them CV-19 deaths too.    (RS Study)

The mask religionists will never let go and it is pointless to argue with numbskulls who can’t distinguish between evidence and belief.  So even when research clearly shows that masks don’t work to slow transmission in the community and why that is so, they have to find some way to weasel around the evidence.  I love the title of this article, because instead of saying masks don’t work, it says we need better masks.  (Mask Study Article)   (Mask Study)    This was another mannequin study, so not real humans with real human mask-wearing.  And they just had the mannequin expel aerosols, no attempt to include virus and measure that.  And the time measured was very short, but we are asking employees, the public and children in school to wear masks for hours at a time.  The authors were looking at masks primarily as source control and found that cloth masks and surgical masks basically didn’t stop most aerosols, which recent studies pretty clearly show contain most virus that is emitted and those aerosols maintain that virus in airborne particles for an extended time.  Now here is the truly hilarious part of the study, N95 masks, which are incredibly uncomfortable to wear for any length of time, only blocked 50% of aerosols, but the researchers say if we just wear them, everything will be hunky-dory.  Please note also the finding that masks tended over a short interval to begin to concentrate aerosols and therefore emit them in larger concentrations than were emitted by unmasked persons.  And they make this recommendation to wear N95 masks while noting that supposedly more effective masks pose a significant impediment to good breathing.  And the researchers further find that ventilation improvements are far more effective than even N95 masks.

I have been saying this since the mask nonsense started.  They might in an isolated instance of encounter with virus particles prevent transmission to you and they might prevent you, if you are infected, from spewing quite as much virus.  But over any significant number of encounters, do the math if even N95s are only blocking 50% of particles.  And that leaves aside issues about what happens to all the virus particles being collected by the mask, poor fit, touching the mask, and on and on.  The question must be framed as “do masks slow community transmission in the population”.  I find my answer by looking at epidemic charts, the answer is clearly no.  Ianmsc on Twitter constantly shows this.  And the failure of the religionists to do real trials to demonstrate how wonderful their little fetish is, tells you all you need to know about how well they work.

In light of evidence suggesting that vaccine effectiveness may lessen somewhat rapidly, the followup period for any study on vaccines becomes important.  It was short for this study from Germany, but give the age of the participants, it is still informative.  (Medrxiv Paper)   The study examined vaccine effectiveness at preventing infections hospitalizations and deaths among persons over 80 years old.  The study covered over 700,000 persons and even among this quite old group effectiveness against infection was 68%, against hospitalization 73% and against death 80%.

This study examined breakthrough infections among health care workers in Germany.  (Medrxiv Paper)    There was a low percent of vaccinated workers with breakthrough infections.  All were asymptomatic or mild diseases resulted.  Cycle numbers were lower in asymptomatic versus symptomatic individuals.  But the really interesting finding was that  cycle numbers for positive tests on these infections appeared similar to those from unvaccinated workers infected with the original strain, in other words Delta didn’t produce higher viral loads in vaxed persons, and the samples were less likely to actually culture for viable virus and the period of positivity was much shorter.  This strongly suggests that many of these breakthrough “infections” aren’t infections at all, but testing that finds viral fragments from the repulsion of an attempted infection.

Is their a significant difference between the adaptive immune response resulting from infection and that occurring after vaccination?  Another study examines this question and finds that while vaccination resulted in higher near-term antibody levels, those levels declined more rapidly in vaxed people as opposed to those with immunity from infection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

There has been a lot of research on the relative costs and benefits of lockdown policies and it is difficult to assess accuracy because so many assumptions and different methods of analysis are involved.  Here is another such study, focusing solely on economic costs and finding that those costs of lockdowns far outweighed any benefits.  (SSRN Study)

Join the discussion 25 Comments

  • Dan Riser says:

    I am now faced with that after the big shut downs and terror porn. I have to have my aortic valve replaced and all my tests have been completed but now the hospital administrators who are suits probably not surgeons decide that they just might have to cancel surgeries due to a shortage of beds. My condition is a matter of life and death and not something I can live without having done.. Surgery is scheduled for tomorrow.

  • Alvasman says:

    Because I have a partially collapsed nostril, am congested, and have “hot breath” due to acid reflux, I find the mask difficult to wear. To the point that I don’t wear one at times or wear it improperly I am in danger of losing my much-needed job. At my age, I’m in the virus danger-zone age-wise. Would gladly retire because the physical labor starting to be a bit much, but can not and will need to work until I drop. To my knowledge I haven’t been infected despite being around any number of people for part of a day five days a week ever since this thing began.

    So, I’m in the process of waving a white flag; meaning getting a vaccine though I haven’t decided which one (I think I’m in information overload, at this point). All this to say there are any number of these mega-corporations, either foreign owned or American in origin, who exert their control with a one-size fits all attitude. So much for personal health care. I’m convinced their concern is mostly the almighty dollar and they have accumulated resumes just against some employees have had enough and walk out. Also, I understand that once the FDA give approval of the vaccines employers can mandate them, with little legal recourse for those employees who refuse.

  • Richard Allison says:

    I read the U of Waterloo study pointed at by Kevin’s link. Then decided to do a duck duck go search to see where else the study surfaced in print. Lots of places in print mostly in fairly obscure publications, lots in India. The Daily Mail in London was the only major news outlet I found- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9914969/Popular-blue-surgical-face-masks-NOT-stop-people-infected-COVID-19.html.

    No NY Times, WaPo, USA Today or WSJ. Thought that was interesting.

    Note perhaps I missed something or those publications will eventually report on this study. However that’s not the way I’d bet.

  • J. Thomas says:

    A very sad day at the FDA, approving an experimental [vaccine] with NO long-term data. A completely politicized and corrupt organization who should be closed with all leadership jailed. Does this mean that they are now liable for all resulting medical consequences from this experiment?

    • Kevin Roche says:

      not true at all, a complete mischaracterization of the FDA process and the data used, you shouldn’t say anything if you don’t understand the typical drug development and approval process

  • Chuck says:

    Is there any chance of moving back to screening people before being tested? In March-April 2020, you had to call a nurse’s hotline with your symptoms prior to being approved for a test. In other words, will we stop testing asymptomatic people?

    • Kevin Roche says:

      It would make sense to limit testing, or start routinely disclosing cycle numbers and the threshold being used for positivity. Otherwise we are getting a lot of false positives

  • Ganderson says:

    We’re all masking up again in Massachusetts. Most school districts are requiring all school personnel, including school kids, to be masked. So far Governor Charlie “Parker” has resisted calls for a statewide order, but I believe he’ll fold like Dick Contino’s accordion.

    A good news/bad news scenario here in Amherst. The Mullins Center practice rink at UMASS, (home of the National Champion Minuteman😀) where my group has had the Wednesday night 9 pm ice time slot since the facility opened in the early 90s has told us we can come back and play hockey. That’s the good news. Bad news is we are required to wear masks at all times while we are in the facility, including when we are ON THE ICE, PLAYING HOCKEY. I told the guy who organizes our skates to, in the immortal words of Louis B Mayer, include me out. Could mark the end of a tremendously undistinguished hockey career.

    My Nextdoor feed is full of stories about the vaccinated people who got the ‘’rona and are really sick. One woman suggested we boycott and picket the local BigY, a local grocery chain , aas she saw someone in the store without the face diaper. Many of the posts are by doctors and nurses. I wonder why- are these medical professionals deluded, or outright lying? And why? Or are they not really med pros?

    Had a conversation with a friend of my wife’s- an academic, obviously intelligent, and a total Branch Covidian. Takes it as a matter of faith that the virus is out of control in Texas, Florida, and South Dakota. Mad as a bicycle.

  • C Schenck says:

    Kevin,

    Please do a blog post on the FDA approval process.

    Thank you

  • Colonel Travis says:

    This is the top headline in the Dallas Morning News right now:

    Dallas looking for 12,000 students who didn’t show up to school
    District leaders hope new virtual option for young kids brings back families worried about COVID-19

    Gee, I wonder if irrationally scaring the you-know-what out of everyone for the past year and a half had anything to do with it? These kids are ruined for life, psychological and educationally.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      I don’t think it is worrying about CV that keeps kids in big metro areas out of school, they just disengaged last year when real school stopped and many don’t have the strong family structure necessary to get them back in.

  • Carol Ann Kington says:

    I have been reading your blog for well over a year … thank you for the information you provide. I don’t believe masks work much, if at all, based on many of the studies you have provided us with and have avoided using them because I am claustrophobic and have anxiety … both things make me incredibly physically and psychologically uncomfortable to wear a mask.

    I just saw this link on CFP yesterday which seems to show masks DO work. I’m still not on board .. lol. If you haven’t already posted this on your blog, can you give me a short takeaway on what you think of this study?

    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2776536

    The link on CFP seems to have disappeared, or maybe I’m missing it, but I had bookmarked the article.

    Thank you, Kevin!

  • J. Thomas says:

    Please name one [vaccine] which as been FDA approved with NO long-term data. I don’t have to know how a corrupt process works to know this is wrong. No LTD and a out of control VEARS = caution, NOT politically driven approval. You’re a lawyer, why no comment regarding the other part of my post on liability shift now that it’s ‘Approved”? Who’s going to support all of the people who have trouble with this jab? And why would anyone put their immune system at risk so someone else might not (99.9%) die? Our society is in the throws of mass psychoses, driven by a sick political class. We are their ‘subjects’ not their partners in a balanced society.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      you simply have no, zero, idea what you are talking about. You clearly don’t understand that in the absence of a mechanism for something that would crop up after years, the pure large number of people taking something substitutes for time. if it were there, it would show up by now. And how do you think flu vaccines for newly emergent strains are approved? No long term studies there either. Really, if you don’t know what you are talking about, don’t talk.

  • Blackwing1 says:

    Mr. Roche:

    I just came on the U of Waterloo study this morning and have only skimmed it, but I was going to provide a link to it for you (not necessary now). What I found most interesting were the “simple commonly used” masks that they tested; one was the typical multi-layer blue “surgical” mask, the other was a three-layer (3-layer) cloth mask. In the year-and-a-half that the math-impaired have been wearing masks I have yet to see a home-made 3-layer cloth mask. Why they selected that for the study is a mystery.

    But it also reinforces what I’ve tried to point out many times. Not only are the “filter media” of the single-layer cloth or paper masks utterly inefficient at filtering human respirable aerosols in the 2 to 5 micron range, without an effective face seal they are rendered completely useless. This study completely confirms this fact:

    “The results show that a standard surgical and three-ply cloth masks, which see current widespread use, filter at apparent efficiencies of only 12.4% and 9.8%, respectively. Apparent efficiencies of 46.3% and 60.2% are found for KN95 and R95 masks, respectively, which are still notably lower than the verified 95% rated ideal efficiencies. Furthermore, the efficiencies of a loose-fitting KN95 and a KN95 mask equipped with a one-way valve were evaluated, showing that a one-way valve reduces the mask’s apparent efficiency by more than half (down to 20.3%), while a loose-fitting KN95 provides a negligible apparent filtration efficiency (3.4%). The present results provide an important practical contrast to many other previous experimental and numerical investigations, which do not consider the effect of mask fit when locally evaluating mask efficiency or incorporating mask usage in a numerical model. Nevertheless, if worn correctly, high-efficiency masks still offer significantly improved filtration efficiencies (apparent and ideal) over the more commonly used surgical and cloth masks, and hence are the recommended choice in mitigating the transmission risks of COVID-19.”

    Note that the efficiencies of the surgical and 3-layer masks quoted above are with GOOD face seals, and that having a poor face seal renders the high-efficiency (N95) masks completely useless (3.4% efficiency). Where they think that 3-ply masks “see current widespread use” is left unstated.

    You can tell who is routinely wearing an N95-style mask: They have a circular bruise all the way around their nose and mouth from the necessary tightness to fit the mask to the face. They cannot have a beard or mustache, and even moderate hair growth on the face prevents the necessary seal.

    The wearing of the mask has become a true religion, and those of us who point out that they simply DO NOT WORK have become heretics. It’s only a matter of time until they start executing us for our heresy.

  • J. Thomas says:

    This is a new type of vaccine, the first large scale use in the human population. To compare it to flu shots is a senseless rebuttal. Jabbing half the population with [so far] statistically low short-term severe consequences now equals long term data ? … that pretzel logic is exactly why you’ll ever get the other 50% to buy in. The only sensible reason for the rush to approval was to give businesses leverage to FORCE jabs into their employees. That’s not legal medicine or adherence to the Hippocratic oath. There’s ZERO medical urgency to do this as C19 is now endemic, the mutations are towards less lethality, there are early onset treatments that are working well and, as you’ve so eloquently expressed multiple times, it’s extremely tilted towards the old and medically fragile. And, BTW, all of this is supported by a phony PCR scheme … which you’ve also agree with.

    I really don’t get where you are coming from anymore. You’ve been 100% against the government’s approach to how this entire pandemic was handled, but now you think that the same government’s free, fast and forced vaccine program is somehow correct and worthy of support in order for them to stop their tyranny. It is their primary mechanism of control at this point. Wait until we see the ‘Primary’ variant show up next fall and voting yet again bastardized by the use of another concocted medical emergency. Get off the fence Kevin !

    • Kevin Roche says:

      Not spending my time replying to ignorance anymore. The vaccines were well-tested and have been used in hundreds of millions of people with minimal issues. For a respiratory virus vaccine, they are quite effective. What would the alternative be–let everyone get infected, because while I know it is exaggerated, there is still a huge hospitalization and death toll from the virus.

  • rbolter says:

    Hi all,

    Any concerns on the study of the (Mask Study) linked here using olive oil? The point is that N95 masks are specifically NOT rated for oil based particulates. That’s what P95 masks are for. All this study proved is that a mask that is not rated for blocking oil based particulates does not, in fact, block oil based particulates.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      excellent point, I have no idea why they used that–in fact why not use something akin to respiratory expulsions with a virus of similar size to CV-19 in it.

  • Jolie says:

    I see the numbers for delta on the vaccinated. I see the numbers for delta on the natural immune group. This may be a bit hard to quantify but: are there numbers for folks who caught covid and also got vaccinated? Because you have a natural immunity factor and you have a vaccine factor. (Bearing in mind that there are still two groups of unknowns, the immune in the first place and the folks that caught a light dose and didn’t notice.)

    • Kevin Roche says:

      yes there are in several studies I have posted a summary of, and the combination of being infected and getting vaxed appears to provide the strongest protection

  • J. Thomas says:

    There’s only a huge population of deaths because the medical community was under strict orders NOT TO PROVIDE any medical support for the first year or more of this outbreak. Couple that with the Cuomo-style management schemes and the outright lies about who died ‘with vs. from’ and you have the phony numbers you’re referring to. This isn’t medicine, it’s tyrannical government. And yes, you should let it run through the population under 40! One vaccine (with one spike mechanism for protection) for everyone sets the entire population up for a variant, now or in the future, that can make this look like mosquito bites.

    The arrogance in big pharma is betting all of our lives on the hope that they can now create version after version of mRNA serums to stay ahead of any monster they create with this strategy. The entire global population is then under government control to get the jabs to stay alive. What a beautiful world that will be !

    Weather we agree with you or not, I believe all of your feedback is taken with sincerity and is helpful to understand our situation.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      just when I think you can’t say something any wilder, here comes the absurd idea that the medical community was told to stand by and do nothing. What an insult to all the doctors and nurses, and i know many of them, who have worked tirelessly to save lives and help the infected recover. Amazingly effective conspiracy too, to get the millions of health care professionals in the US alone to agree to do this

  • J. Thomas says:

    I do agree and didn’t mean to discount all of the work that they have done. We all know doctors and nurses who are tireless warriors in this fight. Many have gotten this virus as a result of their work and had to fight this personally. A sincere blanket apology to all of them if my point was misunderstood.

    But let’s not be naïve, there was top down direction to the primary care level to ‘go home until you think you need hospitalization’. Rem’d and Iver’m were taken of the table as options. In my opinion, this was to help ‘qualify’ the [vaccine] EUA. There were also known strategies regarding vitamin therapies that might have helped many turn the corner at home that were not advised. As a nation, we fumbled and bumbled around for more than a year with a myopic strategy of [vaccine] only. This costs countless lives which no one is being held accountable for. My complaint is about the central planning, government to the rescue, arrogance that has permeated our now ‘government run’ medial system.

    Everything; insurance, research, pharma, all the way down to your family’s PCP have been scooped up and turned into a political mess. When you mix politics and medicine, you get politics ! No centrally planned approach to any problem is better that a market based, boots on the ground, strategy. They F up everything they touch and they think more is going to somehow make it all better. Other nation’s successful responses should have been factored in to our polices, but they were scoffed at by the arrogance of this country’s leadership. And socialist assholes like Bernie Sanders want a complete take over of the healthcare system (look at what a partial take over has done) !

    And I do appreciate and respect the direct and appropriate feedback ! My head is spinning too with the dizzying amount of crap to sort through to make good decisions for our company.

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