A Florida judge struck down the travel mask mandate for airlines this week, and the response from the public was overwhelmingly positive. The decision by U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, also said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to justify its decision and did not follow proper rulemaking procedures that left it fatally flawed.
Acting swiftly, most major airlines dropped mask mandates for inside the plane and for the concourses and airline workers. In symbolic unity, rideshare operators Uber and Lyft also jettisoned their ill-advised mask mandate despite having nothing to do with air travel. What can we learn from these events?
SARS-CoV-2 is not transmitted by asymptomatic persons, so masking well people was always absurd. Even if someone was acutely ill with COVID-19 and unmasked, those around him or her would require about 3 hours in a closed room to effectively transmit the virus. This explains why 85% of all SARS-CoV-2 infections were acquired from household contacts. Even if masks were donned in earnest, expert Stephen Petty has concluded that 18% of the air harboring the virus moves around the mask and is inhaled.1
Finally, the size of the viral particle is too small to filter out, even if the air is directly forced through the mask. Concordantly, studies of public masking failed to show any benefit for respiratory diseases.2 So, we always knew that masking on airplanes was not taken seriously but served persistent as a symbol of the false narrative meant to remind us to be fearful and compliant and to distrust all around us — unless during the time when drinks were served, and all packed like sardines enjoyed a reprieve from the ceremony and drank thirstily sans mask.
Why do doctors, dentists, and other health professionals wear masks if they are so useless? The answer is that masks provide some protection against a big sneeze or cough at close range and help block droplets but not an aerosol spread of common pathogens in the nasopharynx.
We all could agree we could not want the surgeon to sneeze into our open chest during cardiac surgery. Droplets, in addition to aerosol, can carry SARS-CoV-2 virions, and for that reason, we have patients wear masks when acutely ill with COVID-19 to and from testing and in the hospital when going from their rooms to the radiology department.
In the future, hopefully, masks will find their rightful place on surgeons, other healthcare personnel, and acutely sick patients with communicable diseases spread by aerosol/droplets. Of course, those with severe pulmonary disease, immunocompromise, or other conditions that put them at risk for bacterial, viral, or fungal pathogens can wear masks according to their personal level of concern or as advised by their doctors.
Never again should we endure public masking of people who are well and not contagious with any illness. Where we see the absurdity, we should immediately recognize the false narrative and call it out.
This week’s show has a special return guest Dr. George Fareed, MD, who gives us an update on the data supporting early therapy for COVID-19, his practice experience, and his new book co-authored by Dr. Brian Tyson, titled: “Overcoming the COVID-19 Darkness: How Two Doctors Successfully Treated 7000 Patients.”3
This week, our music contribution is from a personal friend and artist, Tania de Jong, “Driftwood – The Musical tells the inspirational story of the renowned Austrian/Australian sculptor Karl Duldig and his artist/inventor wife, Slawa Horowitz-Duldig. We follow their lives in pre-war Vienna, Slawa’s ingenious invention of the foldable umbrella, and an incredible chain of events after miraculously escaping the Holocaust and rebuilding their careers as artists in Melbourne. A magical story of art and creativity, survival and perseverance, family, freedom, and love.
This epic story has been adapted for the stage by award-winning playwright Jane Bodie, based on the memoir by Eva de Jong-Duldig, and inspired by the Duldig Studio museum and sculpture garden, Melbourne. It features original Music and Arrangements by Anthony Barnhill with Lyrics by Tania de Jong AM and Jane Bodie. Acclaimed Director Gary Abrahams brings a stellar cast to the stage.”4
So let’s get real, let’s get loud; on America Out Loud Talk Radio, this is The McCullough Report!
The McCullough Report: Sat/Sun 2 PM ET Encore 7 PM – Internationally recognized Dr. Peter A. McCullough, known for his iconic views on the state of medical truth in America and around the globe, pierces through the thin veil of mainstream media stories that skirt the significant issues and provide no tractable basis for durable insight. Listen on iHeart Radio, our world-class media player, or our free apps on Apple, Android, or Alexa. Each episode goes to major podcast networks early in the week and can be heard on-demand anywhere in the world.
References:
2 Ten randomized, controlled trials reporting estimates of face mask effectiveness in lowering rates of laboratory-confirmed influenza within the community, published between 2008 and 2016, were analyzed, and pooled, applying a standardized, rigorous methodology. One study evaluated mask usage by Hajj pilgrims to Mecca, two university setting studies assessed the efficacy of face masks for prevention of confirmed influenza among student campus residents over 5-months of surveillance, and seven household studies examined the impact of masking infected persons, only (one), household contacts of infected persons, only (one), or both groups (five). None of these studies, individually, or their aggregated, pooled analysis, which enhanced the overall “statistical power” to detect smaller effects, demonstrated a significant benefit of masking for the reduction of confirmed influenza infection (also see this tabulation). The authors further concluded with a caution that using face masks improperly might, “increase the risk for (viral) transmission.”
Independently validating these pooled findings are the results from a single large randomized controlled trial of masking among another cohort of Hajj pilgrims whose enrollment(n=6338) equaled the sum enrollment of all the ten studies in the May, 2020 “meta-analysis.” Published online in mid-October, 2020, this “cluster randomized” (i.e., by tent) controlled trial confirmed mask usage did not reduce the incidence of clinically defined, or laboratory-confirmed respiratory viral infections, primarily influenza and/or rhinovirus. Indeed, there was a suggestion masking increased laboratory-confirmed infections by 40%, although this trend was not “statistically significant.”
Finally, Danish investigators published the results during mid-November, 2020 of a randomized, controlled study conducted in 4862 persons, which found that masking did not reduceSARS-CoV-2 (covid-19) infection rates to a statistically significant, or clinically relevant extent. Covid-19 infections (detected by laboratory testing or hospital diagnosis) occurred among1.8% of those assigned masks, versus 2.1% in control participants. Moreover, a secondary analysis including only participants who reported wearing face masks “exactly as instructed,” revealed a further narrowing of this non-significant, clinically meaningless infection rate “difference” to 0.1%, i.e., 2.0% in mask wearers versus 2.1% in controls.