So, Bollocks, Then

January 19, 2021 Longrider General News, Health and Fitness, sophistry 29

A new study, proving that face masks are effective.

Wearing face masks is an effective way to stop the spread of the coronavirus, a landmark study has found.

This is groundbreaking stuff, given that no such link has been found in previous studies.

Researchers say the study is observational and is therefore unable to prove a direct causal link between mask wearing and transmission.

Ah, right, so a pile of bovine excrement designed to give the right result. Repeat after me, correlation does not equal causation. Bearing in mind this was the summer when the incidence was going to drop anyway.

29 Comments

  1. The Wail article is just more fear-porn. Picked up copies of the Times and FT today. No difference. No-one is allowed to challenge the mainstream misinformation.

    Even Melanie Phillips had a go at Lord Sumption for opposing the lockdown measures in her Times editorial.

    Yes I know the hospitals are ‘overstressed’, but that’s because capacity has not been increased to deal with a seasonal problem that happens every effing year. It seems the NHS would rather spend money on ‘Diversity’ than sorting out the real issue of perrennial undercapacity.

    • Given the noise in the late summer with respect to the expected second wave, it does seem to me that it was incumbent on BJ to prepare extra capacity.

      Maybe open up an extra facility in an unused concert venue.

      We could even have named it after one of our own who gained recognition for realising that infections can at least be partially controlled through sanitation.

      Florence hospitals or such like.

    • @Bill
      NHS response to winter with Covid-19 was…

      …wait for it…

      …reduce capacity by over 9,000 beds

      As for The Wail, I read their columnists and Ross Clarke, don’t look at or read rest. Columnists: Dominic Lawson has lost the plot – Daddy Nigel needs to give him a stern talking to

      Melanie Phillips has been a batty old cat woman for some time now, I now ignore her

      • Best not to read The Times its full of wanky rich opinion writers like Parris who has about 4 homes all over the world and rich London based Remainer lawyers who dominate the letters page. Tossers all !!!

  2. If masks are so effective then why aren’t they, you know, effective? If they really did stop the spread of the Covid virus we wouldn’t need to do all the other shit.

  4. Yes, this Daily Mail story is total bollocks. It contradicts itself by saying masks *do* stop the spread of the virus, then says there’s no proof of a causal link between mask-wearing and transmission. So yeah, bollocks. But how many more sheep in the population will swallow this crap?

  5. “I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that the majority of the population are utter morons”

    You forgot to insert “vast” before “the majority”…

    As for masks, I have a folder on my PC in which I’ve been keeping copies of every study & report into their effectiveness (or otherwise) that I’ve seen mentioned, since this debacle began. It now contains FORTY SEVEN different files, the oldest from decades back when surgeons trialled not wearing them during operations. Suffice to say, none of these reports find any statistically significant benefit, while many cover the negatives, such as re-breathing any “bugs” you may already have, and reduced oxygen & increased CO2 in the wearers blood.

    • Imagine a person of average intelligence that you know, and that half of all people are more challenged. Think George Carlin said something along those lines.

      As I see it, we dumbed down a lot as soon as the handheld smart devices became ubiquitous. There wasn’t a requirement to think thereafter.

    • Bollocks – “Sleepy Joe” (Biden) isn’t the only one suffering from dementia.
      I meant insert “vast” BETWEEN “the” & “majority”…

  6. Masks:
    Many know they are useless and/or don’t want to wear or shouldn’t wear, but peer pressure and police threats make the sheeple comply

    My mum, (80), stopped wearing when hospital told her to and wore a ‘Sunflower Lanyard’. She’s now masked again due to real/imaginary Evil Stares from others

    I have never worn, never challenged and not noticed ‘Evil Stares’. Quite the opposite, customers and staff initiate friendly chat with me and mask never mentioned or hinted at

    Visited GP Nurse for bloods today – nothing said about no mask. Hand sanitiser gone too; receptionists back, but in a greenhouse and waiting room empty

    As Nancy Reagan said about peer-pressure and drugs:
    Just Say No
    – https://youtu.be/kkQXnQ0plDA?t=143
    – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-0OeOFuNXs

  7. Masks are useless for the purpose we are being told they are being used. It’s very difficult, even for me sometimes to come to terms that we are being led by total psychopaths.All I can recommend is turn off TV etc.

    • “All I can recommend is turn off TV etc.”

      But once I’ve done that (and stopped buying a newspaper) I still have to do the shopping. If I’m going to be treated as a dangerous criminal for not wanting to be muzzled I don’t see much of a future…

      • Might come in time, but as per previous poster, I can’t say I’ve ever been challenged about my maskless status in a supermarket, though was at a bank and university.

        Mostly supermarket workers, being young and healthy, and having worked on the frontline throughout this, have realised that something is awry.

        Most have a giggle when I ask how many have died from covid since the beginning.

        Hopefully we wake up soon though, because we’re already in trouble now. Much more of this and it will be difficult to roll back, rolling back the collective insanity is going to be difficult enough, it would have to be a gradual removal of restrictions or the great unwashed will ignore it.

    • I would echo what microdave says to this. This caller to TalkRadio sums up the situation nicely. Like him, I live alone and am well enough to go out to collect groceries, yet have an underlying health issue that makes wearing a mask untenable. Imagine putting a paper bag over your head and trying to breathe through it and you get a flavour of what it’s like for me.

      It is not we who need to stop listening to the news, its the halfwits who believe all the bullshit and are now weaponising it against fellow citizens.

      Personally, the only way out that I can see now is some costly legal settlements. When these cretins start having to fork out four figure sums to pay for their idiocy, they might start to think twice.

      Like Pcar and Wtf, I’ve not had a problem yet, but the storm does appear to be closing in…

      https://youtu.be/Jw_mhPkTpHs

      • “Personally, the only way out that I can see now is some costly legal settlements”

        One case has already been – I saw it reported at Lockdown Sceptics the other day. I can’t remember whether it was £7k or £9k.

  8. If you look at the warf and weft of masks under a microscope you can see millimetre holes. Fine for trapping exhaled aerosols as you can rely on surface tension. However, SARS-2 virus is 100nm – 120nm in diameter. That’s like trying to stop a pea with a chain-link fence. Of course they don’t work. Fortunately you rarely come across virus particles outside a lab. They are dispelled in aerosol form by spreaders. The masks offer some protection from those. All in all that paragraph says it is nonsense.

  9. I think when we’re considering advocates of mandatory masks and indeed lockdown advocates in general I’m reminded of two quotes from the film ‘Demolition Man’ – I’d paraphrase – the average advocate of lockdown/ and it compulsory mask wearing :

    ‘he’s evil in a way you’ve only read about’

    ‘he is a criminal the likes of which you have never seen)

    I do think as our host suggests this will Peter out as unenforceable – not least because of both custodial and court capacity – Might take a little while though.

  10. Look on the bright side.
    With hospitals not treating anything other than CV19, CV19.01, CV19.02….. the NHS expenditure on defending, or just surrendering and paying, out must have dropped.
    Shame for the layers though.

  11. I seem to recall a photo of a box of masks which states that the masks are of little or no use in preventing the spread of coronaviruses. Not cetain if it was photoshopped, though.

  12. This was mentioned at Lockdown Sceptics today:
    https://www.aier.org/article/the-year-of-disguises/
    I haven’t read all of it (yet) but jumped straight to the heading:

    “Don’t “Masks” Make A Difference?”

    The author, Roger Koops says:

    “In my first position after the Ph.D., I was given charge of developing a molecule that was so lethal that even the tiniest amount contacting my skin, nose, eyes, etc., could knock me out and kill without my ever knowing it”

    He sounds like the sort of guy that Wancock would airily dismiss as an “Outlier”, just like he did with Carl Heneghan…

  14. More Mask Study Problems

    ….Finally, is there any significance in the timing? The [Google Funded] report was published the day before Biden became President. Biden has said he will make masks mandatory. The report concludes by saying: “Policy makers should consider innovative strategies for evaluating and increasing mask usage to help control the epidemic.” This seems very convenient. In any case, certainly it will be called upon as evidence when Biden pursues his nationwide mask mandates. It is therefore very bad news.

    https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/01/21/latest-news-261/#more-mask-study-problems

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