My Thoughts

Enough is enough. I have had it with the mob, the media, the mayhem and the madness. I have had it with the utter failure or—according to Heather Mac Donald—outright malfeasance of public officials in their “overreaction to the novel coronavirus” which has “put American cities into a coma; those same officials’ passivity in the face of widespread rioting threatens to deliver the coup de grâce.”

Together, these back-to-back governmental failures will transform the American polity and cripple urban life for decades.

Before store windows started shattering in the name of racial justice, urban existence was already on life support, thanks to the coronavirus lockdowns. Small businesses—the restaurants and shops that are the lifeblood of cities—were shuttered, many for good, leaving desolate rows of “For Rent” signs on street after street in New York City and elsewhere. Americans huddled in their homes for months on end, believing that if they went outside, death awaited them.

The problem for the huddled masses was that their fears were largely exacerbated and predicated on opinion and lies; lies which continue to be pushed by those same failed public officials and the media. Their constant refrain has been “Follow the science” and “Listen to the experts” yet their actions have failed time over time in this regard. If one follows the science, one quickly discovers that our “public servants” are naked, clothed only by invisibility cloaks provided them by their media tailors who weave a false and malicious narrative out of whole cloth.

Take the efficacy of wearing cloth masks. Controlled randomized trials, conducted by well-respected laboratories and researchers have shown “for years” that cloth masks have little, if any efficacy in reducing the infection rates of viruses such as influenza and coronaviruses. According to a Cluster Randomized Trial of Cloth Masks Compared with Medical Masks on Healthcare Workers (April 2015) involving over 1600 healthcare workers:

The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm … Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.

The results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform Occupational Health and Safety…. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.

Let us not forget the vaunted and all-knowing CDC who in January 2020 issued guidance that did not recommend the wearing of face masks: “CDC ‘NOT RECOMMENDING’ Americans use face masks to prevent Coronavirus” one headline shouted! And the now highly doubtable Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has flipflopped so many times he no longer knows whether he is coming or going, repeated that guidance in March, then nuanced it in April, redacted it in May, and forgot what he had last said in June. The last anyone saw of Dr. Anthony Fauci was on the cover of InStyle magazine relaxing by the pool without a mask. Go figure. According to the CDC’s own guidance:

Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.

And then there is the WHO (who?) who issued this guidance on June 5, 2020:

There is limited evidence that wearing a medical mask by healthy individuals in households, in particular those who share a house with a sick person, or among attendees of mass gatherings may be beneficial as a measure preventing transmission. … At present, there is no direct evidence on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.

Last, but definitely not least (far from it,) on May 27, Nature reported in a feature article, Respiratory Virus Shedding in Exhaled Breath and Efficacy of Face Masks,

Among the samples collected without a face mask, we found that the majority of participants with influenza virus and coronavirus infection did not shed detectable virus in respiratory droplets or aerosols. For those who did shed viruses in respiratory droplets or aerosols, viral load in both tended to be low.

The major limitation of our study was the large proportion of participants with undetectable viral shedding in exhaled breath for each of the viruses studied. We could have increased the sampling duration beyond 30 minutes to increase the viral shedding being captured but chose not to do so. Perhaps forced coughing might have had a different result.

When asked whether face masks were efficacious in slowing the spread of the coronavirus, Dr. Ramin Oskoui responded, “The short answer is no. There is no evidence that aerosolization of the virus is a major factor in the transmission of the virus.” “Does your chain link fence stop the mosquito,” he then asked?

Whether you choose to wear a mask or not; whether you believe the science or decide to follow public opinion should really be left for you to decide. I really do not care whether you choose to mask or unmask. What I do care about is having the opinions of pompous public officials, bureaucrats and the media mandate that masks MUST be worn under the guise and guile of science. Enough is enough.

One last thought and it is a doozy. Have you noticed the numbers that are being thrown  at you minute by frightful minute? “Huge spikes in new cases” are shouted at you constantly. You should be asking, “So what?” “Are not the number of deaths more important?” The answer might surprise you. For the week of July 11, 2020 for the entire U.S. there were … wait for it … 181 deaths from COVID-19. Do the math, out of 325+ Million people, what are the odds? The total number of deaths for pre-school and school-age children between February-July 2020 are 9 (under 1 year of age); 7 (ages 1-4); 14 (age 5-14); and 149 (ages 15-24). Dr. Atlas out of Stanford recently said, “If you are under the age of 70, your case fatality rate is less than .04% which is less than half of most flu epidemics.” We are not getting facts anymore; we are just getting opinion. As one well-known physician recently quipped: “What we are getting is wackamole instead of science. Quite honestly, science has been sacrificed at the altar of panic.”

When you hear of huge spikes in new cases, what the numbers do not reveal is that numbers lie. They lie big time! According to a spokesman for Virginia’s COVID-19 Joint Information Command, repeat positive cases “are counted as separate cases only if the tests occur on different days. If tested on Monday and Tuesday and both are positive that’s two positives.” I personally know of a case here in Nevada where a woman was tested at least three times, twice positive and the third negative. You can bet that counted as two positive cases. In Ohio, an eighty-plus year old woman in a hospital was counted as 15 positive “new” cases. In El Paso county Texas, according to a Coronavirus Taskforce spokesman when asked, “It seems there may still be some confusion as to the number of people that are tested. There are individuals that are tested multiple times, especially if they get a positive test result” responded by saying, “We do if they are tested more than once.” In California, physicians must be tested every fourteen days as long as the results are negative. A positive test result mandates immediate quarantine and frequent testing until the results are negative. And each positive result is counted as a new case.

The only reliable numbers that should be relied upon are the ones that can be reliably measured, that is, the mortality rate of confirmed deaths from COVID-19 against the denominator of the population at large. All other numbers are subject to manipulation to support a narrative. Wake up America!

Just my thoughts for a Thursday, for what it is worth.

About the author: Deacon Chuck

Deacon Chuck was ordained into the permanent diaconate on September 17, 2011, in the ministry of service to the Diocese of Reno and assigned to St. Albert the Great Catholic Community. He currently serves as the parish bulletin editor and website administrator. Deacon Chuck continues to serve the parish of Saint Albert the Great Catholic Community of the Diocese of Reno, Nevada. He is the Director of Adult Faith Formation and Homebound Ministries for the parish, conducts frequent adult faith formation workshops, and is a regular homilist. He currently serves as the bulletin editor for the parish bulletin. He writes a weekly column intended to encompass a broad landscape of thoughts and ideas on matters of theology, faith, morals, teachings of the magisterium and the Catholic Church; they are meant to illuminate, illustrate, and catechize the readers and now number more than 230 articles. His latest endeavor is "Colloqui: A journal for restless minds", a weekly journal of about 8 pages similar in content to bulletin reflections. All his reflections, homilies, commentaries, and Colloqui are posted and can be found on his website: http://deaconscorner.org. Comments are always welcome and appreciated. He is the author of two books: "The Voices of God: hearing God in the silence" which offers the reader insights into how to hear God’s voice through all of the noise that surrounds us; and "Echoes of Love: Effervescent Memories" which through a combination of prose and verse provides the reader with a wonderful journey on the way to discovering forever love. He regularly speaks to groups of all ages and size and would welcome the opportunity to speak to your group.

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