Throughout the pandemic, the inconsistencies in public health guidelines not only have been glaring but unsettling.
From flip-flops over the effectiveness of mask wearing to rules that seemingly contradict themselves — like it’s “safe” to take your mask off while eating in a restaurant but not while you’re walking to the table, or making small businesses close their doors while big box stores stay open because they’re “essential” — the last year has left many people feeling like they’re living in some sort of altered reality.
This feeling isn’t all in your head, however. The state of reality has, in fact, been altered, in more ways than one. A particularly visual and polarizing example is the use of face masks, which some have suggested is nothing more than a form of virtue signaling. A video captured by a citizen journalist suggests as much, as the reporter captured on the video wears no mask, and neither does his cameraman, until the tape starts rolling.1
Reporter Puts on Mask Only When on Camera
A citizen journalist begins filming reporter David Kaplan from WTAE in Pittsburg just before he’s about to go on-air for a news segment. When questioned about the authenticity of his report, he states, “We’re purely objective journalists. Truly, truly, sir. From the bottom of my heart … Nobody tells me what to say sir.”2
However, the news station does tell him what to do, which includes putting on a mask while on-air. Again, neither the reporter nor the cameraman are masked until they are about to go on air, at which point the reporter puts his mask on, saying it’s their policy and he wants to set a good example.
Throughout the pandemic, the media have been fanning the flames of fear, including with displays like this, in which viewers see an image of a reporter masked up against the virus — who promptly removes said mask as soon as the camera is off.
It’s a veritable theater, a show of a person’s willingness to obey, even when the rules seem to defy common sense, like wearing a mask outdoors when you’re far away from other people.
Masks Offer Little Protection Except as Symbolic ‘Talismans’
In May 2020, a group of doctors and researchers wrote in a perspective piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine that masks offer little protection outside of health care facilities, except to calm people’s nerves.
“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection,” they wrote, and went on to describe masks as playing a “symbolic role” as “talismans” to increase the perception of safety, even though “such reactions may not be strictly logical.”3
“Expanded masking protocols’ greatest contribution may be to reduce the transmission of anxiety, over and above whatever role they may play in reducing transmission of COVID-19,” they add.4
Since then, masks have indeed taken on a symbolic role, one that presents an outward visible sign that you’re obeying COVID protocols and are acting as a “moral” COVID citizen. Jeffrey Tucker, with the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), pointed out that this mask orthodoxy is part of what’s driving the rampant censorship online, including by YouTube.
“YouTube has taken it upon itself to censor the opinions of esteemed scientists that depart from the orthodoxy on masks. This is not surprising given that masks have become dogma – a visible symbol of compliance and fealty to the medical/political agenda that elevates the coronavirus above all else,” Tucker wrote.5
Now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that vaccinated individuals can remove their masks outdoors and in most spaces indoors,6 it moves the playing field to another agenda, one in which only the “impure” unvaccinated individuals must be masked, creating a new form of segregation and second-class citizens.
Canned News Is the Real Fake News
If you think you’re getting real, unbiased news when you turn on the TV, watch the video above, which shows an unnerving compilation of local affiliate stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group reciting the same script as though it’s actual journalism.
The newscasters, featured on CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox affiliates, ironically stated, “Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think … This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”7
It’s time that word got out that it’s extremely difficult to find truly independent, unbiased reporting, whether you’re watching the news on television or online.
Take, for instance, the Australian Science Media Centre (SMC), which partnered with Google to create a COVID-19 Vaccine Media Hub that will parrot approved mainstream vaccine information to the press.8 Science Media Centres exist in a number of countries, including the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with a reported mission to provide “high-quality” scientific information to journalists. Their mission, as stated on their website, is:9
“To provide, for the benefit of the public and policymakers, accurate and evidence-based information about science and engineering through the media, particularly on controversial and headline news stories when most confusion and misinformation occurs.”
But SMC is not an independent news agency as it claims to be, as it counts among its biggest funders a number of high-level industry players with worldwide agendas, including the Wellcome Trust, GlaskoSmithKline, CropLife International, Sanofi and AstraZeneca.10
As noted by the U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), “ … The SMC model has been influential in shaping media coverage about science. A media analysis11 of U.K. papers in 2011 and 2012 found that a majority of reporters who used SMC services did not seek additional perspectives for their stories.”12
The analysis concluded that there are “more journalists than there should be” that are relying solely on SMC information instead of consulting independent sources.13
CDC Walks Back Hygiene Theater
In the early days of the pandemic, bleach cleaners and disinfectant wipes were flying off store shelves in a frenzy to clean away COVID. Now we know that transmission of COVID-19 by fomites — the term used for inanimate surfaces and objects that can transmit a pathogen — has been exaggerated, but the CDC didn’t acknowledge this until more than a year later, in April 2021. In a science brief released that month, they noted:14
“People can be infected with SARS-CoV-2 through contact with surfaces. However, based on available epidemiological data and studies of environmental transmission factors, surface transmission is not the main route by which SARS-CoV-2 spreads, and the risk is considered to be low.”
Emanuel Goldman, a microbiology professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, suggested this back in July 2020, when he stated that studies suggesting SARS-CoV-2 was easily spread via surfaces did not present in real-life situations.15
“In my opinion, the chance of transmission through inanimate surfaces is very small,” he said, and while period disinfection of surfaces, especially in hospitals, was a reasonable precaution, in public settings, he noted, “this can go to extremes not justified by the data.”16 In February 2021, an editorial in Nature supported Goldman’s work, suggesting that costly and toxic disinfection efforts are misguided.
“Catching the coronavirus from surfaces is rare. The World Health Organization and national public health agencies need to clarify their advice,” the editorial reads.17 The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority alone spent an estimated $380 million annually on COVID-related sanitation, and when it asked the U.S. government whether they should be focusing on fomites or solely aerosols, they were told to continue their focus on fomites.18
Writing in The Atlantic, Derek Thompson described this as a type of “hygiene theater,” in which Americans are going through the motions of dutifully cleaning and, likely, over-disinfecting surfaces when the virus spreads most efficiently through the air.19 Hygiene theater, much like the theater for masks and vaccine passports, provides an illusion of safety, not one grounded in reality.
CDC Finally Acknowledges COVID Is Airborne
There’s been strong evidence for months that aerosol transmission is involved in the spread of SARS-CoV-2,20 which are 0.125 ?m in size. On September 18, 2020, the CDC posted updated COVID-19 guidance on its “How COVID-19 Spreads” page that, for the first time, mentioned aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2, saying “this is thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”21
The CDC then deleted the mention of aerosols and the possibility of spread beyond 6 feet the following Monday, September 21, 2020, saying a draft version of proposed changes had been posted “in error.”22 Finally, on May 7, 2021, the CDC updated their guidance to acknowledge that one of the primary ways SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted is via “inhalation of very fine respiratory droplets and aerosol particles.”23
It’s a noteworthy difference, because since SARS-CoV-2 is spread via aerosolized droplets,24 such droplets remain in the air for at least three hours and can travel over long distances of up to 27 feet.25
This adds to the likelihood that cloth masks do little to stop you from getting COVID-19, not to mention calls into question the arbitrary 6 feet social distancing guidelines (which the CDC recently cut down to 3 feet in classrooms26). AAPS explained back in September 2020:27
“The preponderance of scientific evidence supports that aerosols play a critical role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Years of dose response studies indicate that if anything gets through, you will become infected. Thus, any respiratory protection respirator or mask must provide a high level of filtration and fit to be highly effective in preventing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”
Little by little, the truth continues to emerge as nonsensical theatrics are exposed. Now more than ever, it’s essential to look beyond canned news reports and censoring fact-checkers’ labels to find real information on which to base your knowledge.
If you’d like to get involved, Stand for Health Freedom, a nonprofit advocacy organization, has a number of alerts you can take part in, from saying no to vaccine passports to asking key congressmen to formally investigate the CDC’s conduct during the pandemic.28
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/22/covid-mask-theater-caught-on-camera.aspx