OPINION:
Face masks don’t work. Yet medical tyrants continue to insist they do — in part, by redefining the word “work” — and a la sociopath style, continue to insist that those members of the public under their control play active roles in fueling their deceptions by pretending as if face masks work. Why the lies? For what gain?
Control. Control and power. Control and power and money, money, money. This is what COVID-19 has become for leftists and bureaucrats and arrogant elitists: tools for selfish gain.
Just look at Virginia’s hospitals for example.
Just look at Mary Washington hospital in Fredericksburg, Virginia, as an instance.
Mary Washington dictates on its website that “all visitors … must wear a mask fully covering your nose and mouth” and that “all visitors … must always practice social distancing.” Violators “cannot have an in-person visit in the facility,” and “noncompliance with the mask requirement will lead to removal from the facility,” Mary Washington warns.
Ask for an explanation — ask for the medical data used to justify such dictates — and you get bureaucratic cowardice.
This, from Emily Thurston, the director of communications and marketing at Mary Washington health care: “The masking policy for our organization lives on our website and is reflective of current CDC recommendations” yada yada, and “while universal masking is no longer required in healthcare settings” yada yada, hospitals may “choose to require masking when community transmission of COVID-19 is high,” yada yada. Then comes the pretty map showing Virginia in hot pink against a pale pink region — as some sort of show of medical proof of the rising risks of COVID-19’s spread. Then comes the ultimate bureaucratic argument: Everybody else is doing it.
“Also of note are the masking policies of other area healthcare providers … [which] all have similar masking policies in place,” Thurston writes.
In other words: Who are you to question us?
And therein is the problem.
For three years, the medical community, in partnership with political elites and Big Pharma players, used fear to push narratives that we now know are largely untrue, all the while drowning out critical thinkers and stifling questioners and silencing dissenters by labeling them as dangers to society. That led to serious loss of civil liberties. That resulted in massive seizures of individual rights. The face-masking hysteria drove the social distancing hysteria drove the vaccine mandate hysteria drove the boosters’ hysteria drove the shutdowns of society. And so forth and so on and on and on it goes.
You’d think these bureaucrats would have crawled back into their corners in shame by now. But no.
Medical tyrants to this day still want it believed that those who question the science of their tyrannical ways are the ones who are problems — the ones who are dangers to society — the ones who are putting the health and safety of others at risk. They have to; they’re in so deep with their deceptions, they’re terrified of accountability.
For example: “FDA vaccine advisers ‘disappointed’ and ‘angry’ that early data about new Covid-19 booster shot wasn’t presented for review last year,” CNN wrote.
“That data suggested the possibility that the updated booster might not be any more effective at preventing Covid-19 infections than the original shots,” CNN went on.
Their lies are crumbling before their eyes. You know when even Big Government, Big Pharma fawning CNN is reporting on Big Gov and Big Pharma lies told to justify COVID clampdowns that the web is beginning to break.
But tyrants are stubborn things. Elitists aren’t quick to admit they’re wrong.
The longest-running lie with the three years of COVID-tied chaos has been about the face masks. When medical bureaucrats say “face masks work,” what they’re trying to suggest is that the wearing of face masks prevents the spread of COVID-19. What they’re trying to suggest is that those who wear face masks are protecting themselves from COVID-19, and/or — depending on the science du jour and scientist du jour — protecting others from COVID-19. But that’s not just untrue.
That’s total B.S.
It’s total B.S. because most in the medical community advocating face mask-wearing know that it’s untrue — which means they’re knowingly, wickedly advancing lies.
Michael Betrus is a data guy — someone who looks solely at numbers and statistics and facts and raw data, and then absent political bias, formulates analyses and draws conclusions. (That used to be what scientists and medical professionals did, by the way, pre-COVID.) Betrus became so alarmed by the false statements and deceptive dictates being tossed around during the COVID years, he wrote a book — and then updated his book, with the most current data — about the science versus pseudoscience that has been used by bureaucrats to justify lockdowns. His findings should send shivers down the backs of any freedom-loving individual.
As Betrus reminded, both the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found face masks were useless at preventing the spread of viruses — before COVID. So did the left’s biggest science liar, Dr. Anthony Fauci, by the way — you know, the Democrats’ go-to COVID guy who first said face masks don’t work, then said they did, then said if one mask works, two work even better (it’s common sense, dontcha know), then said anyone who dared question him was actually questioning science. Yes, that Fauci. But for years, WHO and the CDC and Fauci all agreed: Face masks don’t work.
But then came COVID and decades of scientific truths flew out the window.
“We ignored the science,” Betrus said, in his “Do Facemasks Work for COVID?” YouTube. “It evolved into this culture war where wearing masks became a virtue signal … But from a science perspective there was really no study that you could find in the Lancet … or in Nature or in BMJ or in the New England Journal of Medicine, you can’t find studies before COVID that said that cloth face masks or surgical masks were effective at blocking viral particles. Because they’re not.”
Because they’re not.
Because they don’t work.
And why don’t they work? Here’s a thought: Because humans aren’t lab rats living in controlled settings where face masks are free of air gaps; where face masks are 100% of the time correctly worn; where face masks are 100% of the time even worn. Face masks only work if human behavior is 100% controllable. Arrogant elitists know this but dismiss this because their end game is to achieve 100% control.
But as Betrus said: “When you look at the data from each country, each city in America … we had very, very different mask mandates. And in some places we had very high adoption of mask wearing, you know, 95%, things like that in California and New York, and other countries. [Still] you can’t find a community in the United States or in the world that had mask mandates and had a continued suppression of the virus. … It just hasn’t happened.”
That’s the data. Those are the numbers. That’s the truth.
That’s also the common sense.
Now comes the bureaucratic B.S. that prevents that truth from playing in hospitals in the United States, in Virginia, in Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
The American Hospital Association, a massively well-funded lobby group for, as its name makes clear, the nation’s hospitals, continues to press for widespread, non-stop, all-inclusive face mask-wearing for patients, staff, visitors. Roughly 5,000 hospitals make up its membership; the group’s lobby work focuses “on the legislative and executive branches and include the legislative and regulatory arenas.” The AHA’s money comes from membership — memberships kept mostly quiet; kept mostly secret, by the way. In return for dues and fees it collects from hospitals and medical members, the AHA provides these hospital executives and members with “insider access” to its political, policy-making, and executive level contacts, AHA writes on its website. That’s significant.
That provides a wonderful opportunity for hospital executives to rub shoulders with the power elites in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere — and for hands to join with hands and palms to grease palms in this just-as-wonderful world of medical tyranny that COVID ushered into existence.
Science be danged. Truth be hanged. Money be collected.
Keeping face mask mandates in place allows bureaucrats to continue to sell the narrative that COVID is a massive people-killing danger, and that to mitigate this danger, more money, more money, more money is needed. Here’s one money flow, explained. President Joe Biden, ridiculously enough, given the facts of COVID — as well as his own admissions months ago that the “pandemic is over” — nonetheless just extended the public health emergency of COVID. This lays the groundwork for continued benefits to the nation’s hospitals.
These public health emergencies, or PHEs, as they’re dubbed, create “certain flexibilities within the healthcare industry … [such as] simplifying access to vaccines, creating HIPAA allowances to more broadly enable the use of Telehealth throughout the pandemic and, most arguably, requiring Medicaid programs to keep people continuously enrolled through the end of the PHE to avoid lapses in coverage,” BenefitNews.com writes.
In other words: Hospitals directly financially benefit with each extension of PHE.
No wonder AHA wants to keep the lie alive.
“One important learning from the two-and-a-half year COVID-19 pandemic is that the public health emergency waivers made an enormous difference for hospitals and health systems,” AHA wrote way back in August. “While the waivers were meant to quickly pivot to address the challenges hospitals and health systems faced … some of them are worth keeping permanently.”
In September, AHA lobbied for the same. In October, AHA lobbied for the same. More Telehealth remote doctors’ visits; much cheaper for hospitals. More waivers for Medicare and Medicaid systems; much more lucrative for hospitals. AHA hates how Medicare and Medicaid pay less than what members charge; by one AHA estimate, hospitals are left with an “annual shortfall of $57.8 billion” because of regulations capping charges on Medicare and Medicaid patients. During times of medical emergencies, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issues waivers that allow health providers more flexibility with Medicare and Medicaid patient charges that frankly lead to more money for providers.
The powerful AHA lobby would love to keep PHE benefits forever. So, too, hospitals with hefty Medicare and Medicaid patient populations.
On its 2021 Form 990, AHA — headed by a guy, Richard Pollack, who received more than $3 million in annual compensation — reported ending the year with nearly $400 million in assets and beginning the year with more than $353 million. That is to say, it’s a group with political clout.
Hand washes hand; palm greases palm. AHA and hospitals of the nation, unite! That’s the macro.
Now for the micro. Back to Virginia; back to Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. In Mary Washington Healthcare’s case, where net assets, according to its 2021 Form 990 filing, hit above $520 million for the year, and where CEO Michael Mcdermott, according to this same form, rakes in more than $2.8 million in annual salary plus another $317,797 in “other compensation” — in MW’s case, its easy to see how money, power and influence are the driving forces of COVID-19 policy, not science.
It’s all about keeping narratives going. It’s all about keeping fears in place. It’s about sharing the pot of taxpayer-funded wealth called COVID-19 funds.
If truth drove medical COVID-19 policy, face masks would not be required of patients and visitors in Mary Washington’s hospital, in Virginia’s hospitals, in America’s hospitals.
It’s high time medical tyrants acknowledge their dictatorial controls are psychotic, sociopathic and pathetic. It’s high time American citizens — and their lawyers — refuse to play these tyrants’ games. And it’s high time for the medical community to earn back the public’s trust by using transparent, trustworthy data rather than lobby lingo.
Time to end the COVID lies — beginning with the face masks, the tip of the spear for all the other COVID lies.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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