Front-page health coverage by The Port Townsend and Jefferson County Leader returns this week with news that, “The third fatality to coronavirus in the county late last week happened at Jefferson Healthcare – the first coronavirus death at the facility. The patient had been critically ill, Locke said, but the coronavirus caused the man’s death. The resident, a man in his 60s, passed away Saturday. ‘COVID was, we believe, the cause of death. Had it not been for the COVID infection, that person would have likely survived,’ Locke said.” [“Locke” is Dr. Thomas Locke, Jefferson County’s Public Health Officer.]
That may be, but there’s room for doubt in the case of this already “critically ill” patient, given special CDC instructions “that COVID-19 be recorded as the primary cause of death even if the decedent had other chronic comorbidities. These special instructions exclusive to COVID-19 skewed death certificate results, effectively reclassifying many deaths from a variety of causes, now classified as COVID-19 deaths.”
Even if COVID-19 was the culprit here, this should actually be considered just the first COVID-19 death in the county, given that the other two supposed deaths were a 90+-year-old in hospice and an 80-year-old suffering from surgery complications in Seattle, who was infected in a hospital wide outbreak and hadn’t been near Jefferson County for two months. See “Jefferson County Still May Have No Deaths from Covid.”Port Townsend Free Press, 1/14/21.
The Leader article continued to say that “The death comes amid a week marked by a steady increase of coronavirus cases nationwide…. In Jefferson County, health officials said the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rose by 11 over the weekend. Of the 11 new cases, six females and five males tested positive for the coronavirus. The total countywide number of positive COVID-19 tests in Jefferson County Monday was pegged at 374.”
This reporting confuses cases of the disease COVID-19 with positive test results for the virus SARS-CoV-2. Detection of a virus does not constitute a “case” of a disease in lieu of any symptoms, otherwise anyone testing positive for the HIV virus would also count as a full-blown case of AIDS. Moreover, given Jeffco’s unreasonably-high 45 Cycle Threshold for its PCR testing, most of these positive test results may well be false positives. See, “Is Jefferson County Health Department Overstating Covid Case Numbers?” Port Townsend Free Press, 1/25/21.
[Editor’s Note: Our condolences to the family of the deceased. As this death and other deaths being counted as “Covid deaths” are being used to justify restricting the lives and liberties of others it is appropriate to raise questions about whether it is, in fact, a death caused by Covid, and whether it should serve to bolster arguments for extending lockdowns and masking mandates.]
Amid calls to double-down on mask requirements with “100 days of masking”, the real news is the latest research confirming the ineffectiveness and dangers of masking against viruses.
On Nov. 18 was unveiled the first-and-only real-world, randomized, controlled trial “to assess whether recommending surgical mask use outside the home reduces wearers’ risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection”, concluding “the difference observed was not statistically significant” between the masked and control groups.
This Danish study is the lead evidence cited by the World Health Organization in its new Dec. 1 guidance on “Mask Use in the Context of COVID-19” section “Evidence on the protective effect of mask use in community settings,” stating “a large randomized community-based trial in which 4862 healthy participants were divided into a group wearing medical/surgical masks and a control group found no difference in infection.”
WHO then cited a review of nine other trials finding that “wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the prevention of influenza-like illness”, along with a few studies that “could be considered to be indirect evidence for the use of masks.” WHO concludes “at present time there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.”
According to the BBC’s 2019 British Journalism Award-winning medical correspondent Deborah Cohen, “we had been told by various sources WHO committee reviewing the evidence had not backed masks but they recommended them due to political lobbying. This point was put to WHO [which] did not deny.”
Regarding “the efficacy of community-based use of face masks” to protect others, two systematic reviews by the World Health Organization in 2019 and Centers for Disease Control in February, 2020 found “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.” See alsoCDC Emerging Infectious Disease Journal, May 2020 (limited efficacy of nonpharmaceutical measures, such as masking, in preventing virus transmission).
But why are masks so ineffective against viruses? Electron micrographs show the size of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is between 0.06 and 0.14 microns. By contrast, standard cloth face coverings and masks have 2.5 micron pore size, with area 625 times bigger than a virus, which is like trying to stop mosquitos using wide-mesh wire fences. Only true surgical masks have near-viral filter pore sizes, but tests show even they let through 12% to 45% of viral-size particles.
More critical than pore size are two other issues impacting mask effectiveness. The first is that surgical masks may be good at stopping bacterial droplets, but viral droplets quickly “evaporate into ‘droplet nuclei’, remain suspended in air for significant periods of time and could be inhaled.” Bar-On, et. al, National Institutes of Health, NCBI Resources, April 2, 2020.
OSHA’s Fact Sheet on Respiratory Infection Control makes clear that “Surgical masks are not designed or certified to prevent the inhalation of small airborne contaminants. … Surgical masks are not designed to seal tightly against the user’s face. During inhalation, much of the potentially contaminated air can pass through gaps between the face and the surgical mask and not be pulled through the filter material of the mask.”
Anyone wearing glasses knows the truth of this, since fogged glasses prove exhalation is flowing up around the nose past the eyes into the air stream… meanwhile coating contact lenses or glasses with germs so they become point sources of infection. Face shields get a bad rap for allowing air to flow around edges, but vape cloud videos show aerosols likewise follow the path of least resistance through the sides and top of surgical masks.
The other critical problem with mask use outside controlled clinical settings is that even when a mask succeeds in catching viruses these do not disappear from existence but instead turn the mask into an active point source of infection. Viruses collected on the mask get regularly dislodged into the air or pushed through the mask by future inhalations and exhalations or touched by hands, potentially infecting the wearer and others. The net effect may be worse than wearing no mask at all.
WHO lists a wide range of other “disadvantages of mask use by healthy people” including “headache and/or breathing difficulties”, “development of facial skin lesions, irritant dermatitis”, “difficulty with communicating clearly”, “discomfort”, “a false sense of security”, “improper mask disposal”, “environmental hazards”, along with special difficulties for “children, developmentally challenged persons”, “those with asthma or chronic respiratory or breathing problems”, etc.. See also, “Full Time Mask Wearing Brings Its Own Problems,” The Crimson White, University of Alabama, August 20, 2020.
Neurosurgeon researcher Dr. Russell Blaylock warns that reduction in blood oxygenation from prolonged mask wearing is “associated with an impairment in immunity” with “an increased risk of infections … including COVID-19 and making the consequences of that infection much graver”, as well as promoting “spread of cancers”, “cardiovascular (heart attacks) and cerebrovascular (strokes) diseases.” Continually rebreathing moist respiratory wastes beneath a mask raises the concentration of any viruses in the lungs and nasal passages causing worse reactions. “Newer evidence suggests…by wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain.”
In conclusion, the best current science does NOT support mask mandates nor claims that increased mask wearing would reduce virus transmission or save lives. The reality is quite the opposite.
[Editor’s note: Mr. Schumacher provided many additional sources beyond those quoted or linked in this article. We link those additional sources below.]
[From Mr. Schumacher: “My thanks to Dr. Roger Koops for his generous correspondence helping sort out evidence relating to mask pore size and surgical mask effectiveness, and especially for his original insights about how masks can become dangerous point sources of infection.”]
She was “an 80-year-old woman who was being treated in a Seattle-area hospital” since “late October for surgery unrelated to the coronavirus. Following the surgery, she developed complications which mandated additional hospitalization.
“In early December she became infected with COVID-19 as part of a hospital wide outbreak” and “passed away Dec.26.” Her death was not immediately considered to have been caused by COVID, according to Dr. Tom Locke, Jefferson County’s Health Officer. “[S]tate officials were brought in to investigate the death and determine whether her death should be classified as COVID-related or having to do with one of her multiple previously existing medical conditions.”
This second Jeffco death blamed on COVID-19 is even more dubious than the first, a hospice patient in her 90’s. In additional to multiple comorbidities, this 80-year-old woman, suffering what appear to have been extremely serious complications from surgery, had not been near Jefferson County for 2 months when she contracted COVID-19. All events surrounding her death took place in the Seattle area.
Below is a letter I wrote questioning Jeffco’s earlier death, which the Leader and Peninsula Daily News declined to publish. Its closing line appears to be still accurate: “Based on information reported to date, Jefferson County still seems to have no deaths from COVID-19.”
Dear Editor,
I respectfully question the basis on which “Jefferson County just recorded its first death from COVID-19 last week.”
The decedent was “in her 90s and was chronically ill and had been receiving hospice care,” meaning she was already on the verge of death with no hope of cure. She may have died WITH the virus, but I doubt she died FROM the virus.
This is a classic example of how shifting standards and incentives have inflated COVID-19 death totals. Coronavirus illnesses like colds didn’t count as the cause of death for hospice patients in years gone by.
But nowadays, “if you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death… anyone who passes away after testing positive for the virus is included in that category,” per Illinois’ Health Director.
Hence our county’s “first death from COVID-19” would be “included in that category…after testing positive” whether or not she had any COVID symptoms hastening her already-imminent departure.
Note how this miscounts (often false) positive PCR tests for the SARS-CoV-2 virus as if they were symptomatic cases of the disease COVID-19, further inflating “case” and death statistics. Like HIV and AIDS, the virus and the disease are different concepts and should
not be lumped together.
Based on information reported to date, Jefferson County still seems to have no deaths from COVID-19.
R&R hall-of-famers Van Morrison and Eric Clapton team up for another
rollicking blast against senseless lockdown mania with “Stand and Deliver”!!!
You can can stream on major services or buy your own copy at: hhttps://amazon.com/Stand-Deliver-Clapton-feat-Morrison/dp/B08P6DBB3R
Read more from Van the Man about his lockdown protest songs and campaign to bring back live music at: vanmorrison.com
Not so cheery are rising reports of serious adverse effects from the
shiny new Pfizer vaccine. Dr. Vernon Coleman urgently warns that
2.8% of 112,807 UK first-dose vaccine recipients suffered Health
Impact Events (defined as “unable to perform normal daily activities,
unable to work, required care from doctor or health professional”): https://brandnewtube.com/watch/urgent-news-about-the-covid-19-vaccine_botqwzI8R7UUVY2.html
…since the 21,720 Pfizer vaccine takers suffered from “four related
serious adverse events”, 64 cases of lymphadenopathy, and 21% related
adverse events (compared to 0, 6, and 5% corresponding values from
placebo takers). Meanwhile there were 1 severe COVID-19 case among
the vaccine takers and 9 severe cases among the placebo takers. So
the net benefit from the vaccine is reducing 9 severe cases down to 5
severe cases, a statistically insignificant 0.02% benefit. More dramatic is the reduction from 162 to 8 non-severe cases, but that’s still only a 0.7% effect involving minor
symptoms. Costs include 21% related adverse events now plus unknown
long-term risks from the vaccine’s barely-tested new mRNA methodology.
BTW, former NY Times reporter Alex Berenson notes the CDC “is
reporting the number of vaccinations in near-real time. But they
AREN’T (as far as I can find) reporting the adverse events they
receive. We haven’t had an update on those since Friday. Way to build trust.” https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1341180058094997505
