While we should certainly give the doctors and nurses on the front lines heroically treating COVID patients their just due, there’s another, albeit unsung, brand of COVID-hero. They are the reporters, the data hounds, the fact-checkers, the politicians, and especially the medical professionals who all put their reputations on the line to tell the truth about COVID-19 and the destructive, irrational response to it from governments around the world. While nobody’s perfect and this virus has at times made fools of us all, there’s no doubt that ‘Team Reality’ has been correct far more than the powers-that-be, and ongoing trends continue to prove that out. (To help amplify their great work, I feature 165 (and counting) of them on my ‘Team Reality’ Twitter list!) While many (certainly not all) lean to the right, political ideology doesn’t define them so much as a dedication to telling the truth against a seemingly endless tide of lies, of proclaiming that the emperor indeed is stark-naked regardless of everyone in the crowd exclaiming otherwise.
Arguably chief among these, at least on the reporter front, is former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who has been a prominent lockdown skeptic since the early days of the pandemic in March. Over the ensuing months, his massive Twitter account and frequent Fox News appearances have been a refreshing beacon of light against the overwhelming insanity of lockdowns, restrictions, and mask-mandates as governments twist themselves and their societies into pretzels inexplicably trying to “crush” a highly contagious respiratory virus.
Thankfully, Berenson had enough supporters in enough prominent places to somehow convince Amazon to reverse their initial decision last month to censor his latest edition of “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns” that dares call into question our new State Religion, the Almighty Face Mask. Otherwise, not nearly as many people would lay eyes on it. And believe me, as many people as possible need to lay their eyes on this.
Like a hand-written letter in the mail, there’s something quaint yet quietly powerful about using print media to distribute something the powers-that-be clearly do not want the public to read. There are, to be sure, plenty of anti-mask articles available on the internet (I’ve written at least ten here at Townhall with the word ‘mask’ in the title), but good luck sharing them on social media (at least with any ‘reach’ and without a “fact-check”) or finding them on Google. Yes, there’s a Kindle version, but holding this 39-page pamphlet in my hands and personally handing it to friends and family to read feels like a throwback to another era, something dissidents from ‘establishment’ thought on any topic have done since the invention of the printing press. Try ‘deleting’ this now, Big Tech!
Fox News legend Brit Hume said the book is “worth reading, unless you’re allergic to views and evidence that are at odds with the current conventional wisdom.” I strongly concur. It begins with an overview of the pre-COVID science behind mask-wearing and a description of the “sudden 180-degree turn” that occurred in the spring with seeming every media outlet, ‘health official,’ and politician now in lockstep in the insistence that mask-wearing is now a virtue akin to not shooting someone on the street with a pistol.
“The relentless pressure has caused a sharp rise in mask-wearing,” Berenson writes. “In blue states like California, masks are essentially standard, even outside. People who wear masks are increasingly willing to challenge people who don’t.”
Yet, as Berenson documents, the virus is now “spreading faster” than ever before. Noting the difference between various kinds of masks, the author goes on to detail the science behind why most masks used by the public aren’t doing anything at all to curb the spread of COVID-19, and may even in fact be making things worse. All this talk of droplets, aerosols, microns, and nanometers can be complicated, but Berenson breaks things down in a way that’s easy to understand yet not over-simplified. He also offers several examples of post-COVID research that points to masks being generally useless without directly saying so because it’s become taboo.
After proving unequivocally and devastatingly that most masks offer little to no protection to the wearer, Berenson goes on to poke a few Titanic-sized holes in the contention that masks protect others as a form of source control, which serves as the basis for mask-mandates around the world. Not only does Berenson use existing research to prove that face masks “have almost no chance of catching most of the particles we exhale,” he also destroys the premise that “larger droplets [which masks would conceivably curb] are responsible for most viral transmission.”
But the carnage doesn’t stop there. Berenson then moves to the Sacred Cow of COVID-Dogma, asymptomatic transmission. From both Dr. Anthony Fauci and the WHO reversing course on the issue to a study in Wuhan, China that found asymptomatic transmission to be virtually nonexistent, Beresnon efficiently drops this sacred cow too, Leviticus-style. The author then goes on to disprove both the (in)famous hairdresser “study” as well as the CDC report from Kansas supposedly showing mask-mandated states to be doing better than their unmasked counterparts.
“In the case of the source control theory for masks, the real-world evidence is somewhere between weak and nonexistent,” he writes. “Yet instead of decades, public health authorities changed their collective mind on masks nearly overnight.”
It’s a quick read, but the former New York Times reporter includes plenty of data and research throughout this booklet to more than prove the general useless of face masks to anyone open-minded enough to consider the evidence. At a reasonable $5.99 per copy, this is one of those purchases you should duplicate by at least ten. Keep one, then place the others into the stockings of everyone you know.
Indeed, this is one of those rare polemics that has the power to change minds - and ultimately, changing minds is the only thing many of us can do, at least right now. Change enough of them, and pretty soon the world will change too.
Follow Scott on Twitter @SKMorefield, Parler @smorefield, and Facebook. Also, be sure to follow Scott’s COVID ‘Team Reality’ Twitter list, 165 (and counting) doctors, medical professionals, analysts, data hounds, media, and politicians unafraid to tell the truth about COVID-19.