Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Saturday, September 12, 2020

No, It's Not The Masks

 And so the miss-information in regards to masks continue unabated. Let's look at some data that demonstrates this.

Argentina mandated public mask wearing on April 14th. Let's assume that many persons in Argentina started wearing masks before then. 

What happened in Argentina?

Cases went up and continue to go up. Month after month after month. If masks "work" then case levels should have either flat lined very early in May or driven the case numbers towards zero.  Neither happened.



And of course deaths trail cases in ANY first wave. 

So if masks don't work, why do they seem to work in South Korea, etc. ? I suggest to you that there are other factors at play. Firstly since these SARS viruses appear to originate in that part of Asia, it is likelihood that these Asian populations have a degree of immunity to them and thus are not getting the same cases. Secondly, they are probably using treatments that have been politicized in western countries.

The first issue is something that should not be discounted because it bodes ill for the future of lock down and mask countries outside of Asia. History tells us that when Europeans came into contact with Native Americans, that diseases played a large role in the decimation of the native population. Why? The native populations had never had contact with these diseases. They were truly novel. So whereas Europeans would have low mortality from these diseases, they generally had relatively mild reactions, IF they got sick at all.  So we have historical precedence that populations that have regularly exposed to certain viruses generally fare better than those who have no exposure.

The countries and states with lockdowns are trying to make themselves like Native Americans. 


So back to Argentina. Let's look at Sweden's graphs.


No lock downs. No mask mandates. Their case curve in the March through June time period looks just like Argentina's. If masks and lock downs "work" then Argentina should look different.

And here we have Sweden's deaths. Now their death rates spiked far faster than Argentina but as you can see, as of mid July, they were done with the pandemic. Note that the end of the pandemic is not "no deaths" it's statistically negligible deaths (relative to population and expected mortality). 

Note that the Swedish authorities did not panic or induce panic in their populations even in the face of skyrocketing deaths like as happened in places like Australia and the US. That's what leadership is supposed to do. 

So to recap. If "masks work" then you have to explain why Argentina, which introduced mandatory masks way ahead of their case and death growths, had those growths.  Argentina also had lock downs from March 20. So it's on the mask and lock down people to explain why these things did not work in Argentina.