Masking is back in the news because a handful of institutions have begun to bring it back, and there are rumors that masking could reappear on a larger scale by October.
Part of you thinks: nobody can fall for this again. Mankind cannot be this depraved.
Today in a comment thread on social media I read the following, from someone who lived through exactly what you and I did: "If it increases the chances that I will stay alive, then I will do it. It is not a big deal. I trust the experts, because I am not a doctor."
Where would you even begin?
Someone who can say "I trust the experts" after the past three years is quite a trusting soul indeed.
And which experts? American experts or Swedish experts? American experts in 2019, or American experts in 2020? Experts favored by the regime, or experts disfavored by the regime?
I was a model of restraint in my response:
It absolutely is a big deal.
There's no way you could have seen the charts from around the world and concluded that masks have accomplished anything. I consider that impossible. Demographically identical populations living right next to each other with differing mask policies show zero difference in outcomes. Zero. Nothing.
The Cochrane study put the nail in the coffin for masks. If your claim is that you just follow the experts no matter what they tell you, then you should definitely be following that study, which is indeed the gold standard.
So we're obstructing human communication, which is largely nonverbal, and interrupting the normal development of children, who rely on facial expressions, for exactly zero benefit. No benefit at all, man. None.
To go along with this in the face of all evidence to the contrary is very bad. It's not no big deal, as you say. It shows we have no dignity and no self-respect and no curiosity at all about how the world works.
The lockdowns we were subjected to, which took countless lives and caused immeasurable collateral damage around the world, especially in developing countries, were an atrocity that can never be forgotten or forgiven. And again, if you look at the scatterplots, there is zero connection between lockdown stringency and health outcomes. None at all. Even if it looks like there is, correct for age and obesity and the apparent discrepancy disappears.
Continuing to wear a mask after it's been the biggest public health failure in 100 years is to give your symbolic assent to what was done to us over the past three years in the name of pseudoscience and conformity. I personally have no desire to lend the slightest support to that regime, because I am capable of reading a chart, and because I have empathy for those countless human beings all over the world who suffered unnecessarily at the hands of policies that didn't save one single, solitary life.
So yes, there are still people -- a depressingly large number of them, in fact -- who are still repeating the slogans of 2020 ("trust the experts!") and haven't learned a thing.
That side of things has seemingly everything on its side: academia, the entertainment world, the mainline churches, the media, the public health establishment, and much of the business world, among other institutions.
What do you and I have?
Numbers, and the truth.
There was a time when I thought the truth was enough, and that eventually it had to prevail. I don't have that confidence anymore.
So that leaves us with numbers. There are lots of us, and we care more intensely about issues that matter than do most normies, who are content to comply quietly and uncomplainingly with whatever the elites demand of them.
If we don't take our numbers and actually do something with them, then we're expecting the truth to do all the work on its own -- and unfortunately the weird human resistance to truth is very powerful.
If you're like me, you would like to depart this world having at least tried to reverse the decline, or at the very least to do everything possible to make your own family's life more prosperous and fulfilling in the midst of the collapse.
Hence my urging that we combine our numbers into a twofold effort: (1) learning how to navigate a world that hates us and come out successful and content on the other side; (2) start building the institutions of a saner world.
I hope you'll join me in this.
....
Tom Woods
Part of you thinks: nobody can fall for this again. Mankind cannot be this depraved.
Today in a comment thread on social media I read the following, from someone who lived through exactly what you and I did: "If it increases the chances that I will stay alive, then I will do it. It is not a big deal. I trust the experts, because I am not a doctor."
Where would you even begin?
Someone who can say "I trust the experts" after the past three years is quite a trusting soul indeed.
And which experts? American experts or Swedish experts? American experts in 2019, or American experts in 2020? Experts favored by the regime, or experts disfavored by the regime?
I was a model of restraint in my response:
It absolutely is a big deal.
There's no way you could have seen the charts from around the world and concluded that masks have accomplished anything. I consider that impossible. Demographically identical populations living right next to each other with differing mask policies show zero difference in outcomes. Zero. Nothing.
The Cochrane study put the nail in the coffin for masks. If your claim is that you just follow the experts no matter what they tell you, then you should definitely be following that study, which is indeed the gold standard.
So we're obstructing human communication, which is largely nonverbal, and interrupting the normal development of children, who rely on facial expressions, for exactly zero benefit. No benefit at all, man. None.
To go along with this in the face of all evidence to the contrary is very bad. It's not no big deal, as you say. It shows we have no dignity and no self-respect and no curiosity at all about how the world works.
The lockdowns we were subjected to, which took countless lives and caused immeasurable collateral damage around the world, especially in developing countries, were an atrocity that can never be forgotten or forgiven. And again, if you look at the scatterplots, there is zero connection between lockdown stringency and health outcomes. None at all. Even if it looks like there is, correct for age and obesity and the apparent discrepancy disappears.
Continuing to wear a mask after it's been the biggest public health failure in 100 years is to give your symbolic assent to what was done to us over the past three years in the name of pseudoscience and conformity. I personally have no desire to lend the slightest support to that regime, because I am capable of reading a chart, and because I have empathy for those countless human beings all over the world who suffered unnecessarily at the hands of policies that didn't save one single, solitary life.
So yes, there are still people -- a depressingly large number of them, in fact -- who are still repeating the slogans of 2020 ("trust the experts!") and haven't learned a thing.
That side of things has seemingly everything on its side: academia, the entertainment world, the mainline churches, the media, the public health establishment, and much of the business world, among other institutions.
What do you and I have?
Numbers, and the truth.
There was a time when I thought the truth was enough, and that eventually it had to prevail. I don't have that confidence anymore.
So that leaves us with numbers. There are lots of us, and we care more intensely about issues that matter than do most normies, who are content to comply quietly and uncomplainingly with whatever the elites demand of them.
If we don't take our numbers and actually do something with them, then we're expecting the truth to do all the work on its own -- and unfortunately the weird human resistance to truth is very powerful.
If you're like me, you would like to depart this world having at least tried to reverse the decline, or at the very least to do everything possible to make your own family's life more prosperous and fulfilling in the midst of the collapse.
Hence my urging that we combine our numbers into a twofold effort: (1) learning how to navigate a world that hates us and come out successful and content on the other side; (2) start building the institutions of a saner world.
I hope you'll join me in this.
....
Tom Woods
