Are permanent lockdowns the answer to Covid-19?

There is a lot happening in the world of Covid these days. Some of it is presented in the mainstream and some of it is censored, despite being from leading authoritative sources. Today, I am going to share a bit of both. In doing so, I am not advising you to avoid vaccinations and neither am I encouraging you. It is your body and your choice and whatever you decide is between you and your physician. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. That being said, this is what I read today.

Since we left the office, workplace shooting have been down. Now that we are returning to the office, well… Here is a quote from NBC News.

The mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis was the deadliest workplace shooting in over a year, and experts warned Friday that such incidents could increase as more people return to work after a year of pandemic-induced isolation.

Eight were killed in the shooting Thursday night, marking the highest number of deaths in a workplace shooting since February 2020, around the start of the pandemic in the U.S., when five people were slain after a co-worker opened fire at the Molson Coors headquarters in Milwaukee, according to statistics compiled by NBC News.

“It’s quite possible there will be an increase in these kinds of killings when people who have been working remotely start to return,” said James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University in Boston and one of the nation’s top experts on mass killings.

And as we return to the office, no doubt masks will follow. Is that a good thing? Well, no, if you believe the growing concerns of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). In a recent article – Medical Journal Warns About Masks’ Potentially Devastating Consequences they cite how YouTube censored a scientific roundtable on Covid held by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. The reason for the deletion was the comment made by Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff who said…

Children should not wear face masks. They don’t need it for their own protection and they don’t need it for protecting other people either.

The article goes on to cite and quote multiple scientific papers who preach against the modern orthodoxy of mask wearing. A couple of the quotes they mention are as follows. One, concerning long-term mask usage…

In addition to hypoxia and hypercapnia, breathing through facemask residues bacterial and germs components on the inner and outside layer of the facemask. These toxic components are repeatedly rebreathed back into the body, causing self-contamination. Breathing through facemasks also increases temperature and humidity in the space between the mouth and the mask, resulting in a release of toxic particles from the mask’s materials. A systematic literature review estimated that aerosol contamination levels of facemasks including 13 to 202,549 different viruses. Rebreathing contaminated air with high bacterial and toxic particle concentrations along with low O2 and high CO2 levels continuously challenge the body homeostasis, causing self-toxicity and immunosuppression. 

And another quote, this one concerning some psychological harms of wearing masks.

Encountering people who wear facemasks activates innate stress-fear emotion, which is fundamental to all humans in danger or life threatening situations, such as death or unknown, unpredictable outcome. While acute stress response (seconds to minutes) is an adaptive reaction to challenges and part of the survival mechanism, chronic and prolonged state of stress-fear is maladaptive and has detrimental effects on physical and mental health. The repeatedly or continuously activated stress-fear response causes the body to operate on survival mode, having sustained increase in blood pressure, pro-inflammatory state and immunosuppression. 

I thought the papers they cited were thought-provoking because they challenge the groupthink of what most repeat as “science” while appearing to me as dogma to be obeyed. As to which lobby is correct pro-mask verses no-mask, I have no expert opinion. I favor conflicting opinions, especially on such a weighty matter as personal health. I much rather viewpoints be scrutinized than blindly accepted or worse yet, hidden from view entirely. Case in point, the NOQ Report mentioned how a peer-reviewed study done by Stanford University proved beyond a reasonable doubt that face masks had zero effect on Covid-19. It was posted on the the National Center for Biological Information government website. (The NCBI is a branch of the National Institute for Health.)

Wow! That’s HUGE news that the mainstream media is ignoring and if you happen to share that story on social media, you get censored. Keep in mind, the censored tweet was linking to NCBI a GOVERNMENT website.

Call me crazy (as some have) but, there is something amiss. Either the masks and lockdowns are necessary for our survival or, they are not. There is a growing wave of dissent concerning these measures that are being reported more each day. The Post Millennial article – “Reopened states with low COVID case counts show that lockdowns are a farce” had this to say:

Five states had an increased jump in cases. In all but Florida–New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey–the states remain in some form of lockdown. Together, they had “more than 196,400 of the country’s 453,360 cases reported in the last week,” CNN reported. Cases are increasing where lockdowns remain and decreasing where lockdowns are loosened or eradicated.

At this point, it’s worth observing that in places where states have reopened faster, cases seem to go down as a general whole. Whether this is because fresh air is helpful or herd immunity is being reached faster because people are out and about remains to be seen. But at the very least, it’s absurd to suggest strict lockdowns should remain anywhere.

I have heard several arguments from the no-mask lobby that seem sound logic to me; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis being chief among them. The Daily Wire quoted him as saying…

“If the vaccine is effective, why would you be wearing two masks? Like some of these folks are doing. It doesn’t make sense,” he said.

And he said this as well…

“So, you know, my view is, if you get a vaccine, the vaccines are effective, you’re immune. And so act immune. If you tell people the opposite then, gee, if it’s not effective for them and it’s not gonna change anything, then what’s the point of going through it?” the governor asked.

His opinion is shared by many Americans which is why thousands of Americans have yet to be vaccinated. According to Daily Mail, “The U.S. supply of COVID-19 vaccines is beginning to rapidly outpace demand, as appointments remain unfilled across the country and states say they are running out of people willing to get the shots.” The CDC graphic below show you the percentage of the population vaccinated so far.

Another reason for the vaccination hesitancy is the recall of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine and blood clotting being connected to the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. And then there is the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines which were once touted as 2-dose vaccines. Later this year, they will be known as 3-dose vaccines.

And while some say the issue of vaccines is not settled yet, thus the slow adoption, others are pointing to what they recognize as unavoidable threats on the horizon. For example, The Jerusalem Post in their article, “Why the Indian COVID mutation should worry Israelis – analysis” said the following…

There are three reasons why health officials pay attention to variants. First, because they could have increased infectiousness, like the British variant. Second, they could cause more severe disease. And, third, they could break through the immunity developed through infection or vaccination.

In Israel, where the majority of high-risk people are inoculated, Israel has to focus on whether or not a particular variant could be vaccine-resistant and thereby infect people who believe they are protected – potentially harming the country’s vaccination campaign.

“I don’t want anyone to panic,” Shomron said. “On the other hand, we have to check and make sure our vaccines can stand up to the Indian mutation or any other mutation.”

And there are the recent developments in Turkey. This according to MSN…

Turkey reported 318 fatalities from the coronavirus on Sunday, a 10% rise from the previous day and the highest figure since the start of the pandemic.

As the number of new cases continues to hover among the highest in the world, an expert warned about the surge in the number of critically ill younger people.

Sunday’s death toll raised total fatalities to 35,926, official data show. Social distancing measures announced on April 13 have “started to decrease the speed of the increase,” Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said in a tweet. However, the nation ranks as the third in the number of daily cases, behind India and Brazil, whose populations are far larger than Turkey’s 84 million people.

And Chile is a country to watch as well. The Wall Street Journal points out…

Across Chile—which has mounted one of the world’s most rapid vaccination campaigns using the vaccine made by Chinese drugmaker Sinovac Biotech Ltd.—health authorities are scrambling to deal with a surge in new infections and deaths.

More than 7.6 million people, half of Chile’s adult population, have already received at least one vaccine dose, most made by the Chinese drugmaker, making the country a real-world testing ground for a vaccine that Beijing is supplying to countries across the developing world.

The problem, public-health officials say, was that people in general overestimated the effectiveness of the vaccine after only one of the two recommended doses and moved to ease up on pandemic-control restrictions too soon.

So, is the proper response a slow, measured reopening or is it better to operate in an overabundance of caution? Oregon is leaning towards the latter. In an Associated Press article – “As mask mandates end, Oregon bucks trend with permanent rule,” they cite the following…

As states around the country lift COVID-19 restrictions, Oregon is poised to go the opposite direction — and many residents are fuming about it. A top health official is considering indefinitely extending rules requiring masks and social distancing in all businesses in the state. The proposal would keep the rules in place until they are “no longer necessary to address the effects of the pandemic in the workplace.”

Michael Wood, administrator of the state’s department of Occupational Safety and Health, said the move is necessary to address a technicality in state law that requires a “permanent” rule to keep current restrictions from expiring.

“We are not out of the woods yet,” he said.

But the idea has prompted a flood of angry responses, with everyone from parents to teachers to business owners and employees crying government overreach.

And there you have the arguments on both sides of the equation. Permanent lock down for the greater good of the public or re-open the country nationwide and discontinue the practices that have been proven ineffective; despite the dogma taught in the mainstream. Whatever the decision, the world should decide now. To date, 3,000,000 have died worldwide. What will that number be tomorrow?

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