A woman known only as Tina40 tweeted recently, “The tyrants don’t create the tyranny, your obedience does.” And she is absolutely correct. Why was a pastor able to be arrested, charged, and awaiting trial for opening his Alberta, Canada church while another Canadian pastor, a Polish immigrant, chased the Mounties out of his church when they came to shut it down, shouting, “No Nazis here! No storm troopers here! Get out! Get out!” They left, because he didn’t simply obey as they closed the church doors and arrested him. He resisted them with unexpected ferocity, having experienced the same tyranny in Communist Poland and having heard of his parents’ experiences under the Nazis in WWII. Why, also, are groups of people able to meet for Bible study and prayer in homes in California contrary to Gov. Newsome’s explicit ban? Because they didn’t obey the tyrant. They took him to the Supreme Court and they won!
The vast majority of the “bans” inflicted upon us and meekly accepted by us during the Coronavirus pandemic were dictates by states’ governors that under many state constitutions do not have the force of law, or, in the case of an emergency, have a limit such as 30 days. Governors have circumvented the time limits by simply reissuing the same executive orders again and again, as has happened in Illinois. Problems have arisen for governors and mayors when orders were arbitrary, vague, and did not treat all citizens alike, as in the case of the home Bible studies in California. Another example is Dallas, Texas salon owner, Shelley Luther. After enduring a lengthy scold by the judge at her trial who berated her for her selfishness in carefully opening her salon, she responded: “I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I am selfish because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hair stylists that are going hungry because they’d rather feed their kids. So sir, if you think the law is more important than kids being fed, then please go ahead with your decision. But I’m not going to shut the salon.” The Texas Supreme Court dismissed all civil and criminal charges against her and threw the case out because of the vagueness of the order she had supposedly transgressed. She did not obey the tyrant and she won.
Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee have never had a state-wide mask mandate. Seven states—Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming never issued stay at home orders in March and April of 2020 as the rest of the country locked down. But South Dakota was the only state which did not even close businesses. Life there, went on pretty much as normal. Texas, Mississippi, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota and now Indiana have dropped their mask mandates, and Alabama intends to drop its mask mandate next month. Everyone of these 18 states has a Republican governor who trusts his or her citizens to keep themselves safe without the state government forcing masks upon them. And it is working.
But President Asterisk, Dr. Fauci, and the CDC continue to warn against a fourth surge of cases and deaths and predicted disaster in states like Florida and Texas without a mask ban. Yet, a month after the dropping of the mask mandate in Texas, cases in the state have continued to fall. Florida has had fewer total cases than New York, which was once touted as the gold standard in COVID management, yet Florida has more elderly residents and more total population than New York and has never instigated the extreme shutdowns that New York did.
Government health officials warned us of a fourth surge, coming largely from the British variant, but the surges have come primarily in states with shutdowns and mask mandates still in effect, mostly blue states (Democrat-controlled states). Even then, the cases country-wide have been dropping precipitously and the cases from the British variant are mild and affecting the young, unvaccinated, thus deaths are also down. Still, the government mantra continues: Masks must still be worn, even after you have been vaccinated. Government officials blithely ignore the numerous studies worldwide which indicate that only a tiny number of vaccinated individuals (those whose bodies did not totally “take” the vaccine) become infected with COVID, that they will have a mild case that will not cause death, and that the likelihood of them transmitting the disease to others in infinitesimally small. The national health study done by Israel, found that four weeks after the first shot of the Pfizer vaccine which is almost identical to the Moderna vaccine, the vaccinated individual is “almost bulletproof” as far as COVID is concerned. Yet, we —the people whose ancestors took up arms against the most powerful nation in the world and defeated them — we meekly don our masks.
But should we really wear masks? Is it necessary to protect ourselves and others? In previous blogs, I have enumerated study after study done across the world that have proven the ineffectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of a virus. Masks must be porous enough to allow the wearer to breathe, and except for the N95 masks, are loosely fitting. According to the FDA, “While a surgical mask may be effective in blocking splashes and large-particle droplets, a face mask, by design, does not filter or block very small particles in the air that may be transmitted by coughs, sneezes, or certain medical procedures. Surgical masks also do not provide complete protection from germs and other contaminants because of the loose fit between the surface of the mask and your face” (https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/personal-protective-equipment-infection-control/n95-respirators-surgical-masks-and-face-masks). Cloth masks are even less efficient, because they are made of woven fabric with tiny holes between the weave. Thus, with the masks that the vast majority of people wear, they have no protection against the tiny particles transmitted by coughs and sneezes, again according to the FDA. Likewise, someone does not need to cough or sneeze in front of you in order for those particles to pass through your mask and enter your mouth, nose, or eyes. The CDC writes, “Airborne transmission is infection spread through exposure to those virus-containing respiratory droplets comprised of smaller droplets and particles that can remain suspended in the air over long distances (usually greater than 6 feet) and time (typically hours)” https://www.cdc.gov › science › scientific-brief-sars-cov-2). So you can simply walk into a store where someone sneezed through his mask three hours ago and breathe in the virus right through your mask. Furthermore, cloth masks are intended to be washed after each wearing and surgical masks are to be worn once and then discarded, but instead most people use both kinds of masks over and over again.
Furthermore, study after study comparing places with mask mandates with those who had no mask mandate show that mask mandates actually increase the number of COVID cases! An organization called Rational Ground studied counties in Florida with no mask mandates and counties of like size with mask mandates. They discovered that when counties did have a mask mandates there were an average of 23 cases per 100,000 residents, but when counties did not have a mask mandate, there were only 22 cases per 100,000 residents. Though not a great difference, it is still a difference.
Then they expanded their research to include states with a mask mandate and those states that had not imposed a mask mandate in order to see if Florida was an anomaly. What they found was astounding. “When states DID have a mandate in effect, there were 9,605,256 cases over 5,907 total days and averaged 27 cases per 100,000 per day. When states DID NOT have a statewide order there were 5,781,716 cases over 5,772 total days averaging 17 cases per 100,000 people per day.” Not only did masks appear (as both the CDC and FDA have said clearly in articles that can be found on the internet) not to prevent people from getting COVID, it appears that they may have contributed to people catching the virus.
This actually harks back to what we were told at the start of the pandemic. On February 29, 2020, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams ordered Americans to “STOP BUYING MASKS!” in an all-caps message on Twitter, claiming they are “NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching coronavirus” and will deplete mask supplies for healthcare providers. He was correct. In an interview with 60 Minutes on March 8, 2020, Dr. Fauci said “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” though he admitted he was not against them, but that wearing masks could lead to “unintended consequences” as people constantly touch their faces to adjust their masks. This touching of the face may account for some of the COVID cases in states with mask mandates, as may the false sense of security that we have been led to believe that the masks give us. Even last July, Dr. Scott Atlas, one of President Trump’s key COVID advisors tweeted that masks don’t work.
But by then the CDC had decided that COVID could be transmitted even by talking with someone and, ignoring their own study of a few years ago that concluded that masks don’t protect against viruses, they jumped on the mask bandwagon and most of the country found themselves masked. Governors ordered schools closed and many remain so today. They also closed businesses, restaurants, churches, and ordered people to stay in their homes. It was the worst thing they could have done. All through last spring, summer, and fall, when we should have been outside in the sun, dosing our bodies with the sun-provided vitamin D that boosts our immune systems and prevents us from catching viruses such as COVID-19, we all hunkered down in our homes and gave each other the virus.
Today, with over one hundred million Americans already vaccinated and millions more with natural immunity from having had and recovered from COVID, we have nearly reached the point where there are not enough susceptible people to continue to pass the virus from person to person. This is called “herd immunity” and is exactly what through vaccinations has eradicated diseases such as Small Pox, Polio, Diphtheria, mumps and measles from the United States. Hib, another disease eradicated by vaccine, is far deadlier than COVID-19, killing 1 in 20 children who catch it. 99.5% of people who contract COVID, survive it, yet our leaders would keep us in isolation and wearing useless masks to prevent others from getting sick.
As I have said before, I am a non-masker. Rarely will you ever find me with a mask on my face now that Russ, Missy, and I have all been vaccinated and are well beyond the two weeks required for maximum protection. In addition, we take magnesium, zinc, vitamin C, and vitamin D3 to boost our immune systems. Russ and I have been in Walmart, Casey’s, and Rural King in Paris maskless, and in Kroger, Baesler’s, Pet Smart, Penney’s, and the Outback Restaurant without a mask. And in none of those places were we the only ones without a mask. In fact, only a man and his small son who were there to see his wife, an Outback’s employee, entered the restaurant with masks on their faces. Everyone else came in without a mask.
Don’t let the tyrants win. If we give in so easily to useless masks, what other limits to our freedom will we allow by our fear and complacency? Remember, “The tyrants don’t create the tyranny, your obedience does.”