With the COVID/flu silly season fast approaching, certain jurisdictions will once again be tempted to institute rights-infringing, counterproductive mask mandates, especially for our kids in school. Indeed, some already have made this decision. It is time to stand up to these Petty Little Dictators and refuse to comply with such orders in the general public and in schools.

The mask pushers in power have two main tactics; making arguments from authority (despite the lack of convincing data to back it up) bolstered by compliant media propaganda, and using fear/shame against the public. Both of these tactics worked well for the pro-maskers in the last couple years, but enough information is available now for the public to feel confident opposing their use this time around. Without public acceptance, these tactics – and these policies – don’t stand a chance. Learn the troubled history of the mask recommendations to uncover their shaky foundation, take the time to review their studies (like the Kansas study highlighted below) so you can be confident in your criticism, and band together to support each other in your opposition efforts.

A Political Decision Backed Up By Unscientific Reasoning

Aside from mask mandates being improper policy because they are immoral and infringe upon fundamental rights, the decision to recommend masks in the general public was also improper because it was not based on science, but was rather a political decision. The science that existed prior to COVID on the efficacy of masks slowing viral transmission did not support such a move, especially regarding healthy people wearing cloth masks in the general public. There was plenty to review at the start of COVID – available online and in journals – and health authorities would have been familiar with studies such as these found in this 2010 Cambridge review and this 2011 UK Department of Public Health review among many others. Even the WHO 2019 guidance cautioned against it and the CDC’s own review in March 2020 indicated the scientific literature since 1948 does not suggest mask use in the general public, or even in clinical settings, is effective. The scientific authorities knew this -certainly NIAID head Anthony Fauci knew this – but they supported and tried to bolster the political decision anyway.

Many of the studies conducted and touted by health authorities around the time the political decision was made to recommend them are flawed. Many suffer from bias and cherry-picking, most are not comprehensive enough to warrant a general recommendation, and these studies were simply not of the caliber necessary to justify a complete reversal from the bulk of evidence against their usage suggested by decades of Randomized Controlled Trials and larger studies on mask usage. This City Journal article provides discussion of the shortcomings of some of these studies. Now, after time has allowed for a more detailed analysis of such policies instituted in the real world, anti-mask advocates have been vindicated; as the preponderance of evidence suggests mask mandates had little to no effect on transmission rates and may have even contributed to worsening individual and public health in various ways. You can read some of these studies here and find more interesting discussion about these studies themselves and more here and here. Pro-mask authorities still have their favored lists of studies to justify their position as well, but given the history, political decision-making, cherry-picking, and the just plain enormity of the situation that dwarfs our feeble attempts of control, one would have to be extremely biased towards the establishment at this point to not be looking at everything they put out with a critical eye. At best, they ought to stop at a recommendation for symptomatic individuals. Without a clear benefit to stopping transmission – given the mounting evidence against their position – the mandates fail to satisfy even their misguided “ends justifies the means” argument to protect “the public health.”

A big part of the problem was the misinformation put out by health authorities in the media. With headlines about pro-mask studies blasted into everyone’s living rooms and dominating their newsfeeds, they could create the illusion “the science” backed up the use of masks. They could then justify the shaming of dissenters as selfishly opposing the public health by failing to act “for the greater good.”

Bogus Studies and Manipulating Headlines

We must be ready to identify and combat the blatant propaganda of the pro-mask authorities and this starts with analyzing media stories beyond the headlines. Many of the studies conducted during the mask mandate period were severely flawed in their designs. Data was often poorly collected and unreliable. Many of them had inherent limitations acknowledged by the study authors themselves. But this did not stop the authors from taking liberties with the results or the health authorities and their sycophants in the media from using the results of these studies to backup their preconceived conclusion that masks were effective and therefore mandates were warranted. To take one example that highlights the standard reaction to these flawed studies in the media and explore it beyond the headlines can give an idea of what to look for in other high-profile studies.

“Trends in County-Level COVID-19 Incidence in Counties With and Without a Mask Mandate — Kansas, June 1–August 23, 2020” was released to the public and was national headline news for at least a week. Most mainstream news sources reported on it and it was all over social media. The set up to the study is as follows:

“On July 2, 2020, the governor of Kansas issued an executive
order (state mandate), effective July 3, requiring masks or
other face coverings in public spaces. CDC and the Kansas
Department of Health and Environment analyzed trends in
county-level COVID-19 incidence before (June 1–July 2) and
after (July 3–August 23) the governor’s executive order among
counties that ultimately had a mask mandate in place and those
that did not. As of August 11, 24 of Kansas’s 105 counties
did not opt out of the state mandates or adopted their own
mask mandate shortly before or after the state mandate was
issued; 81 counties opted out of the state mandate, as permit-
ted by state law, and did not adopt their own mask mandate.
After the governor’s executive order, COVID-19 incidence
(calculated as the 7-day rolling average number of new daily
cases per 100,000 population) decreased (mean decrease of
0.08 cases per 100,000 per day; net decrease of 6%) among
counties with a mask mandate (mandated counties) but con-
tinued to increase (mean increase of 0.11 cases per 100,000
per day; net increase of 100%) among counties without a
mask mandate (nonmandated counties).)

From this set up and data, the authors conclude that the mask mandates are responsible for the decrease in case rates after the governor’s order and are therefore a useful mitigation tool. However there is a problem with concluding this with this data in this instance; if you look at the chart of the data it is clear the number of reported cases in the mandated counties shot up dramatically right before the mandate orders while the cases in the non-mandate counties remained on a steady trajectory. Both before and after the mandate order, non-mandate counties had lower case rates than the mandated counties. The decline in case rates seen in the mandate counties appear to be a return to the normal trajectory, not necessarily a result of the effects of the mask mandate. One possible explanation for this is that the counties that instituted the mask mandates were also the counties that began testing at greater rates corresponding with the rise in reported cases. These tests have since been widely acknowledged to be extremely flawed and inaccurate. Accurate or not, if this increase in testing in the soon-to-be mandated counties is true, then the decline in the rate seen in this study could be due to a return to less testing corresponding with the leveling out of the trend line seen in the data. At no point in the data is there an indication that the mask mandates lowered case rates below the natural trajectory.

The headlines put out about this study of course never indicated this possibility or reported that non-mask mandate counties performed better than masked counties before and after the mandate orders. While anyone could pull up the study and look at the data themselves, the number of people that actually do this is dwarfed by the number that just read the headlines and take away the desired (imperfect) conclusion. Thus, we have an overall effect, whether intended or unintended, of bias towards desired conclusions at the expense of the truth and more nuanced consideration. Such manipulation of the public perception is improper, especially when rights-infringing policies are based upon them.

Reject Fear, Confront Those Attempting to Shame You, and Build Coalitions

It may seem hard, but it is time to say “no more.” My family and I never wore a mask to comply with a mandate in the general public because we recognized the political nature of the policy from day one and refused to comply with the rights-infringing, unamerican, anti-human, pro-germophobia compliance measure. Living in the Metro Detroit area of Michigan, with one of the worst governors when it came to arbitrary top-down COVID Executive Orders, I know what you may face when choosing to stand against such orders in public. While compliance rates were high in my generally liberal area, agreement with the policies were much lower. People unwillingly gave up their rights to bodily integrity/autonomy based on junk science and a political will to control the people through fear. They did so because the forces against them were too much to bear.

When you equip yourself with the skills necessary to dissect their propaganda and learn the arguments against their positions, it becomes easier to reject their fearmongering. But this alone will not get you through a contentious school board meeting, motivate you to attend that protest, or walk into that store unmasked. You must be ready to oppose their attempts to shame you. I advocate acting virtuously in all instances so I do not recommend getting nasty with anyone. But confident noncompliance and stern rebuttal is necessary. The simple act of civil disobedience can inspire others to do the same. The more people that come together to oppose the return of these mandates, the easier it will be to defeat them.