Covid Studies 2022

 

Today's headline featured on the front page of the Connecticut Post, my local newspaper, read: “State lawmakers likely to extend mask rules.” An article followed indicating that the state legislature was about to approve the Governor’s mask mandates for another 60 days. 

 

Predictably the Governor, the legislators, and newspaper editors and writers are unaware of recent Covid scientific studies. Here is a list culled from recent articles I have read.

 

In a January 23 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Halperin, adjunct professor at the Gillings School of Gobal Public Health at the University of North Carolina noted the following studies.  

 

# 1: “A recent rigorous review by the University of Minnesota research group concludes: “we are well past the emergency phase of this pandemic, and it should be well-known by now that wearing cloth face coverings or surgical masks, universal or otherwise, has a very minor role to play….It is time to stop overselling their efficacy and unrealistic expectations about their ability to end the pandemic.

 

#2. The first large randomized community level study published last month in Science, found that while generic surgical masks provided a modest (about 10%) reduction in the risk of infection from Delta, cloth masks didn’t significantly reduce risk. Masks may be even less protective against an extremely contagious variant like Omicron….

 

Omicron doesn’t seriously threaten the vast majority of children; preliminary evidence  suggests much less risk for youth than from Delta. An increasing number of public-health experts…have called for ending school mask mandates soon.

 

#3. While a new CDC study finds that boosters substantially reduce the risk of infection as well as hospitalization from Omicron, countries like the U.K. and Israel that had widespread booster coverage before Omicron struck have also seen unprecedented surges in cases…. 

 

#4. The European Medicines Agency recently cautioned that repeated boosters may weaken the immune system over time.

 

#5. A recent Southern California study looked at more than 50,000 patients infected with the new variant. Not one required mechanical ventilation and only one died, compared with 14 deaths and 11 ventilations out of some 12,000 infected by the Delta variant during the same period….

 

#6. Health and Human Services Department data indicate the total number of patients in U.S. hospitals has hardly budged over the past six months….

 

#7. Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics  and Evaluation estimates in the Lancet that the number of Omicron deaths “seems to be similar in most countries to the level of a bad influenza season in northern hemisphere countries.”

 

In another op-ed published In the Wall Street Journal on 1/27/2022, Marty Makary, a Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine mentioned some other studies, including one conducted by himself and colleagues at Johns Hopkins. 

 

#1. Finally, last week the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination….

 

#2. The National Institute of Health repeatedly has dismissed  natural immunity by arguing that its duration is unknown—then failing to conduct studies to answer the question. Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people, who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99% of them up to nearly two years after infection. We also found that natural immunity from prior infection reduced the risk of infection  with the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the two-dose Moderna vaccine against infection (not severe disease) declines to 61% against Delta and 16% against Omicron at six months, according to a recent Kaiser Southern California study. In general, Pfizer’s Covid vaccines have been less effective than Moderna’s.

 

To summarize. The wearing of masks has been largely ineffective in stopping Covid in its various forms. Even Dr. Fauci admitted as much when he advised people to wear two masks. Moreover, as has been pointed out on this blog many times, most people from the President on down handle and wear them improperly. Just look at basketball coaches wearing their masks on their chin when they yell at their players. The wearing of masks has become a superstition designed to ward off evil spirits.

 

If we really want to follow the science, we might also conclude that Omicron is a blessing in disguise. Many of my family members had the Omicron virus over the holidays and they all survived with only cold or flu like symptoms. The latest science now  indicates that they will now be immune not only to Omicron but to other viruses in the future.

 

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Mask Mandates

The photo at the left shows Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and the most influential woman in America, at a large dinner party in Napa surrounded by a crowd of invited political guests. Even though she is around 80 and in a high risk group, she is not wearing a mask and neither are her guests. Despite her words to the contrary, are her actions telling us that masks are not really needed if we have been vaccinated? 

Actually I have wondered about the effectiveness of masks in protecting us from the coronavirus from day one. I know some people attribute the absence of flu last year to the use of masks, but I believe that social distancing and the fact that children and teachers  have not been in school did more to stop the flu than anything. In any event, the masks have obviously not stopped the coronavirus which still remains with us after more than a year of mask mandates. 

Last fall, I visited my Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor (ENT) because of sinus related symptoms. He did a test and the results showed that I had a staph infection. Although staph infections can be severe, mine was not. He prescribed an inexpensive anti-biotic that did the trick. He said that he was treating an above average number of staph infections this year.

 I asked him if he thought the increase could be related to the masks that everyone was wearing to protect against the coronavirus. “Definitely,” he answered. He went on to explain that most of the staph infections he treated were in the mouth and nasal passages. Could it be that the masks are causing more harm than good?

About the same time, my local newspaper contained an editorial with this banner headline: “Wear a mask for the sake of strangers.” It went on to explain that “anyone whose face is now uncovered in public is truly unmasked as a nonconformist…. But by scorning masks many outliers express disregard for the rest of humanity.” The editorial went on to complain that there will always be people who resist social norms and laws, and applauded the Governor’s intention to impose monetary fines on non-compliers. 

However, there was not one bit of science in the paper’s editorial. Why are we wearing masks? At the beginning of the pandemic my local state representative in her regular newsletter urged all of her constituents to wear masks, and she provided a link to a scientific study. 

I went to the link and discovered that it was a study of the efficacy of wearing masks in a hospital environment. Well, duh! Who would doubt the value of doctors and nurses wearing masks in an operating room? The masks are worn to protect patients whose defenses are breached in the course of surgery. Any open wound is prone to infection. Moreover, medical professionals are trained in the proper use of masks, and usually discard them after one use. Even so, many patients still develop infections while in hospital settings.

 But what about the general public? In a follow-up the same state representative sent out a mask update warning people to use the masks properly. She wrote,

Use the loops to take your mask on and off.

Do not touch your mask while you are wearing it.

Be sure your mask covers your nose, mouth and chin.

I love advice like this that is almost impossible to follow for ordinary people. Just look at people adjusting their masks while putting them on or taking them off. Imagine not touching your mask inadvertently. Also, how many times do you see people with their masks only covering their chin? Ordinarily, our skin protects us from germs of all kinds even when they land on our chins but when you move the mask from your chin to cover your nose and mouth, you are potentially bringing all sorts of bacteria into your mouth and nasal passages.

 

Although politicians and media commentators continue to urge people to wear masks in public, I have seen no study that would indicate that they are effective in keeping ordinary people from infecting others, or being infected by others. Indeed, a Google search for studies of mask effectiveness fails to find any conclusive scientific studies. Controlled scientific studies of public mask wearing are almost impossible to conduct. Actually, when government officials claim that two masks might be necessary, they are tacitly admitting that one mask is not effective. Social distancing and frequent washing makes more sense to me.  

Nevertheless, it is now regarded as a kind of crime against humanity to appear in public without a mask. Although there is no scientific study that children can infect others, all children must wear masks in school. Does anyone remember the many diseases that children brought home from school in previous years? Why weren't masks needed then?

 On a somewhat related note, my local newspaper ran a front page story last year with the headline: “Doctors drop use of lead X-ray aprons.” Apparently, doctors at Yale Hospital are abandoning the lead shields because they have found that they actually do more harm than good. 

Describing it as a monumental shift in medical practice, the radiology director at Yale explained that over the past 50 years “they were taught over and over again to shield, to shield, to shield … to protect the patient. However, research has found that the lead shield not only does little if anything to protect the gonads from radiation that might cause genetic defects or cancer, but that it may result in an increase.”

Fifty years of science out the window. It will be interesting to read the final scientific verdict on the wearing of masks. We have already discarded the practice of continually wiping down surfaces. Will the masks be next?

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