by Dr. Simone Gold
Author’s note: The below is the Op-Ed that was accepted to USAToday on June 24. They deleted key phrases/paragraphs for their print paper and then they refused to print it at all online.
It is clear to me as a physician-lawyer that the disinformation about both Covid-19 and the Constitution has caused us to turn a medical issue into a legal crisis.
The scientific usefulness of a mask has been so aggressively overstated, and the foundational importance of the Constitution has been so aggressively understated, that we have normalized people screaming obscenities at each other while hiking.
The Covid virus was supposed to be contained in the kind of lab where people wear astronaut suits and go through triple sealed doors. It is a con of massive proportion to assert that now, having escaped those environs, a bandana will magically do the trick.
After all, size matters.
The pore size of cloth face coverings range from ~ 20-100 microns. The Covid virus is 200-1000x smaller than that, at 0.1 microns. Putting up a chain link fence will not keep out a mosquito. Even the most esteemed medical journals admit their purpose is to calm anxiety. “Expanded masking protocols’ greatest contribution may be to reduce the transmission of anxiety …”
Of course, by knowledge or common sense observation, most Americans already know that masking everyone is superstition. But unlike privately carrying a lucky charm, mandating facial coverings requires the consent of the governed.
Many cultures mandate clothing that appears totally irrational to outsiders. Never have those cultures pretended that there is a scientific basis for their clothing requirement. Their leaders rule, and their citizens accept, that their choice of clothing is due to religious or cultural preference.
Not wearing a mask is not mere “personal choice” like deciding between a head covering or a t-shirt. It is a flashpoint for being a free human being who has consented to be governed but has not consented to be ruled. We do not consent to a masked America, because that is a fundamental change in American society, culture, norms, and rights.
People who are apathetic toward their own liberty cannot eliminate Constitutional rights for those who are not. This is not the first (or last) time that people who believe in superstition are screaming the loudest. The Constitution exists precisely to protect all people during times of mass hysteria.
The mask has become the most visible symbol of #socialconditioning to Americans determined to preserve individual freedom. Thus far most Americans have continued to give their consent to be governed. But you are trying our patience.
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Simone Gold, MD, JD, FABEM, is a board certified emergency physician. She graduated from Chicago Medical School before attending Stanford University Law School to earn her Juris Doctorate degree. She completed her residency in Emergency Medicine at Stony Brook University Hospital in New York. Dr. Gold worked in Washington D.C. for the Surgeon General, as well as for the Chairman of the Labor & Human Resources Committee. She works as an emergency physician on the frontlines whether or not there is a pandemic. Her clinical work serves all Americans: from urban-inner city, to suburban, to the IHS. Her legal work has focused on conflicts between hospitals and insurers. She writes on a number of policy issues relating to law and medicine. She always leads with the facts. Read more at The Gold Opinion.
Hi!
I want to say I really appreciate the “America’s Frontline Doctors” , which include mostly ophthalmologists, an orthopedic surgeon and a pediatrician, all of whom are educated at length on viral diseases and are clearly on the “Front Lines” of COVID-19!
Seems to me if you wear a mask that prohibits normal breathing, it would also prohibit at least some virus from getting through. Also, if the virus is transferred via the hands to the face, wearing a mask should be the reminder not to touch your face. I’ve heard that a lot of people have died from the virus, but I haven’t heard that anyone died from wearing a mask. And lastly, the rudest people making comments here seem to be republicans, who are forgetting that democrats are Americans. Love your neighbor as yourself.
For all of you who don’t think the masks do any good, next time you have surgery, make sure the surgeons don’t where masks.
Are you walking around with an open incision in your abdomen?
Dr. Gold is correct on the physics and on the epidemiology.
Water vapor goes right through any said mask, and there are enough virons on any single suspended vapor to infect you. This is a simple matter of physics. Said vapor remains suspended, effectively indefinitely. Larger droplets fall to the ground rapidly so unless you get coughed or sneezed on directly the odds of one infecting you are very low; virtually all transmission that is airborne for a virus happens from the water vapor in the 100% RH air you exhale. Masks cannot prevent transmission either at the source of at the target and RCTs over the last 20 years have proved that physics is indeed a set of laws, not suggestions — masks are worthless against virus transmission.
In addition we have further evidence in the form of contract tracers and what they’re finding as vectors, along with a key piece of data nobody will talk about in the media. Specifically, all aerosol virus transmission is inversely correlated with absolute humidity. The reason for this is again physics; the higher the absolute humidity the greater the odds of *condensation* of a vapor molecule into a larger drop, which then falls to the ground. This is why we have a flu season every year; when it’s colder absolute humidity is lower. But Covid-19 is not following this pattern, yet it is a physical law that if it’s transmitted in the main by aerosol it must.
This strongly suggests that the largest vector is in fact manual — that is, you hands. We also know the virus is expelled in feces. Oh, and close to half of all persons in a nursing home are partially or entirely incontinent. And where has this virus ripped through with impunity? What an interesting correlation; how come nobody has done anything to interrupt that?
The contact tracer reports also document the same thing; the transmission isn’t coming from aerosol, it is manual. Incidentally the same pattern is seen with norovirus on cruise ships, which is why they don’t hand out masks; that would do nothing. Instead they bleach and ever-loving bejeezus out of every single contact surface they can on a near-constant basis, since that’s how it’s being spread.
Not only are masks ineffective because they can’t work the virtue signalling with them is a very effective foil to keep us away from actual effective mitigations that would make a difference — like cutting off the vectors in nursing homes and health care settings.
We’ve killed tens of thousands of people by ignoring science.
What Dr. Simone didn’t say was that the Covid virus really needs a form of transport, which is respiratory exhalation droplets that range between 60 and 100 microns. That is what the mask knocks down @ pore sizes of cloth face coverings ranging from 20-100 microns. Please keep wearing a mask.
Is it not a case that even N95 masks have no filter on exhaled air?! Therefore it is not beneficial for anybody as nobody is protected with these face coverings.
Also it would be more hazardous for somebody with Covid to re-inhale virus particles which would happen when they are wearing a face covering.
Anecdotal evidence even shows that oxygen levels deplete to a worrying level when any sort of mask is worn.
I for one will not be wearing any type of mask.
It is irresponsible for us Doctors to advise such a policy when many studies show how harmful masks can be.
Sick people need to quarantine, healthy people should be allowed to get on with their lives.
You apparently missed this part?
“The pore size of cloth face coverings range from ~ 20-100 microns. The Covid virus is 200-1000x smaller than that, at 0.1 microns. Putting up a chain link fence will not keep out a mosquito.”
Judy, this is a measure of the isolated virion size, but the virus doesn’t exit your body as an isolated ‘particle’ (a virus in the gas phase isn’t stable at standard temp and pressure; it has to ride inside of a aqueous droplet) I’m afraid the folks who claim to grasp the “physics” (inter-molecular interactions typically are regarded as falling squarely under the realm of chemistry, but I’ll admit the lines are blurry) here would flunk anything beyond a sophomore level undergraduate course on the topic. I’m begging anyone considering whether to trust the public health authorities: take this seriously and do the bare minimum of ‘crashing out’ as much of any potential virus out of your breath as possible by wearing a mask in public. Clearly this measure isn’t guaranteed to save any given person from transmitting/contracting covid; this isn’t the goal. Statistically significant reduction in transmission rates can mean the difference between where we are now and where other countries are who are faring much better. It is very dangerous to trust dime-store science on forum post that is counter to public health advice; leave it to those who have spent time thinking about this before they started trying to defense their erroneous position by applying pv=nrt genchem logic a complicated non-equilibrium process (I’m not going to comment on the poop theory…)
The ACLU, “Liberties”. Funny how they NEVER defend a conservative point of view or issue. Where are they supporting our liberty to not be required to wear a mask?
This comment is wrong from scientific point of view.
In Germany you have to wear masks because the effectivly hinder small droplets to be spitted over longer distances. These droplets might contain large portions of virus and therefore are very dangerous.
Well, thank God we are not in Germany. Do they have more than the .0004% chance that I have of getting the Wuhan Red Death in the US?
There’s something about this entire thing that makes NO SENSE at all.
They ALL say, masks do not protect you, they protect others? So, if masks do not protet ME from small droplets FROM others, how do they protect OTHERS from small droplets from ME???? These are NOT one way masks, so from that point of view, the entire idea makes no logical sense.
The masks prevents your droplets from spreading!
Interesting article here, this is the kind of thing that gets suppressed by Facebook and Twitter
https://medium.com/@forecheck32/caribou-and-coronavirus-why-the-lockdowns-are-fundamentally-anti-science-76cdeb15b086
The mask are dumb and should only be worn by those with symptoms or those taking care of the symptomatic. It’s kind of like walking around with a condom on.
When you were a kid, your momma told you to cover your mouth when you coughed. The good Dr. must have had substandard home training.
Idiot. If you are not sick, you are not coughing. Excellent piece she wrote here.
Idiot. If you are not sick you are breathing. Dumb piece she wrote here, I’m glad she is not my doc, because she sure doesnt keep up with the research
Forget this theory about droplet sizes and whatever and look for the studies into what interests us. And you find that MASKS REDUCE TRANSMISSION RATES. Not eliminate entirely but reduce enough to make it worthwhile.
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub4/full
Well…what is the most important piece that you omitted from your scold?
After you’ve covered your mouth and captured your sneeze…
WASH YOUR HANDS!!!
As a registered nurse I have been surprised at the MDs and other healthcare professionals who are likely liberal who have supported the use of these cloth masks. WKRN committed a random act of journalism recently and printed that contact tracers noted 80% of our infections were being driven by household transmission of people in the food service, construction, and healthcare industries. Two of these three groups are already wearing masks.
She ‘nailed’ it. It seems that Dems ALWAYS want to tell everyone else what to do!
Yep, John. I’m old enough to remember when many Democrats were classical liberals who supported individual and personal liberties iaccording yo an objective reading ALL of the Bill of Rights. But now, most all have become leftist authoritarians who want to rule over us.
“Timid men (and women) prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
–Thomas Jefferson
But now, their foot soldiers in the streets want to destroy the Jefferson Memorial–just like the Islamic radicals of ISIS do in their countries. Incredible!
I am old enough to remember when ALL democrats were socialist SOB’s and I am going back into the 1950’s.
You may or maynot know of the county judge of Duval County who delivered all the necessary votes (from dead people) to push Texas over for JFK. The commie dems ran Texas with an iron fist for 150 years. We barely have it now, but many like me will not give it back to the dem-commies without blood spilled.
Yes, the scariest part about this all (more than getting covid) is what will be the next forced compliance for our safety….they will be selecting the food we eat, words we can say……