I saw this article a few days ago and felt it was worth pointing out the absurdity of both what Gates had to say as well as Business Insider and their claim from the start. https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-rashida-jones-on-anti-maskers-are-like-nudists-2020-11
First, there is a distinct lack of credible evidence that wearing face masks curbs the transmission of coronavirus or any airborne respiratory virus. The author considers the evidence "overwhelming" because of two studies she cites. But while one of the studies could not even be totally scrolled through or read for me and while it's not my area of expertise, the one thing I have learned is that credible and scientifically accepted studies are not only double blind and peer reviewed but use randomized controlled trials in order to eliminate or at least reduce as much as possible any bias within the study and when coming to a conclusion about the results. I did not see any notation of randomized controlled trials used in either study. As a matter of fact, from what I could see on the Massachusetts hospital study, they seem to say two things that stand out. First, there could have been other factors that reduced Covid-19 positivity rates and that their study had limitations. They mentioned that even with the measures taken in the state of Massachusetts including mask wearing, rates of infection continued to rise even as they went down in the healthcare setting. Well of course comparing a healthcare setting in which people are highly trained to deal with mitigating infections is not an apples to apples comparison to the general population. Second, they seem to directly state that no randomized trials were conducted. I say seem to because again I could not get the study to come up quite right for me. There is a sentence that states "Randomized trials of universal masking of HCWs during a pandemic are likely not" and then the page cuts off or stops. My guess is that they're saying such trials are likely not possible or easy to do. But again randomized trials are the method for eliminating or reducing bias and when governments, media, businesses, and individuals like Bill Gates are screaming wear a mask and many of those people fund the scientific studies done, it might be nice to have some randomized trials as a part of them.
As a matter of fact, speaking of studies, there was a Danish study done which was randomized and was extremely large in terms of a sample, studying 6,000 people. But no medical journal will publish the results of it. https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/why-won-t-anyone-publish-danish-mask-study
Second, the timing of such a statement about the evidence being "overwhelming" is ludicrous on its face. Over 60% of the states in our country have mask mandates in place. In fact, it's closer to 75% as we now have 37 out of the 50 states with mask mandates in place. That is actually as of today. https://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-2020/states-mask-mandates-coronavirus.html Yet all we are hearing daily in the news is how numbers are surging and records are being broken, including in my mask mandated state of Ohio. So much for the rates sinking. I would be embarrassed to have written such a thing myself.
So now let's move to some of the "genius" of Bill Gates from his podcast with Rashida Jones and take this point by point.
"What are these, like, nudists?" he said. "I mean, you know, we ask you to wear pants, and no American says, or very few Americans say, that that's, like, some terrible thing."
Well, gee, Bill. I guess you've got us there. For the most part people don't object to wearing pants. But that's because we agreed a long time ago that it's generally appropriate to do so. We didn't have a bunch of nudists running around or protesters marching somewhere in their underwear or with the bare bottoms glittering in the sun. The government didn't come along and say, "Starting Thursday evening at midnight you will begin wearing pants." We decided that and agreed to it on our own. Also, near as I can tell pants provide no health risks whatsoever. Yet we have, or had, medical exemptions that allow people to bypass wearing masks. Why would that be? Because they have a medical/respiratory condition that might lead to their life being in jeopardy if their natural breathing is impaired in any way. Given that it's dangerous for those people, it seems unlikely to be totally safe and healthy for the rest of us. And of course it indeed is not. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/the-risks-vs-benefits-of-face-masks-is-there-an-agenda/
The man who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express so he could pretend to be a health expert also said this.
Gates said that early on, experts based their advice on what they knew about other respiratory viruses, like the common cold and the flu. Those illnesses might spread when people cough — but far less readily than COVID-19, which can jump between people who are merely talking.
"These unbelievable viral loads that you see with coronavirus don't occur with most of the other respiratory viruses," Gates said.
First of all, I would love to see credible evidence that Covid-19 is a virus that is spread merely by talking. Maybe they're working on or have developed a monster virus, perhaps the Covid-21 that some people claim will be released next year, that spreads like that. Until then, and short of that, all such a claim amounts to is extremist fear mongering. As it is, the Spanish flu was the most serious pandemic we've had in the last 100 years or so and when scientists tried to deliberately infect people with that virus they were unable to do so even when literally taking discharge from the nose and mouth and directly wiping it in the eyes, nose, and mouths of healthy people. https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/studies-question-transmission-1918-spanish-flu They literally were unable to prove that the Spanish flu was transmitted from person to person. Now the common wisdom is that bacterial infections killed more people than a mutated H1N1 flu virus did. History certainly always repeats itself and it would be interesting if we had another 100 years in this world- and we don't in this earth age- if people would find how wrong and mistaken we were about the nature of this "pandemic" as well.
And as far as "viral load", the New York Times is not regarded as an objective bastion of truth telling by everyone these days. Yet in the summer they published an article stating a very legitimate point that Facebook recently claimed I was incorrect on. The cycle count for the Covid-19 PCR tests is set too high and as a result up to 90% of positive cases in New York, Massachusetts, and Nevada were individuals who had barely any active virus in them and were almost certainly not contagious. https://www.dailywire.com/news/ny-times-up-to-90-of-people-who-test-positive-for-covid-19-no-longer-contagious-dont-need-to-isolate Yet individuals like Bill Gates, "Do as you're told" Anthony Fauci, and almost every governor in the country wants to limit our freedoms and scare the heck out of us because faulty tests are causing surging case numbers.
Keep in mind too that in the Children's Health Defense article I linked there is a point that there was almost universal face mask wearing in China leading up to the Covid-19 outbreak as they were wearing them for the flu season. Yet they still had the outbreak, face masks and all.
Finally, the man with the bad haircut and the inability to protect our computers from viruses tells us this.
COVID-19's ability to spread when people are asymptomatic is unusual too, he said. So while people with a cold or the flu tend to stay home when they're contagious because they don't feel well, people with COVID-19 can be walking around feeling healthy and unknowingly infecting those around them.
Well, again the problem here is two fold. One, the piece from the New York Times again demonstrates that a large number, indeed a ridiculously large majority of Covid-19 positive individuals were likely never contagious. I'll almost guarantee that the people who have this who are contagious and if it is a virus that indeed passes from person to person, it is almost entirely the people who are sick and having symptoms, even if they're mild symptoms, that spread and transmit it. Not you and I who basically feel fine but might unwittingly kill someone who's vulnerable if we don't mask up.
The second problem is that we know that the WHO, which ironically receives funding from and is heavily influenced by Bill Gates, said this past spring/summer as well that asymptomatic transmission of the virus is "very rare". Now, it got walked back once people got upset that they said that and it became this silliness of, "well really they're presymptomatic and they just haven't developed symptoms yet. Or really they're not asymptomatic they just didn't know they symptoms they had were Covid symptoms". https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/06/08/who-says-asymptomatic-spread-of-coronavirus-very-rare-but-experts-raise-questions/?sh=5eab4fb543d0 All of this of course is kind of akin to a lawyer trying to use word games to create doubt or Bill Clinton trying to explain how he did nothing wrong with Monica Lewinsky. They can say what they want but asymptomatic is not the same as presymptomatic or being "mildly ill or mildly diseased." This was a case in which the truth was accidentally told at the wrong time and they had to clean up the mess as best they could.
But maybe if Bill and Rashida want to ask "big questions" on face masks, maybe they can ask this one. Why don't you wear a face mask Bill? Are you a nudist? And please don't tell me that we'll see you pantless next. No one wants that. https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/why-wont-bill-gates-wear-mask
