Tag: mask

Bioweapon

Back in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton informed a Fox News audience that “just a few miles away from that food market [initially proposed as the epicenter of the outbreak] is China’s only biosafety level 4 super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.”

The Senator’s mere suggestion that the fast-spreading virus might have originated from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology labs — which were (a) known to be sloppy, and (b) doing U.S. funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses — was immediately labelled a “debunked” “conspiracy theory” by The Washington Post (which has since corrected its story).

Some scientists and pundits also expressed outrage — erroneously — at Cotton’s “implication” that China had unleashed a bioweapon. In Cotton’s defense, he never said any such thing.

Hmmm?

When the lab leak theory made a comeback — after a year or more of Fauci & Co. colluding to snuff out the very thought — it seemed the one thing “we” somehow “knew” was that it certainly wasn’t a bioweapon.

Yet, unsure of its precise origin, how can we know that?

“It matters little whether it was intentionally leaked from a lab or not,” Brian T. Kennedy, chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, explained at a recent Hillsdale College speech, “what is clear is that they allowed it to spread throughout the world knowing the harm it would cause.”

The Chinese rulers did this both by covering up human transmission for many weeks and by knowingly allowing hundreds of thousands of Chinese to travel throughout the world spreading the new virus. That’s why Kennedy calls it “a biowarfare attack against the United States.”

In his book, No Limits: The Inside Story of China’s War with the West, Andrew Small writes about a well-placed Chinese friend who told him in January of 2020 that “the Chinese leadership had reached a decision: if China was going to take a hit from the pandemic, the rest of the world should too.”

With friends like China …

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with PicFinder.ai

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Tags bioweapon, China, covid, mask, vaccines

too much government

The Really Slow Fast COVID-19 Test

Post author By Editor
Post date October 7, 2020
2 Comments on The Really Slow Fast COVID-19 Test

A rapid test for COVID-19 that you could perform in homes, workplaces, and classrooms would be less accurate than the best slower tests. But even somewhat accurate fast tests would help many to cope with the disease more effectively.

If necessary, asymptomatic persons who test positive could be retested by another method while staying isolated. If test-takers have already exhibited COVID-like symptoms (but also bad-cold-like symptoms), a quick positive result means that they could more quickly start appropriate treatment.

An easy, rapid test would be a godsend in situations where it is advisable for people to be retested continually.

In late August, Abbott Labs announced that production of a credit-card-sized, “$5, 15-minute, easy-to-use” test is being increased “to 50 million tests a month.” The U.S. has approved its mass-scale use.

Hooray! Another positive development in efforts to cope with a scourge that is not the Black Death but not just-the-flu either.

Not so fast.

Great as far as it goes, but as FEE writer James Anthony notes, this is only one approval of one test produced by one company. And the test can be performed only at “point-of-care” sites able to flourish special regulatory approval. So not at every workplace, classroom, or home.

Yet, according to Abbott, the test delivers results “in just 15 minutes with no instrumentation.”

Sounds like mere lay persons like you and me would have to . . . follow instructions.

Like governments should follow ours … and get out of the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Masks Work

Post author By Editor
Post date May 22, 2020
5 Comments on Masks Work

mask, filter, coronavirus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic,

Early in this pandemic, experts — including CDC officials — told us that if you aren’t a medical worker dealing with infected patients, wearing a mask is ineffective in protecting yourself and others.

Many reversed themselves, though without honestly explaining why they had ever downplayed the value of masks to begin with. Masks are even now mandatory some places.

But we still hear naysayers who declare masks to be pointless.

One blithely declares: “The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked.” That’s less than 2.5 micrometers. A micrometer is one millionth of a meter. Yes, small.

But “too fine to be blocked”?

A properly worn mask need not be 100% effective to block tiny particles. Viruses do not fly unerringly through holes and gaps in the mask. They have no guidance system and no little legs enabling them to scamper to a hole if it hits fabric.

Nor is the virus invariably unattached to larger particles.

Obviously, the better the filtering, the more effective the mask.

Suppose you go to a supermarket and

wear a mask,
try to keep your distance from others,
go when fewer people tend to be shopping, and
leave fast.

All pointless?

Short of wearing a hazmat suit or never leaving a one-resident home, no protective measure will be 100 percent effective all the time, infallibly. This doesn’t mean that partly effective measures should be dismissed as entirely ineffective.

A part of something is, well, not zero.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency national politics & policies responsibility

America Unmasked

For weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services told us not to wear face masks. The Surgeon General even warned that mass use of masks could “increase the spread of the coronavirus.”

“My nose tells me,” I posted on Facebook weeks ago, “that all the info about how we don’t need face-masks is to cover up for the lack of face-masks.”

My family is very grateful to a Taiwanese friend, who mailed me masks — not the N95 masks, which the Taiwanese government is donating in large quantities, but masks of excellent non-medical quality.

Last Wednesday, CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell noted that a large percentage of people spreading the virus are asymptomatic, meaning they don’t know they have it. She asked Dr. Anthony Fauci with the White House Coronavirus Taskforce: “Should we be advising people to wear masks?”

“The primary people who need masks are healthcare workers,” the doctor replied, before admitting that if supplies weren’t so limited, wearing a mask was “a potentially good way … you could have an impact with preventing transmission.”

Days later, President Trump passed on a CDC advisory to the same effect.

Americans had figured out the initial lie, and were already making their own and posting how to do so on social media. Now that’ll ramp up.

Initially, our leaders didn’t level with us. They could have. Americans seem amazingly cooperative, to say the least.

Government folks need to stop masking the truth from the public. That way they might earn more public trust.

Which sure can be useful during a crisis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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