Infectious disease epidemiologist, Michael Osterholm — finally said, in public, what I've been saying since January 2020 — about COVID and masks

02 August 2021

A nation led by aggressively laggard folks?

Last week, I had harsh words (again) for the United States' repetitively absurd handling of COVID-19. See here, here and here.

On that same theme, today, I was gladdened to see that infectious disease epidemiologist, Michael Osterholm, finally said something true about the American COVID situation.

Dr. Osterholm produced words to the effect of what I have been (repeatedly) saying since January 2020.

Anti-COVID masks, Osterholm pointed out, are not created equal:

I wish we could get rid of the term 'masking' because, in fact, it implies anything you put in front of your face works.

We need to talk about better masking.

We need to talk about N95 respirators which would do a lot for both people who are not yet vaccinated — or not previously infected — protecting them, as well as keeping others, who might become infected, having been vaccinated, from breathing out the virus.

So, I think one of the things, right now, that we've just got to get a better handle on what does protect people and what doesn't.

Yes, my friends

Twenty-two months after COVID-19's first appearance (probably in China), it has finally dawned on someone in US influence that maybe making and distributing virus-resistant masks might be a good idea.

Do ask yourselves . . .

Where have these supposedly credentialed people, like Osterholm, have been hiding for more than 18 US pandemic months?

Nothing about SARS-CoV-2 poses an obstacle to the asking of intelligent investigative questions.

Yet, virtually no one in American (or for that matter, world) leadership has been asking diddly squat about anything — other than how much money there is to be made by fostering unwarranted hysteria among the world publics.

For months and months and months, US and European policy makers have been recommending cloth masks as an infection-control measure. With not a whit of evidence to support those virally porous masks' epidemiological efficacy.

This insane policy direction occurring, ad nauseum, despite the fact that no one in a teaching hospital would dream — not even for a moment — that a respiratory virus of SARS-CoV-2's infectivity could be stopped, without N95 level mask protection.

Yet here we are, in this braggadocious American nation of ours, still making no attempt to boost domestically sourced N95 production to the levels necessary to protect vulnerable public members, who might want them.

Even today, if you look for N95 respirators to buy (in 'Ahmurika'), you will find that virtually all of them come from China.

Outsourcing apparently remains the official American plan for combining national security and public health.

The moral? — Dumbshit-ism and US leadership are exactly synonymous

Kernels of molecular intelligence, hiding within in the human genome, are all secretly hoping that our Brainless Ilk will kill itself off via our overwhelmingly aggressive penchant for uninterrupted stupidity.

Twenty-two months, it has been — with not a visible bit of American N95 manufacturing and distribution progress.

Recall in comparison, if you will, what I wrote (here) about a historical example of an intelligently undertaken and gargantuanly difficult national survival effort by the Soviet Union, during World War II.

In effect — during the current COVID era — the United States has tacitly admitted that its supposedly free society cannot keep up with the motivation and implementations that totalitarian cultures occasionally achieve.

This apparently never-ending demonstration of American incompetence augurs poorly for our (self-initiated) economic and military competition with the People's Republic of China.

Can't even make our own medical masks in sufficient quantities.

PeteFree.com

Infectious disease epidemiologist, Michael Osterholm — finally said, in public, what I've been saying since January 2020 — about COVID and masks