This present note (immediately below) was previously published in the

October and November 2020 issues of Catholic Candle

We usually focus directly on Faith and morals.  However, sometimes issues in society have a severe indirect impact on Faith and morals and should be addressed.  Below, we examine one of those issues which has a severe indirect impact on Faith and morals, viz., the overblown corona-scare.  We put COVID-19 in perspective, to help readers face this challenge in which Providence has lovingly placed us, for the glory of God and for our good.

In our current corona-crazy world, people are acting strangely because they are frightened by (supposed) imminent death from COVID-19, or they are intimidated by abusive governmental lockdown and mask-wearing orders.  People have been bludgeoned into letting go of their humanity and are fearfully acting as if their fellow man was a threatening virus-culture rather than a fellow child of God and fellow soldier in the Church Militant.

Lastly, another reason to examine the abusive mask mandates is because they are a prominent example showing (for anyone who needs further proof) that the mainstream media and the liberal “deep state” establishment (which is entrenched in the government), are unreliable as sources of the truth concerning what is going on in the world.  It is Catholic Candle’s hope that this present article is a helpful reminder to our readers that they should distrust the mainstream media and entrenched liberals in government because they lie and “spin” the truth.

This article was up to date when it was written in October and November, 2020.  The article mostly uses evidence from the U.S. because there is so much of it available.  However, the evidence we have from other countries supports the theses of this article.  Such support makes sense because human nature is the same in all countries, COVID-19 is (apparently) the same everywhere, and the effects of mask-wearing are the same.

Face masks present grave health risks & are to control people, not a virus

We previously saw the COVID-19 scare is overblown.[1]  We also saw that lockdowns don’t work, and that their real purpose is to control the population, not the virus.[2]

In this present article, we will see that:

1.    masking everybody is not effective to protect people from COVID-19;

2.    it is a health hazard for healthy people to wear masks; and

3.    the real purpose of imposing masks is to dehumanize and control the population.

Below, we examine each of these points.

1.   Masking everybody is not effective to protect people from COVID-19.

Before we examine medical studies and medical authorities, let’s start by using common sense.

➢  If masking everybody in a pandemic is such a good idea, why has it never been done before, in the history of the world?  Masks are not new and are “low tech”.  They have been available for thousands of years.

➢  If masking everybody is such a good idea, why is it promoted and required by those who are most hostile to God and to the worship of God (viz., liberals)?  In other words, if God’s enemies promote it, why would we suppose it is good?

➢  If it is such a good idea, why is it that those who promote masking everybody “even if it only saves one life” (as they say), are the same people who promote murdering innocent babies (abortion and infanticide) and killing the elderly (euthanasia)?

 

➢  If everybody should wear a mask because simply breathing near someone can infect him with a virus, why do the (supposedly more reliable) COVID-19 tests require sticking a long rod/swab up your nose, into your skull (popularly called a “brain-poke”) in order to get a good test sample?  Why couldn’t the test be done by breathing into a bottle or onto a swab or at most supplying a drop of saliva?

➢  If masking everybody is such a good idea, why is it promoted through emotion but not reason?  For example, when Georgia opened back up (after a briefer and less-abusive lockdown than in many other states) the liberals attacked the state and called it “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice”.[3]

➢  The liberals and mainstream media continually talk about following “science” but their position is not supported by science and they don’t cite any supporting science.

Masking everybody is not supported by any science.

There are no studies showing that masking everybody works to prevent viral infection.  The closest thing we could find is a hamster study.  This study is a non-peer-reviewed study of hamsters in Asia, in which a fan blew air from COVID-infected hamsters into a cage of healthy hamsters.  The study concluded that there was a reduction in infection of healthy hamsters when there was a cloth barrier erected between the cages, preventing the continual blowing of the air – day and night, for weeks – from the infected hamsters, into the cage of healthy hamsters.  The researchers concluded that this study “implied” that masking everybody would help humans.[4]

The fact, of course, is that the hamsters were not wearing masks and the study does not show what the mainstream media says it does.  The study merely indicates what we already know: erecting a barrier/wall to separate sick animals from healthy ones is a good thing and that it is a bad idea to blow the air from sick animals – for weeks at a time, day and night – into the living space of healthy animals.  That study’s result is neither surprising nor particularly helpful.  The liberals and mainstream media tout this study because they have no relevant science to support their policy of masking everybody.  Id.

Before masking everybody became a liberal political cause, all medical authorities declared that masks are ineffective to prevent a viral infection.

Before we see what real medical studies say, let’s look at what all medical authorities recommended all of the way up to last spring, on the issue of whether the healthy public should wear masks to prevent infections.

In March 2020, the CDC was still following the infectious disease protocols in place through earlier this year – before the liberals began to use masks as a political tool.  The CDC stated it “does not recommend that people who are well wear a facemask to protect themselves from respiratory diseases, including COVID-19”.[5]

The CDC’s own journal, Emerging infectious Diseases, published a May 2020 meta-analysis of masking in “non-healthcare settings”.  This analysis of prior randomized controlled trials (undertaken between 1946 and 2017) concluded:

Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.[6]

The CDC’s infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, stated:

No, right now, people should not be wearing – there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.[7]

Fauci is a liberal.  It is not that he was conservative in March 2020 and then became a liberal.  Liberals (and everyone else) agreed last March that masking everybody is not effective against a virus.  Fauci changed his position when the liberals began using masks as a political tool.

On February 29, 2020, before masking everyone became a political tool, the U.S. Surgeon General, Jerome Adams, MD, did his best to discourage the public from wearing masks.  He stated:

Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS!  They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus.[8]

In a May, 2020 study entitled: Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era, The New England Journal of Medicine stated:

We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.[9]

California’s OSHA regulations state:

Cloth face covers are not protective equipment and do not protect the person wearing a cloth face cover from COVID-19.[10]

In March 2020, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the United Nation’s WHO (World Health Organization) health emergencies program, stated:

There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit.[11]

Before the liberals began using masks as a political tool, the World Health Organization advised against everyone wearing masks.  Here is what the WHO stated:

[T]here is currently no evidence that wearing a mask (whether medical or other types) by healthy persons in the wider community setting, including universal community masking, can prevent them from infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19. …  [T]he wide use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not supported by current evidence and carries uncertainties and critical risks.[12]

Dr. Eli Perencevich, MD, is an infection prevention specialist and a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa’s College of Medicine.  Here is how he recommended against healthy people wearing masks:

The average healthy person does not need to have a mask, and they [sic] shouldn’t be wearing masks.  …  There’s no evidence that wearing masks on healthy people will protect them.  They wear them incorrectly, and they can increase the risk of infection because they’re touching their face more often.[13]

Before the liberals began using masks as a political tool, everyone agreed that masks were not effective to prevent the public from catching a virus.  One of the reasons for this universal agreement is because the studies concluded this.

For example, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy published a 2020 study entitled: Face Masks Pose Serious Risks To The Healthy.  Here are conclusions from that study:

We do not recommend requiring the general public who do not have symptoms of COVID-19-like illness to routinely wear cloth or surgical masks because there is no scientific evidence they are effective in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.  … 

Our review of relevant studies indicates that cloth masks will be ineffective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission, whether worn as source control [i.e., by a sick person] or as PPE [i.e., by a healthy person].  …

[G]iven the paucity [i.e., scarcity] of information about their performance as source control in real-world settings, along with the extremely low efficiency of cloth masks as filters and their poor fit, there is no evidence to support their use by the public or healthcare workers to control the emission of particles from the wearer.  …

We were able to identify only two household studies in which surgical masks were worn by the index patient [i.e., sick person] only, as source control.  Neither of these found a significant impact on secondary disease transmission [i.e., infecting others], although both studies had important limitations.

Clinical trials in the surgery theater have found no difference in wound infection rates with and without surgical masks.  Despite these findings, it has been difficult for surgeons to give up a long-standing practice. …[14]

In a meta-study of 17 earlier studies concerning wearing a mask to protect against the flu, the study concluded:

None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.[15]

A 2009 study found that mask-wearers had more headaches and no benefit avoiding contraction of cold viruses.[16]

A 2010 review of studies on mask wearing outside a hospital setting, showed that masks did no good preventing the flu.  Here[17] is a summary chart with the findings:

A 2017 study conducted a meta-analysis of mask effectiveness among healthcare workers.  Here[18] are key findings of the study:

➢  The meta-analysis suggested mask wearing provides a protective, but non-statistically significant, effect against laboratory-confirmed viral infections.

➢  There is no evidence cloth masks provide protection and they might facilitate transmission of pathogens when used repeatedly without adequate sterilization; and

➢  There is no protective effect against SARS for disposable, cotton, or paper masks.

On November 18, 2020, a new randomized controlled study was published.  It is the first study in the world to test whether face masks were effective in preventing wearers from contracting the coronavirus.  The study found there was no statistically significant difference in COVID-19 cases between mask-wearers and non-mask-wearers.[19]

It is impossible for masks to be effective because viruses are far too small.

Masking everyone is not effective to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory viral illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles.  This is because the principal transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles which are between 10 – 80 nm[20] in size.[21] 

Trying to stop tiny virus particles with a mask is like trying to stop mosquitos with chicken wire (poultry netting).  It is not effective.  Virus particles are far too small to be trapped by even the oppressively uncomfortable N95 masks.  Here is how one review of the research explains this fact:

[T]he filtration material itself of N95 (average pore size ~0.3−0.5 μm) does not block virion [i.e., individual particles of virus] penetration, not to mention surgical masks.[22]

This means, e.g., that with a virion of 10 nm and a mask pore of 0.3 μm, 30 of those virions could fit through the same mask pore at the same time.  Hence, it is roughly like 30 mosquitos going through the same hexagonal hole in the chicken wire at the same time.  It is unreasonable to stop mosquitos with chicken wire and is unreasonable to stop viruses with a face mask.  They are not effective and all medical authorities agreed about this before the liberals made the corona-scare political.

Summary

The conclusion is plain: masking everyone is not effective against the coronavirus. 

2.   It is a health hazard for everyone to be wearing masks

In part one (above), we saw that masks are ineffective against a virus and no one recommended masks for healthy people in the general population until the liberals made the issue political in the Spring of 2020.

Masks are not only ineffective they also pose significant risk of harm.  This is why – before the liberals made the issue political – the U.N.’s World Health Organization warned:

[T]he wide use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not supported by current evidence and carries uncertainties and critical risks.[23]

Among the known critical risks to a healthy general population, are that mask-wearing:

1.    Reduces a person’s oxygen supply;

2.    Increases the risk of carbon dioxide toxicity;

 

3.    Reduces a person’s immune protection against diseases;

 

4.    Disposes a person to “brain fog” and can reduce the clarity of his thinking;

 

5.    Causes headaches, dizziness, difficulty breathing, and shortness of breath (dyspnea);

 

6.    Causes a person to re-breathe contaminant particles trapped in his mask;

 

7.    Forces a person to breathe through a moist, warm material perfect for growing whatever pathogens are present in his surroundings; and

 

8.    Typically causes a person to touch his face more frequently.

Below, we discuss each of these critical risks caused by mask-wearing.

1.   Mask-wearing reduces a person’s oxygen supply.

Mask-wearing decreases the oxygen level in a person’s blood.  A mask increases the risk of hypoxemia (which is a critically-low level of oxygen in the blood).[24]

In this study, researchers examined the blood oxygen levels in 53 surgeons using an oximeter, measuring blood oxygenation before and after surgeries (during which they wore masks).  Id.  The researchers found that the masks reduced the surgeon’s blood oxygen levels significantly.  Id.  The longer the duration of wearing a mask, the greater the fall in the blood oxygen level.  Id.

2.   Mask-wearing creates the risk of carbon dioxide toxicity.

Mask-wearing increases the carbon dioxide in a person’s blood and increases the risk of hypercapnia (which is a harmful elevation in the blood’s carbon dioxide level).

In a study conducted in a medical setting using a capnometer (used to test CO² blood levels) mask-wearing anesthetists were tested before wearing their masks and then after wearing a mask for twenty minutes.  All anesthetists showed elevated CO² blood levels after this twenty-minute period.[25]

The results of these studies are common sense and are predictable since masks trap some of the CO²-rich breath in the mouth/mask inter-space.  Thus, a part of the carbon dioxide previously exhaled is inhaled again during each respiratory cycle.

Not only are the resulting oxygen deprivation and elevated CO² blood levels common sense and predictable, but the consequences are also.  For example:

➢  A New Jersey man passed out when driving while wearing a mask and crashed.[26] 

➢  Two healthy Chinese teenagers dropped dead while wearing masks during a run.[27]

3.   Mask-wearing reduces a person’s immune protection against diseases.

Habitual wearing of masks decreases a person’s natural immune response which fights off diseases.  This is because a drop in oxygen levels (hypoxia) is associated with an impairment in immunity.  Such impaired immunity places a person at greater risk of contracting any infection, including COVID-19 and also makes the consequences of any infection graver.  In other words, mask-wearing can place a person at an increased risk of infections and likelihood of a worse outcome.  Here are four studies which show this:

1.    Shehade H. et al. study entitled: Cutting edge: Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1 negatively regulates Th1 function published in: J Immunol 2015;195:1372-1376; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275019757_Cutting_Edge_Hypoxia-Inducible_Factor_1_Negatively_Regulates_Th1_Function

2.    Westendorf AM et al. study entitled: Hypoxia enhances immunosuppression by inhibiting CD4+ effector T cell function and promoting Treg activity, published in: Cell Physiol Biochem 2017;41:1271-84; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314487473_Hypoxia_Enhances_Immunosuppression_by_Inhibiting_CD4_Effector_T_Cell_Function_and_Promoting_Treg_Activity

3.    McMahon, et al., Hypoxia-enhanced Expression of the Proprotein Convertase Furin Is Mediated by Hypoxia-inducible Factor-1: 10.1074/jbc.M413248200, 2004, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and available here: https://www.jbc.org/content/280/8/6561.full.pdf+html

 

4.    Sceneay J et al., study entitled: Hypoxia-driven immunosuppression contributes to the pre-metastatic niche, published in: Oncoimmunology 2013;2:1 e22355, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/onci.22355

COVID-19 is more technically named “SARS CoV-2”.  This is significant because one medical study showed that mask-wearing increased the risk of contracting Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in particular.[28] 

This weakening of the immune system is apparently why Surgeon General Jerome Adams told the public in March 2020 that wearing a mask “can increase your risk of getting it [viz. COVID-19]”.[29]

However, low oxygen blood levels don’t make a person more susceptible to only respiratory viruses, but also to a whole host of other diseases.  For example:

❖  Cancer invades, grows and spreads more readily in a low-oxygen environment.[30]

❖  Atherosclerosis, cardiovascular (heart attacks), and cerebrovascular (strokes) disease risks are enhanced by a low-oxygen environment.[31]

 

4.   Mask-wearing disposes a person to “brain fog” and can reduce the clarity of his thinking.

In a 2008 study, mask-wearing was shown to cause anxiety, brain fog, and difficulty concentrating.[32] 

In another 2008 study, mask-wearing was shown to cause reduced work efficiency and the decreased ability to make correct decisions.[33]

Two of the Catholic Candle Team saw a striking instance of “brain fog” during the oxygen deprivation suffered by a woman they knew in a nursing home.  She was not wearing a mask but as she got closer to death, her lungs were less effective, so her blood oxygen level decreased.  She suffered an oxygen-deprivation incident which is instructive concerning what can happen when a person’s blood-oxygen level goes down a few points.  (The oximeter registered that her oxygen blood level was down 5%). 

One of the incidents which caused her nursing home to place her on supplemental oxygen, was her insisting that one of the two of us had visited her earlier on that particular day.  In fact, this did not happen.  That day, she also showed her confusion by saying various incoherent things.  When she was given supplemental oxygen, she (with her mind and memory) returned to normal and she was kept on oxygen for the remaining weeks of her life. 

5.   Mask-wearing often causes headaches, dizziness, difficulty breathing, and shortness of breath (dyspnea).

A 2020 study involved 159 healthcare workers aged 21 to 35 years.  It found that 81% of the workers developed headaches from wearing a face mask.  The research study concluded:

Most healthcare workers develop de novo PPE‐associated headaches or exacerbation of their pre‐existing headache disorders.[34]

In a 2014 study of headaches caused by mask-wearing, researchers surveyed 212 healthcare workers (47 males and 165 females) and asked them about presence of headaches with N95 mask use, the duration of the headaches, the type of headaches, and if the person had preexisting headaches.  The researchers found that about a third of the workers developed headaches when they wore a mask; most of these workers had preexisting headaches that were worsened by mask-wearing, and 60% required pain medications for relief.[35] 

In a 2008 study, mask-wearing was shown to cause headaches, difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, and other adverse symptoms.[36]

In another 2008 study, mask-wearing was shown to cause headaches, dizziness, and shortness of breath.[37]

6.   Mask-wearing causes a person to re-breathe particles trapped in his mask.

Mask-wearing not only increases the amount of CO² a person re-breathes (as explained above) but also causes a person to re-breathe particles that his lungs have exhaled, whether those particles are pollen, dust, or various infectious particles which are trapped in the mask.  On the very next inhalation the person breathes them back in, increasing infectious particles in the airways and lungs.[38]  In this way, medical masks cause self-inoculation, an increase in particle load, and an increase in disease severity.

7.   Mask-wearing forces a person to breathe through a moist, warm material perfect for growing pathogens present in his surroundings.

Bacteria, protozoa, fungi and other pathogens are all around us in our environment.  This is normal.  Those pathogens do not cause disease unless they infect a person in sufficiently large numbers. 

For many of those pathogens to increase in number, they need a moist, warm environment.  This environment is supplied by a mask through which a person exhales his moist, warm breath.  Those masks become saturated and pathogens from the environment around us then can opportunistically multiply there.[39]

8.   Mask-wearing often causes a person to touch his face more frequently.

Every day, we see mask-wearers constantly fiddling with their masks.  Although COVID-19 is in the “same ballpark” as the annual flu and not dangerous to most people, nevertheless, if a person is supposedly trying to protect himself from colds, flu, COVID-19, or any other infectious disease, it can’t be helpful for him to be continually touching his face.

Eli Perencevich, MD, is an infection prevention specialist and a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa’s College of Medicine.  Here is how he warned how increased touching of one’s face increases a risk of infection anytime there is a pathogen present:

The average healthy person … shouldn’t be wearing masks.  …  [People] can increase the risk of infection because they’re touching their face more often.[40]

Further, continually fiddling with a mask is a sign of the discomfort of wearing a mask and how it also distracts a person from thought and from his focus on other parts of life.

The above problems are made worse by the almost universal practice (in the mask-wearing general public) of wearing the same mask repeatedly and for long periods, rather than continually replacing masks every hour or so.

In the medical setting, masks are continually replaced by new masks.  Here is how one surgeon explained this practice:

Medical masks are single use devices designed to be worn for a relatively short period of time.  Once the mask becomes saturated with moisture from breath, which, if properly fit, takes about an hour, they should be replaced.  The more moisture-saturated the mask becomes, the more it blocks oxygen, increases re-breathing of carbon dioxide, re-breathing of viral particles, and becomes a breeding ground for other pathogens.[41]

As we see in daily life, almost every mask-wearer uses the same mask, day after day.  He stores it in an unsanitary location, e.g., at the grungy bottom of his backpack, where it accumulates other foreign grime which is then available for his inhalation on the next occasion when he wears it.  This is a further inevitable problem with the harmful idea of having the healthy general population wear masks.

Conclusion: As everyone agreed before the liberals made mask-wearing a political tool:

➢  Mask-wearing “carries uncertainties and critical risks” for the general public (WHO); and

➢  Mask-wearing “can increase your risk of getting it [viz. COVID-19]” (U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams).

3.   The real purpose of imposing masks is to dehumanize and control the population

As is true of the corona-lockdowns, the mask-mandates are for controlling the people, not a virus.

Let’s start by summarizing the background of these mask-wearing mandates.

As we showed above, until the Spring 2020, every medical authority and medical study agreed that masks are ineffective against a virus and that masks themselves present a serious health risk to the general population.  Then the liberals completely reversed their position – although they did not support their new position with any serious studies or reasoning. 

Starting with the liberals’ reversal of position, masks instantly “became” the safe and prudent garb that everyone was told to wear.  Those who didn’t reverse their own position and their own practice in order to follow the liberals and mainstream media, were mocked and attacked as being rash, stubborn, unfeeling, “science deniers” who endanger the lives of other people.  People felt peer-pressure to conform.  By wearing a mask, people engage in “virtue signaling” to show that they are not backward, unfeeling, or “science deniers”.

The liberals and mainstream media leave no room for calm, rational discussion of the many reasons and studies against mask-wearing.  For example, social media sites immediately remove any rational discussion, calling it “disinformation”.  The liberals and mainstream media declared that it is completely unacceptable to continue to follow what everyone – even Fauci, the CDC, the WHO, and the rest of the liberal medical “authorities” – had continually said for years until they contradicted themselves in the Spring of 2020.  People are given no other choice: either conform or be mocked and vilified.

Mandatory mask-wearing began in the summer of 2020, as the evidence then showed increasingly plainly that the COVID-19 death scare was overblown.

Early in 2020, the liberals and mainstream media terrorized the people by predicting a catastrophic corona-death toll.  For example, in March 2020, the widely-cited Imperial College COVID-19 death model predicted that COVID-19 could cause as many as 2.2 million people to die in the U.S.[42]

But as the weeks passed, it became increasingly clear that this scare was false and that COVID-19 was not nearly as fatal as the scaremongers claimed.  People became less afraid and were demanding that society be opened up and that the lockdowns end. The “spell” of corona-terror was dissipating.  At that point, many governments ordered mandatory mask-wearing. 

Masks cause people to be disoriented, frightened, and anxious (both emotionally and physically).  This effect of masks is not only common sense – and we observe every day in our current, bizarre times – but it is shown by all of the medical studies on the subject.  For example, a 2008 study showed that mask-wearing caused anxiety, brain fog, and difficulty concentrating.[43]

For the liberals to accomplish their totalitarian goals, it is crucial that the people be anxious and disoriented.  This was admitted, for example, by billionaire, far-left promoter of socialism and revolution, George Soros, who remarked how the people’s fear and disorientation were crucial for accomplishing his goals.  Here are his words:

I would describe it as a revolutionary moment when the range of possibilities is much greater than in normal times ….  What is inconceivable in normal times becomes not only possible but actually happens.  People are disoriented and scared.[44]

The leftists and New World Order promoters are using mask-wearing mandates to prevent people from going back to normal life and to keep them in a state of corona-disorientation.

No medically-effective mask is demanded but only outward conformity.

Because mask-wearing is about controlling the people, and not controlling a virus, there are no minimum medical standards for the masks.  A face-covering is demanded, but any face-covering is acceptable.  It doesn’t matter what the face-covering is, as long as it conceals a person’s face.  Any kind of bandana or strip of cloth is fine – no matter what it is made of and no matter how ill-fitting it is.

Mask-wearing destroys human interaction.

All that tyrants need in order to succeed in enslaving the people is to prevent the people from joining together.  As Benjamin Franklin famously said while he and other American colonial leaders were opposing King George III of England: “If we don’t all hang together, we will all hang separately.” 

Mask-wearing is all about dividing and isolating people from each other because masks disrupt social connections and impede social interactions.  This is because masks hide the most distinct, unique, human aspect of people – their faces.  The two main means of human communication are our mouths and our eyes.  Masks obscure our expressions and impede normal human, social interaction, dialogue and therefore, friendships and community.

Masks de-humanize persons and weaken the human connection of persons who are talking together.  They cannot see each other’s expressions, so they are less sure they know what the other person is thinking, whether he understands correctly, etc.  For example, when a person tells a joke, it is harder to know if the other person knows he is joking and whether the other person understands the joke being told.

When people have their mouths and noses covered, they cannot readily speak.  This is why placing something over the mouth is a universal symbol of suppression of speech.  It is a common sight to see two masked persons come together and pull down their masks so they can speak to each other.

Not only can’t people readily talk, they also cannot readily understand the muffled words which other people are trying to communicate.  The psychological impact of these impediments to communication, is huge.

Government mask-mandates push people to watch their neighbors and report on them.

One hallmark of communist countries is pushing people to report their neighbors if those neighbors do not conform to government regulations.  The U.S. has had comparatively little of such a report-your-neighbor, tattletale mentality in its history.  But the government is encouraging this mentality now.  Some governments have set up hotlines on which a person can report his neighbor for not wearing a mask.  Here are three examples:

❖  In Ohio:  https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ohio-county-launches-hotline-to-report-people-spotted-without-masks

❖  In New York: https://nypost.com/2020/04/21/de-blasios-social-distancing-tip-line-flooded-with-obscenities/

❖  In Los Angeles: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/la-mayor-says-snitches-get-rewards-if-they-report-neighbors-covid-violations

Vermont schools interrogate their students whether the students’ families had Thanksgiving dinner with anyone outside their family circle.[45]

Some people are officious meddlers and so they will gladly report their neighbor for not wearing a mask.  Others are jealous of non-mask-wearers: “if I have to wear this, why don’t they?”  This jealous friction harms the cohesiveness of a free people.

Mask orders are helping to turn the U.S. – which has been one of the freest countries on Earth – into a regimented, conformist society, under perpetual surveillance, in which a subservient people scurries about under the severe eyes of authority.

Mask-wearing is a further part of the liberals’ vision of a “nanny state”.

A mature and free person takes personal responsibility for his own actions.  For example, he decides whether to buy flood insurance for his home – for his use in the event that his home suffers a catastrophic flood.  If he decides not to buy this insurance, then he suffers the consequences of his own decision if his house floods.  He “made his bed and now must lie in it”.

This is a conservative mentality.  This is the position of freedom, maturity and virtue.  This is the Catholic position.  So, although there are hurricanes and floods every year, the government does not command a person to buy flood insurance.  This was more the position of our nation in the past (compared to the present). 

Likewise, there is flu and there are other sicknesses every year.  In the past, no one ordered healthy people to lockdown, wear a mask, and take other such measures.  An adult was expected to take personal responsibility for his own health and for his family.

By contrast, the liberals seek (and have long sought) to make the U.S. into a “nanny state”, in which adult citizens are not free but must conform to everything the government tells them to do for their (supposed) “own good”.  For example, the Obamacare statute has a health insurance mandate to compel people to buy health insurance “for their own good” and which includes the specific minimum coverage which the government decides those people must buy.  This is like the government demanding that all people eat a certain minimum quantity of broccoli “for their own good”. 

This is the same mentality as in communist countries, where the government manages everyone’s life and, e.g., tells factories what (and how much) to produce and tells farmers what (and how much) to grow.  Pope Pius XI warned about this communist control of the people, in these words:

Communism, moreover, strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity ….[46]

Part of that dignity which Pope Pius XI speaks of, is the dignity of a person taking personal responsibility and being provident for himself and his family. 

Mask-wearing is all about the government controlling the people through power and fear.  Face masks turn people into voiceless submissives.  In mask-wearing, we see an example of government abuse and a furtherance of the “nanny state”.  The “nanny state” mandates (such as mask mandates) are very visible ways in which Russia is spreading her errors to the Western World, as Our Lady of Fatima predicted would occur.[47]

The liberals and mainstream media make a pretense of tolerance but are completely intolerant when they are in control and when people don’t make the same “safety decisions” those liberals demand, because liberals assume that people will not do what is reasonable unless the government compels them to do so.

Mask-wearing promotes evil conduct.

Revolutionary change can only occur in a destabilized society, as George Soros recognizes in the quote above.  Mask-wearing destabilizes society because it emboldens people to commit evil they would not otherwise commit.  That is why the (anti-Catholic, anti-black, bigoted) Klu Klux Klan members wear masks to embolden them in the evil they commit.  Similarly, criminals wear masks because it makes them anonymous. 

That is why many states make it a felony to wear a mask or conceal one’s face in public (with a few exceptions for which masks are permitted).  Here, for example, is the relevant part of Virginia’s criminal mask-wearing statute:

It shall be unlawful for any person over 16 years of age to, with the intent to conceal his identity, wear any mask, hood or other device whereby a substantial portion of the face is hidden or covered so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, to be or appear in any public place ….  The violation of any provisions of this section is a Class 6 felony.[48]

The anonymity of actions committed while wearing a mask is like the anonymity of conduct committed in darkness.  That is why Our Lord declares that evildoers love the darkness:

[M]en loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil.  For everyone that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved.[49]

Similarly, broad public mask-wearing de-stabilizes society by encouraging the protestors and rioters to commit crimes they would not otherwise commit.  This mask-wearing obstructs the relationships between people and makes people’s interactions more anonymous.

Face-covering promotes aggressive (and unfriendly) conduct against another person whose face is covered.

Not only does wearing a mask encourage a person to act evilly or irresponsibly, but also, when the person acted upon has his face covered, this further encourages aggressive or unfriendly conduct because it dehumanizes the recipient of that conduct.  This is why from time immemorial, executioners covered the faces of the criminals who were being executed (whether by firing squad, lethal injection, electric chair, hanging, etc.).  Covering the criminal’s face de-humanizes the man whom the executioners are about to kill.

The incentive offered to the people for this conformity, is receiving back a part of the normal life that the government stole from the people.

As long as people conform to the mask requirement and wear something that covered their faces, they are not harassed.  They are given the “privilege” of shopping at those stores which are, in turn, granted the “privilege” of being allowed to be open.  (The permissible stores are mostly the big-box stores, to the destruction of the nation’s “mom and pop” businesses.  These big-box corporations almost uniformly promote and support liberal causes.)

Thus, people learned that if they conformed to the mask-wearing order, they could receive the “privilege” of having part (but only part) of their normal life restored to them again.  This is like in communist countries, the government allows the people the “privilege” of working and living with less government harassment if they conform and don’t dissent.  People in communist countries learn that by conforming, they can have at least some aspects of a normal life (at the cost of their soul and their character).  In other words, people are taught that if they want to live a life which is at least partly normal, they have to accept abnormality.

The character of mask mandates as executive orders, does further harm.

The harm to our country is not only caused by ordering everyone to wear masks but also because this is done by “emergency” executive order.  The justification of those orders, in principle, is that they are necessary when an emergency is so urgent that action must occur immediately and there is no time to wait for the legislature to act.  However, the months tick by, one by one, and there is no legislative action, as there would be if this were a true emergency.

This is an important and evil precedent which twists our established form of government.  The abusive executive orders continue without checks or balances, month after month, long after the legislatures could have enacted a law but chose not to.  In fact, some legislatures, e.g., Wisconsin’s, both did not enact any law and also challenged their governor’s lockdown as unconstitutional.[50]

Those who voluntarily promote this societal upheaval and revolution also share the guilt for it.

A person is culpable for the sin of another person when he: 1) consents to that sin; 2) remains silent when he should speak up; or 3) is a partner in that sin.[51] 

All of us, in our own circumstances, must make sure that we do not consent to or voluntarily cooperate with this evil now committed through this corona-scare which is ushering in what the globalists call “rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence”[52] and the “Great Reset” of the world’s “economic and social system” in the wake of the “global health crisis”, requiring a “new social contract” focusing on “social justice”.[53]

Some people have more options than others do to effectively resist the jack boot of the New World Order, firmly pressing on society’s neck.  Plainly, as much as possible, we should avoid scandalizing other people by giving them the impression that we support the liberal agenda. 

Whereas the liberals follow their leaders such as former vice president Joe Biden, in “religiously” wearing masks, conservatives tend to be mask sceptics, like President Trump.  As even the liberal media notes, there is an element of political allegiance displayed in wearing a mask in public.[54]

Further, Our Lord is the Truth.  St. John’s Gospel, 14:6.  We all have a duty to be devoted to the truth and reflect the truth by our outward actions.  If a person is persuaded that the present universal mask-wearing is not a health necessity but rather is a leftist political ruse, then he would avoid voluntarily wearing a mask so that his outward actions would reflect these truths that he knows.  Each such instance of not being cowed by human respect and pressure can help timid Catholics gain strength to join the fight for Christ the King.

We are first and foremost Catholics!  We are subjects of Christ the King!  Everything else we are, is secondary!