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. We also saw that
lockdowns don’t work, and that their real purpose is to control the population,
not the virus.
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”.
➢
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. …
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.
A 2009 study found that mask-wearers
had more headaches and no benefit avoiding contraction of cold viruses.
A 2010 review of studies on mask
wearing outside a hospital setting, showed that masks did no good preventing
the flu. Here is a summary
chart with the findings:

A 2017 study conducted a meta-analysis
of mask effectiveness among healthcare workers. Here 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.
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
in size.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
➢ Two healthy
Chinese teenagers dropped dead while wearing masks during a run.
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.
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]”.
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.
❖ Atherosclerosis,
cardiovascular (heart attacks), and cerebrovascular (strokes) disease risks are
enhanced by a low-oxygen environment.
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.
In another 2008 study, mask-wearing was shown to
cause
reduced work efficiency and the decreased ability to make correct decisions.
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.
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.
In a 2008 study,
mask-wearing was shown to cause headaches, difficulty breathing, shortness of
breath, and other adverse symptoms.
In another 2008 study, mask-wearing was shown to
cause
headaches, dizziness, and shortness of breath.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ….
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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” 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”.
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.
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!