Browse the articles related to this topic below.
Join our community on Guilded.
In our supposedly liberal and transparent democratic country, it seems that it was a group of remote and unnamed scientists, outside of the formal SAGE infrastructure, who effectively imposed masks on British citizens. Were they well-meaning academics offering their expertise, or conflicted ideologues engaged in a global endeavour to control the masses? You decide.
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/12/22/the-shadowy-group-that-brought-mask-mandates-to-the-u-k/
What are the roots of the technocratic and transhumanist policies currently being pushed onto society? In this essay, Matthew Ehret traces two centuries of British imperial grand strategists who adapted Thomas Malthus’ system of scientific governance of useless eaters in opposition to the deeper creative impulses of the human species.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/16/the-government-has-lost-control/
The new Oxford study released by Royal Society and British Academy does not prove face coverings work. It is a policy document masquerading as an investigation into face coverings.
The Mayor Of London claims new evidence supports the use of face coverings as effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19. He cites a University of Oxford study that claims: “face masks and coverings work – act now.“
The study, from Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, is freely available for download from The Royal Society website. Nevertheless, we doubted that many people would take time to verify the claims so we took a look. What did we find?
The bulk of study is in fact an investigation into policies and behavioural factors behind face mask usage. Only a small section is dedicated to analysing the effectiveness of cloth face coverings and even this provides nothing new. Further, rather than performing randomised controlled trials (RCTs), which form the highest level of evidence in medical science, this report simply looked at existing research.
From this existing research, the authors forced a conclusion that ‘face masks and coverings work’ but with some very important caveats:
The study limitations can be found in the document appendix, table A5.1.
What can we conclude from the release of this study?
It seems evidence for universal masking of healthy people in the community so flimsy that sleight of hand is needed in order to push public acceptance.
Update 19 July 2020:
A Spiked Online article published on 16 July, The government has lost control, draws the same conclusions:
The Royal Society published, on 26 June, a ‘rapid review of the science of the effectiveness of different face-mask types’ – a dense, 37-page tract which made the case for face masks. It was neither peer-reviewed nor opened to wide expert and public debate before being used to argue for policy.
…the hasty assembling of research articles in support of a policy position is not science, and demanding that the government introduce new ‘taboos’ is naive and clumsy social engineering, not careful examination of the facts.