Barry Shaw: Mask, Lockdowns, and Vaccines: A Contrarian View

Barry Shaw,
International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies

Around the world there is a manic mask mandate on steroids. But do masks stop the spread of Covid?

The answer depends on who you ask. That’s science for you. Its precociously contrarian at a time you want definitive answers.

If you had followed the American experts, from CDC to Fauci, you would have seen a 180-degree swing on statements about masks. And yet, despite the bold certainty of both that masks prevent the spread of Covid, there are the results of studies that cast doubt even on that certainty.

A Danish mask study, a 4,800-person randomized trial that took place in the spring and early summer, showed there was little statistical difference in infection rates between a group that wore masks and another group that didn’t.

42 of 2,393 people (1.8%) in the mask group and 53 of 2,470 (2.1%) in the no-mask group. The difference was not statistically significant.

Dr. Christine Laine, editor in chief of the Annals of Internal Medicine, said, Masks “are not a magic bullet,” she said. “There are people who say, ‘I’m fine, I’m wearing a mask.’ They need to realize they are not invulnerable to infection.”

A study by the Institute of Medical Science at Tokyo University published on 21 October, 2020, found that medical masks (surgical and even N95 masks) could not completely block the transmission of virus droplets/aerosols, even when sealed.

N95 respirators and surgical masks prevent pathogens from infecting others, but the jury is out on the effectiveness of the flimsy cotton masks worn by most of the public.

There is an assumption that cloth masks offer at least some protection but evidence of the benefit from cloth masks is scarce.

The standard view is expressed by Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 response program.

“The more people who wear a mask, the more the community is protected and therefore the more you individually benefit. It’s like a herd effect.”

Dr. Brooks said: “We believe strongly that universal masking policies can help avert shutdowns.”

If that were so why are so many countries enforcing both mask-wearing and lockdowns?

There is evidence that the common cloth masks you and I wear is next to useless.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, chief executive of Resolve to Save Lives, an advocacy group, and former director of the C.D.C., tried to put a positive spin on this issue.

“An N95 mask is better than a surgical mask,”Dr. Frieden said. “A surgical mask is better than most cloth masks. A cloth mask is better than nothing.”

Basically, these health experts tack on masks after recommending social distancing and hand washing. They prescribe masks to allow society to go about their business claiming that this additional step may prevent drastic lockdowns, another scourge on society. But they enforce lockdowns anyway.

Sweden is a country that defied both mask-wearing and lockdowns.

Kicking against the blind acceptance of mask mandates is Sweden.

Anders Tegnell, chief epidemiologist for the Swedish public health authority, has relied heavily on the public adopting a policy of herd immunity to allow them to build up antibodies.  Although admitting that the use of face masks could be considered when visiting busy and confined places, he has been against mass mask mandates.

“The evidence is weak,”he told the Science Journal. “Countries that have masks are not doing the best right now. It is very dangerous to try to believe that masks are a silver bullet.”

Swedish authorities actively discouraged people from wearing face masks which, they said, would spread panic, are often worn the wrong way, and can provide a false sense of safety.

In Sweden, they took active steps to prevent the fear factor from influencing their open society herd immunity method of fighting against Covid to the extent that individuals, particularly medical professionals were published for wearing a mask.

Agnieszka Howoruszko, an ophthalmologist at a regional hospital in Landskrona, began to wear a mask in March when she examined patients. She was twice reprimanded but was allowed to continue wearing a mask after explaining that she worked with elderly and vulnerable patients.  The big mistake that Sweden made was not protecting their elderly, a section of society more prone to the ravages of Covid, which resulted in their high death rates.

Dorota Szlosowska, a pulmonologist who worked at Sundsvall regional hospital, was not as lucky as the Landskrona doctor. Her work contract was not renewed because of her constantly wearing a mask.

Sweden is resisting mask wearing pressure from the WHO and the EU health agency ECDC. and Tegnell insists Sweden’s numbers have gone down since routines were improved at nursing homes, and because people now stay home when they are sick, work from home, and respect social distancing.
“To try to replace those measures with face masks won’t work,”Tegnell said. “Several countries that introduced masks are now seeing big resurgences,” he said on August 14th.

He seems to be right. Graphs of several European countries show spikes in Covid patients AFTER the imposition of mask wearing mandates.

So should we follow the scientists? Evidence suggest that we shouldn’t. Try Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director, said about Remdesivir on 29 April, 2020, “Remdesivir has a clear-cut significant positive effect in diminishing time to recovery for patients with Covid-19. This will be the standard of care. A drug that can block this virus,”

We can trust science, can’t we?  Well, apparently we can’t.

A month later, Dr. Peter Breggin released a report, “Fauci’s Remdesivir: Inadequate to Treat Covid-19 and Potentially Lethal,”in which his opening statement read, “We have found that Remdesivir is a failed antiviral drug that will probably do more harm than good for many coronavirus patients.”

As Dr. Vladimir Zelenko told me back in August, “For early stage Covid patients Hydroxychloroquine is much safer than Remdesivir. Remdesivir causes dangerous cardiovascular problems such as atrial fibrillation (6%), hypotension (8%), and cardiac arrest (1%). Remdesivir also causes hepatic toxicity (23%), kidney damage (19%), and serious lung damage (10%) such as ARDS.”

So whose science are we supposed to follow? Certainly not that of Dr. Fauci. And apparently not Dr. Zelenko. He was demonized and pilloried by the health bureaucrats, Big Pharma and the media, as have so many reputable outpatient physicians, for saving early stage Covid patients’ lives with a simple off label drug called Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) combined with zinc and Azithromycin, an antibiotic.

His theory was that it is possible to cure Covid patients in the early days when the infection is in its flu-like condition and prevent them deteriorating into the pneumonia stage of the disease where they will need hospitalization and more severe treatment.

From the numerous interviews I have conducted with physicians, patients, researchers, the overwhelming evidence is that the Zelenko Protocol works and saves lives. There is a science behind it, and it is based on a drug that have been found to be safe for over half a century.

But clinical trials were held in conditions not conducive to success. HCQ was administered to late stage patients, often in dangerously high doses.

Dr. Zelenko told me that the HCQ-zinc combination is highly effective while the virus is in its early flu-like stage and should be administered before the disease develops into more deadly pneumonia-like symptoms.

These trials were doomed to failure and the results, together with a Lancet article, which was shown to be fraudulent and retracted, were used to enforce a ban on outpatient doctors and local clinics from prescribing HCQ to early stage Covid patients.

Epidemiologist Professor Harvey Risch says the results of the late stage clinical trials of HCQ were irrelevant because that drug was never meant to be prescribed for hospitalized patients.

This cheap drug continues to be available to lupis patients including pregnant women and those breast-feeding babies. I interviewed one such person in one of my videos. A young mother who came down with Covid and took HCQ according to the Zelenko Protocol while breast-feeding her baby. “I didn’t want to go to hospital and die,”she told me. She didn’t. She got better in matter of three days.

I have drawn a conclusion that the ban on HCQ for outpatient use in Israel has been the contributing factor for the significant rise in the Covid death rate in Israel.

Toward the end of Israel’s first Covid wave the number of mortalities were in the low 300s. As Israel struggles to emerge from the second wave, the death total approached 3,000.

Why the drastic difference? Could it be the ban placed by Israel’s public health bureaucrats on outpatient doctors and clinics from prescribing the drug that dare not speak its name to their patients has caused many more people to become seriously infected and die?

In the absence of any contrary reason, this provocative question still stands.

So how can we trust our public health officials who force us into hospital when there is a drug they will not let us have, bureaucrats and politicians that force us into lockdowns that, in the long run, do not work, and cause more damage to us individually and as a society?  A damage that will be felt for years to come?

As Professor Risch explained to me. “If you want to enforce effective lockdowns, keep every person in your society in long term lockdown, until there are zero daily infections. Then keep them there for another two to three weeks to ensure there will be no reoccurrence of the virus. Anything less than that merely postpones the inevitable – another spike in the infection rate.”

Of course, he said, no country can possibly survive such drastic measures.

He was right. The cure cannot be worse than the problem. But this is precisely what is being imposed on us with harsh authoritarian lockdowns.

I predict we will see the ravaging damage of the current lockdown by early next year on our streets when the hopeless homeless have nowhere to go but to the sidewalks and parks of our major cities.

The public health establishment, our politicians, ignored the obvious signs of a society in breakdown.

The economic, mental, physical, sociological health of our community cannot be nurtured in lockdown. Our fracturing, deteriorating, society is caused by authoritarian bureaucrats with little concern, and even less action, to prevent the enormous damage they are causing.

Spousal violence is resulting in murder against women as the stress of unemployment and the consequential inability to pay rent, rates, energy costs drive people to drugs, drink and despair.

This damage was not caused by a virus from China. This damage was caused by bad leadership.

And we have yet to ponder on the troubling thought of what we are not being told about the vaccines that may be forced on us.

Before you rush to get yourself injected, have you any idea for how long you will remain virus free? A year? A month?

We are told it is 90% effective. Effective for what? It means not having immediate dangerous side effects? But what about longer term side effects? Nobody knows

And for how long any effectiveness of a vaccine will last? Is it a marathon, or a sprint, before the vaccine effectiveness wears off?  This is what the CDC guideline says; “Regarding vaccination, we won’t know how long immunity lasts until we have a vaccine and more data on how well it works.” In other words, they have no idea.

I heard Bill Gates talk about a “digital signature”at the recent New Economy Forum. This is the New World Order being planned by those who want to control our lives.

Bill Gates spoke excitedly about the future of the World Health Organization and the need “to have a conversation”about his digital signature.

Bill Gates is invested in Moderna, and his Foundation websitetalks about mRNA genetic engineering.

Could Bill Gates digital signature be inserted into our bodies in a vaccine that turn us into robots for Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Corp and compliant governments, to track how we function, what we do, where we go, what we read, what we think, so they can program us for their commercial and control purposes?

Given this knowledge, would you take a Moderna vaccine?

It was clear from the recent Bloomberg-sponsored New Economy Forum that the globalists are busy designing our future. Did anyone notice that it was China that hosted the event, not the United States?

They are pumping more things into our arms and our heads than a vaccine.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of several books, and has produced several videos on aspects of Covid-19.

Barry Shaw

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is also the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism’ and ‘BDS for IDIOTS’ both available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

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