Hooooooo what a discouraging week it's been!

I get to listen more than I speak, explain only what I don't want to talk about,  be wrong over and over, be swamped with service calls and get no time for projects, attend wasteful meetings, get confronted about masks, boss says they're writing people up, scandal is ignored by wimps, wife is moody, I'm moody, son is a contrarian, no sleep, endless paperwork... 

(I wrote the above paragraph before the holidays, but it still kinda feels that way)

Happy New Year!

I need to write down some stuff about masks, to clarify my argument and make sure I'm acting in a manner consistent with my principles. Masking seems like a really small thing, but I don't want to knowingly participate in a cultural lie which I think is harmful, and more importantly, masking is representative of a larger problem: the entire world government response to Covid has been destructive -- shutting down businesses, locking people in homes, spreading fear and panic, etc..

(a) I'm not convinced that Covid is harmful enough to warrant this kind of action.

(b) No government has Biblical authority to do the things that our governments are doing in response to Covid (and un-Biblical authority is not authority at all, Romans 13).

So, by wearing the mask, I feel like I'm implicitly supporting the government's response. Other people who see me wearing a mask will assume "he's wearing it to protect himself from covid". They won't assume, "he's wearing it to play along with the government's stupid requirements.". When you follow along with something like that, and you give people the impression that you agree with the commonly stated motive for it, you participate in a culture of conformity with that, which does pressure people around you to agree with that motive and to likewise participate, even if they don't understand the rationale for it. If everyone around you is doing something, you will feel pressure to do likewise, even if you think that they're dumb. If everyone around you is saying that something is true, you will feel pressure to also say it is true, and to doubt yourself if you think it's false. (See Asch conformity experiments.) Basically, participating in a lie pressures other people to believe the lie, and I don't like it.

But then, suppose my employer wants me to wear the mask, as a private business, imposing this on my terms of employment for their own comfort. Strictly speaking, I think private companies should be able to impose whatever requirement they want on their employees, as long as they don't require the employees to sin. So, this is one thing I have to think about: is it sin? I'll talk more about that a little later.

But also, my company is taking a more complex approach to the subject. It's not as simple as "if you want to work here, do this". Initially, I was told that I should wear the mask in order to participate in pressuring union operators (who were in the midst of refusal) to do likewise, for their safety. You see, at my company, we do develop policy for safety. And so, if a behavior is unsafe, we police against the behavior. If lack of a behavior is unsafe, we require the behavior. If we find out that we're wrong, and a behavior which we formerly considered to be safe is unsafe, or v.v., we change our policy to suit safety. Our safety policies are malleable, and intended to fit the facts of the matter. The requirement is not, "you must wear a mask to work here", but, "you must behave safely to work here".

So now, I have to ask myself, does the lack of a mask make me or others unsafe? Let's assume, for a moment, that Covid uniquely warrants an entire workplace safety agenda around preventing it. Do masks help?

Well, to quote my boss's boss, and every other person he was quoting at the time, "the science on this matter is settled". Only, he meant that the science indicates masks are helpful.

The science is in fact quite settled to the contrary. You see, there are generally two categories of tests out there concerning the efficacy of masks (I am generalizing!): there are studies which involve finding a statistical correlation between mask wearing and Covid infection rates, and there are studies mechanically testing the mode of causation by which masks are expected to prevent Covid: filtration. The former might give us some value of confidence on the matter; I'll stop short of saying it's non-scientific to rely on this kind of data. The latter is definitive, and a proper application of the scientific method. 

The CDC, in their presentation affirming masks as a tool to prevent Covid, relies entirely on the former kind of study -- seeking statistical correlations among masked and unmasked groups of people. The problem here is that it's not difficult to find other studies, some with larger sample sizes, saying that there is no such correlation (like this one, or this one, or maybe this one, or the tabulated data on page 4 of this one, or this one . How many of these should I post? Here's another, and another, and another. I could keep going. Here's another and another.). Man, with all these studies out there, it sure would be nice if someone would just do the work for us, and conduct a scoping review of all these articles. Oh wait! Here's a scoping review of 5462 peer reviewed articles. What did the researchers conclude? "The COVID-19 pandemic has led to critical shortages of medical-grade PPE. Alternative forms of facial protection offer inferior protection. More robust evidence is required on different types of medical-grade facial protection. As research on COVID-19 advances, investigators should continue to examine the impact on alternatives of medical-grade facial protection." 

5000 peer reviewed research articles, and still more research is needed. Hmmm...

The amazing thing is, we could skip all that additional work with just one peer reviewed test against the actual mode of effect for masking. Let's just test the filtration efficiency of the mask. Here it is! And, just for fun, here's another one.

So masking doesn't work. Masks are actually incapable of filtering Covid. This isn't just "other research casting doubt on masks". This is the actual mode of protection being debunked in one fell swoop -- the masks can't filter Covid; that's it.

But what about the correlations you saw in the CDC tests? Is there any value to them at all? Well, read the tests. For example, take a closer look at Wang Y’s study on infection rates within families: The infected groups tended to not wear masks, but they also spent more time in close proximity to infected family members, had smaller living spaces per capita, lower hand-hygiene scores, fewer bedrooms per person, lower frequency in room cleaning (both with and without disinfectant), and fewer home-ventilation hours per day. In short, the infected group responded worse in every single metric. It appears that one or more of those other factors might be actually effective, and people who wear masks are also more likely to do something else which is effective.

But don't they help a little bit? Shouldn't we wear them just to be doing something? No. We shouldn't waste time on ineffective solutions, so that we can instead dedicate our resources toward finding effective solutions.

But what about scholarly consensus? Well, have you seen what happens to scientists who speak out against the "consensus"? They get shut down by "fact checkers" who work for media outlets. That means that the scholars aren't allowed to decide what the scholarly consensus is. If we really want to know what scholarly consensus is, then we should stop taking down every single dissenting video and social media post, and let people listen to the researchers. Here's a perfect example: Dr. Robert Malone. Look him up. Here's his credentials (taken from Rogan):

"Dr. Robert Malone is the inventor of the nine original mRNA vaccine patents, which were originally filed in 1989 (including both the idea of mRNA vaccines and the original proof of principle experiments) and RNA transfection. Dr. Malone, has close to 100 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited over 12,000 times. Since January 2020, Dr. Malone has been leading a large team focused on clinical research design, drug development, computer modeling and mechanisms of action of repurposed drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. Dr. Malone is the Medical Director of The Unity Project, a group of 300 organizations across the US standing against mandated COVID vaccines for children. He is also the President of the Global Covid Summit, an organization of over 16,000 doctors and scientists committed to speaking truth to power about COVID pandemic research and treatment."

A censored consensus isn't a consensus.

But I'm not a medical professional. How can I say this with such confidence? The whole reason studies exist is because we don't all have the same credentials. Read the studies yourself. Are they terribly confusing?

OK, but are masks harmful? Yep. They are. here's some more studies on that: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

So, back to the main point: my company wants me to wear masks for safety. But the masks don't make us safe. They make us unsafe. What should I do?

I wrote a nice little essay on the topic (much more formal than what I've written here), and I gave it to "the right people" (my boss, the safety guys, etc), one by one hoping to affect a change. The response I kept getting back was "I agree with you, but it's company policy." Well, the problem is, if they agree with me, then company policy says they should change company policy to promote safety. They said they'd pass the paper up the chain, but I never got any responses, just "I agree with you, but it's company policy". And as I waited, company policy actually began to get more strict -- masks are required in more situations; we have to wear it everywhere on the premises except our desk; even in the big, well ventilated warehouse, where nobody is within 100ft. So, I acted on my own according to company policy: I did the safe thing. I stopped wearing my mask, and in doing so I ceased implicitly pressuring operators to do so as well.

And then my boss's boss started confronting me. He even told me he wasn't sure if he could promote me because I wasn't complying. I told him about the paper; he hadn't seen it and at first was unwilling to read it. After a brief (and surprisingly heated) exchange, he agreed to read my paper. I emailed it to him, and a while later got a response: (paraphrasing) 'I disagree with you because of scholarly consensus. And even if masks are only a little bit effective, we should wear them so that we're doing something to help fight Covid." He also said I don't have to wear the masks they give. I can wear some other kind of mask if I want.

OK, so company policy, then, (communication from the higher ups is my primary source of policy knowledge) is "do the ineffective thing. Not for safety. It doesn't matter that the masks don't filter Covid. It doesn't matter that they cause headaches and rashes. Just do it."

Fine. I can accept that from the company. That's what they want; that's their right.

But there's still the issue of whether I am allowed to harm myself and participate in a culture of pressuring others into self-harm.

I think I can kill a few birds with one stone. My current plan is to find a comfortable mask material (not a surgical mask -- a comfortable one. A breathable mask with relaxed ear-strings). I'll test a few kinds, and then start recommending them to the union operators who I'm supposed to be pressuring. This way, I don't pressure them into self harm. I don't harm myself. I just comply with company policy.

Masking outside of work is another issue. I still need to consider what I'm communicating to everyone else. If I have to wear a mask, I should communicate to others somehow that I am not doing so because of my agreement with the general idea that masks are helpful and that covid is a big deal. Maybe I'll get some masks with a message printed on them. I'll have to think more about it. 

"A milestone"