Clifton Road and Pennsylvania Avenue
Sometimes there is not enough duct tape in all of of ACE....
It is the last Saturday morning in February and I sit at my desk with my head in my hands trying to understand what it must be like for the good men and women of CDC who sit at their desks on Clifton Road every morning wondering why they are still there.
CDC has always had a strong political wing but it was never this blatantly political and this void of a scientific basis for any of its “guidelines”. Remember — CDC has very narrow regulatory authority which does not include dictating who should wear a mask and when they should wear it or who should be vaccinated and when they should be vaccinated. That is why CDC issues guidelines and not recommendations or standards. See, CDC believes that “recommendations and standards” are regulatory words and so they don’t use them because they don’t want the accountability that comes with making regulatory recommendations.
So yet again and with great miffness (don’t bother trying to find it in the dictionary) I find myself writing about masks and SARS-CoV-2. Because I’ve written and ranted about the absurdity of suggesting that a chain link fence is effective against a sand storm I will cut straight to the ‘ole bottom line: Surgical masks do not prevent any virus particle from either leaving or entering your nose and mouth. Period. It is not a matter of physics, humidity, the time of day, the phase of the moon or any other thing the fringe scientific mind might conjure. In short, size matters: eentsy, weentsy virus particle — great big hole. Get it?
The only thing surgical masks are going to stop are great big, wet, sticky, visible to the eye, virus laden sputum droplets from a highly symptomatic person. And if that person is out in public I hope that their mother finds out and gives them a good tongue lashing because they have no business being anywhere but inside their own home.
CDC knows this and they have always known this.
By now you’re probably wondering: What made Larry lose his mind today?
Rochelle’s Latest Gift to the American People
The headline reads: ”CDC Drastically Alters Key Measure That Influences Mask Mandates Across US.”
Surely, Rochelle ( I think that by now we should be on a first name basis) has read my introduction and finally arrived at the same conclusion as I — surgical masks don’t stop SARS-CoV-2. Surely she has.
HA!
Fooled again. Here is Rochelle’s real reason for “drastically” altering key measures that dictate mask wear:
“This updated approach focuses on directing our prevention efforts toward protecting people at high risk for severe ailments (emphasis added) and preventing hospitals and healthcare systems from being overwhelmed,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, told reporters on a call.
Walensky said the CDC “came up with indicators, including new hospital admissions and hospital beds utilized” and combined “them with case incidents to really create a packet of metrics to be able to understand what’s happening at the local level.”
I wrote public health policy for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to support OSHA rule making for new work place standards addressing chemical and biological exposures in the workplace. Unlike Rochelle or any of her underlings, I did have accountability for making regulatory recommendations. That was my job. Had I said or written anything even resembling what Rochelle did I would have been chased out of the building. Why? because that statement is two things: 1) data free and 2) scary because it establishes mask wear as a new norm to address “… severe ailments and preventing hospitals and healthcare systems from being overwhelmed….”.
And Rochelle did all of this without one bit of data, peer reviewed or otherwise, to support her position while at the same time establishing the institutional pejorative of using masking for any “severe aliment” that she thinks masks should be used for.
The only peer reviewed data that exists on the topic the surgical masks as a barrier against virus particles reaches precisely the opposite conclusion that Rochelle reached: Masks do not prevent viral spread.
You can read the rest of the nonsensical reasons for Rochelle’s new and improved “guidelines” for masking yourselves. I simply don’t have the patience to do it myself and besides, ala Glen Beck - if I do I will need to wrap my head in more duct tape than Ace Hardware has on their shelves to keep my head from exploding. But there is one more bit that you need to understand. This wasn’t just Rochelle’s idea.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
In the midst of trying to contain yet another foreign policy screw up, the administration in a bold display of multitasking has weighed in on the issue of masking in the US.
Jeffrey Zients, a White House official, did not deny the White House had been in touch with the CDC on revising its masking recommendations but said the CDC was “in the lead here on both the substance and the timing of masking guidance.”
The phrase “in the lead here on both the substance and the timing of masking guidance.” is incomplete and more correctly should read:
’Now that we have given Rochelle direction, CDC is in charge of figuring out how to cover everyone’s back pockets, particularly Joe’s.’
I need more duct tape.
Union, KY
26 February 2022