Why So Many Americans Don’t “Trust the Science” On COVID

Is it real science?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                [Why So Many Americans Don’t “Trust the Science” On COVID]( Is it real science? [John Hawkins]( Feb 12 If we’re going to talk about why we don’t “trust the science” on COVID, masks seem like an excellent place to start. When the COVID pandemic kicked off, masks seemed to make a certain amount of sense. After all, doctors and nurses wore them, right? Plus, some of the Asian nations that initially did well against COVID had culturally embraced mask-wearing. Additionally, even if the COVID particles themselves were small enough to fit through masks, they were still attached to saliva particles the mask might help with. As any of us who have ever worn a mask with glasses can tell you, the first thing that tends to happen is that your glasses fog up because your stream of breath is driven up and down instead of outwards. Since all of that seemed logical in the early days of COVID, I started wearing masks before a lot of other people in my area did. There was just one problem with that. As masks were increasingly adopted across the country and even became mandatory in most places, it seemed to make no difference in how many people were being infected. On the one hand, we were hearing things like this from government scientists: “If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really think in the next four, six, eight weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control.” -- [Robert Redfield](, the then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in July 2020. In fact, wearing masks was supposedly so important that Joe Biden promised to sign a day one executive order forcing people to wear masks: [Twitter avatar for @JoeBiden]Joe Biden @JoeBiden On day one, I’ll sign an executive order to require masks everywhere I can. [Image]([December 9th 2020 7,639 Retweets98,636 Likes]( At one point, there were [only 12 states without mask mandates](. Of course, for those of us that actually care about science (as opposed to the people shouting TRUST THE SCIENCE as a replacement for thought and debate), this raised some extremely obvious questions. For example, if masks were effective at stopping COVID, why didn’t we ever see big decreases in the infection rate in states that put mask mandates in place? At one point, [more than 90% of Americans were wearing masks](. So, if masks worked, then WHY WEREN’T THEY WORKING? By late 2020, it was painfully obvious that cloth and paper masks did nothing of significance to stop COVID and a lot of Americans pointed that out. Just as a few examples out of many: [[Twitter avatar for @johnhawkinsrwn]John Hawkins @johnhawkinsrwn I have been wearing mask since early on and still do where they're required to be respectful, but when people say "masks work," it's like "based on what evidence exactly?" "Wear your mask" seems like another "don't break a mirror because it's 7 years bad luck" at this point.]([October 22nd 2020 4 Retweets23 Likes]( [[Twitter avatar for @johnhawkinsrwn]John Hawkins @johnhawkinsrwn Masks are the modern day version of the religious charms that peasants used to carry to protect them from the Black Plague. People latch on to anything when they're afraid, but one probably isn't more effective than the other at keeping people well.]([November 19th 2020 2 Retweets35 Likes]( [[Twitter avatar for @johnhawkinsrwn]John Hawkins @johnhawkinsrwn We don't have to look at studies to determine whether masks work at this point. We can just look at the fact that 92% of Americans are wearing masks while the coronavirus is surging. The only argument left is whether they are completely useless or just nearly useless.]([November 24th 2020 14 Retweets66 Likes]( [[Twitter avatar for @johnhawkinsrwn]John Hawkins @johnhawkinsrwn Since 90+% of Americans are wearing masks, that means the overwhelming majority of Americans dying with COVID-19 regularly wear masks.]([December 30th 2020 7 Retweets34 Likes]( [[Twitter avatar for @johnhawkinsrwn]John Hawkins @johnhawkinsrwn@DavidAFrench "We’ll never know how many lives anti-mask sentiment cost." True, but we can say with a lot of confidence that number is either zero or very small. In any case, it's a free country -- or it used to be -- and people should be able to make their own decisions about masks.]([March 5th 2021 2 Retweets30 Likes]( [[Twitter avatar for @johnhawkinsrwn]John Hawkins @johnhawkinsrwn@CDCDirector @HHSGov "Masks can help reduce your chance of #COVID19 infection by more than 80%." If that was true, why didn't mask mandates dramatically reduce the spread of COVID?]([November 6th 2021 4 Retweets62 Likes]( Of course, I suppose that saying these kinds of things made me a de facto “conspiracy theorist” and spreader of “misinformation” – except now, it’s [becoming conventional wisdom](: Governors in New Jersey, California, Oregon, Connecticut, and Delaware have announced plans to roll back their mask mandates, citing declining coronavirus cases. Here’s more from a [piece in the Washington Post](, which somehow never gets called “misinformation” no matter how many things it gets wrong: It is intuitive that a barrier ought to prevent germs from being emitted into the air. But if that’s true, why isn’t there more evidence for the benefits of masking two years into the pandemic? Experts associated with The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota have laid out a more complex analysis: Given the current understanding that the virus is transmitted in fine aerosol particles, it’s likely an infectious dose could easily get through and around loose-fitting cloth or surgical masks. ...All those factors may explain why the states with mask mandates haven’t fared significantly better than the 35 states that didn’t impose them during the omicron wave. Rhode Island, where I live, has had a mask mandate since mid-December; nonetheless, we saw our January surge rise far higher than any other state. There’s little evidence that mask mandates are the primary reason the pandemic waves eventually fall — though much of the outrage over lifting mandates is based on that assumption. Many experts acknowledge that the rise and fall of waves is a bit of a mystery, as epidemiologist Sam Scarpino explained to me on my podcast. Isn’t it fascinating that what the “science” says we should do seems so closely connected with what’s politically helpful for the Democratic Party with mid-term elections coming up? It’s almost as if “science” didn’t have much to do with it at all. Now, I know what all of you are thinking: I’d love to take a bow here and say that I alone understood what was happening with the coronavirus from the beginning and that only I, your humble correspondent, could have figured out that masks didn’t work so long ago – except none of that is true. The reality is that many people, me included, have gotten things wrong about this virus and an enormous number of other Americans long ago recognized that cloth and paper masks weren’t working... Subscribe to Culturcidal by John Hawkins to read the rest. Become a paying subscriber of Culturcidal by John Hawkins to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. [Subscribe]( A subscription gets you: Paid subscriber only posts & special bonus posts. Have input into the topics I write about. A weekly Q&A session once we hit 100 members. A members only forum at 500 members. © 2022 John Hawkins [Unsubscribe]( 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 [Publish on Substack](