90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, December 3, 2023

Study Finds Higher Incidence of COVID-19 Among Consistent Mask-Wearers

Some mask wearers were found to have up to 40 percent higher incidence of infection, contradicting earlier studies and opposing the narrative of mask mandates.

People who wore "protective" masks were found to be more likely to contract COVID-19 infections than those who didn't, according to a recent Norwegian study.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Epidemiology and Infection on Nov. 13, analyzed mask use among 3,209 individuals from Norway. Researchers followed them for 17 days, and then asked the participants about their use of masks. The team found that there was a higher incidence of testing positive for COVID-19 among people who used masks more frequently.

Among individuals who “never or almost never” wore masks, 8.6 percent tested positive. That rose to 15 percent among participants who “sometimes” used masks, and to 15.1 percent among those who “almost always or always” wore them.

Adjusting for factors such as vaccination status, the study determined that individuals who sometimes or often wore masks had a 33 percent higher incidence of COVID-19, compared to those who never or almost never wore masks. This jumped to 40 percent among people who almost always or always wore them.

However, adjusting for “differences in baseline risk over time,” the risk of wearing masks turned out to be “less pronounced,” with only a 4 percent higher incidence of infection among mask-wearers.

“The results contradict earlier randomized and non-randomized studies of the effectiveness of mask-wearing on the risk of infection,” the researchers wrote.

“Most of these studies reported that wearing a face mask reduces the risk of COVID-19 infection. Some observational studies have reported manyfold reductions while one community-based randomized trial failed to demonstrate a statistically significant reduction in infection risk and one cluster randomized community trial found only a modest reduction.”

The researchers pointed out a major limitation of their study: Individuals who used masks may have done so to protect others from their own infection. This could explain the “positive association between risk of infection and mask usage.”

Behavioral differences and the fact that the survey was based on...

Visage à trois #1907

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #1474

Visage à trois #1906

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #1474

It’s Time to Unite Behind Trump If We Want to Win in 2024

The ice is melting beneath our feet and Trump is our life raft

The 2024 Presidential election is rapidly approaching. In many ways it can’t come soon enough. Americans have now spent nearly three painful years waking up every day astonished to learn that the Biden administration has outdone its previous act of insanity.

The shocking revelation, for example, that the Biden Administration is covertly flying illegals into the interior of the U.S. is quickly forgotten when new revelations emerge that the same Administration is sabotaging Texas’ efforts to secure the border—ordering federal agents to cut through the wire barriers erected by the state of Texas.

After botching the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan—which left 13 U.S. service members dead and both Americans and billions in American military equipment behind, while turning the country over to the Taliban—Biden invited Russia to invade Ukraine with his “minor incursion” remark. The Biden administration has since sent billions in U.S. military equipment and munitions to Ukraine, not to mention more than $100 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Fears of a Biden-caused nuclear World War in Eastern Europe have faded, only to be replaced with the even more realistic and frightful prospect of an imminent Third World War in the Middle East. Biden, like the Obama administration before, has inexplicably funded the hostile Iranian regime, which in turn funds the very terrorists that seek the annihilation of both Israel and the U.S.

The upshot of all this—three years of “governance” by either the most incompetent or otherwise malevolent administration in American history—is an American citizenry vacillating constantly between a state of angst and denial; as if we are all trapped on a frozen pond as the temperature continues to rise. For many this denial has become a coping mechanism to survive the day to day dread.

How many more days can we endure life under the Biden administration? Nearly ten million illegals have entered the country in less than four years. The border remains open and illegals continue to pour in even as the threat of a radical Islamic terrorist attack crescendos and a steady stream of Americans die from fentanyl made in Mexico with Chinese sourced chemicals.

Problems and crises are neither addressed nor resolved by the Biden administration; only ignored and forgotten by the introduction of new or greater crises of the administration’s own seemingly deliberate making.

Does anyone remember the mystery Chinese spy balloon? The four times deported illegal that murdered his five Texas neighbors in Cleveland, Texas? The cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline? How are the victims of the chemical spill and subsequent aerosolization of toxins from the still-unexplained “controlled burn” in East Palestine, Ohio faring? Has Biden made his promised visit yet?

The failures of the Biden administration are so frequent and numerous so as to almost have a beneficial effect for the pretend President. Americans suffer collective amnesia. Our memories can hardly retain—much less process—the catastrophes of today before our minds are bombarded with a whole set of new tragedies.

If Americans can’t remember the Biden Administration’s failures yesterday, can these same Americans honestly recall the Trump successes of yesteryear?

Even still, Americans seem to have at least a vague recollection that they were at least generally better off under the Trump administration than they are today under the Biden Administration.

Poll after poll now shows Trump narrowly leading Biden—and even others like Newsom—in hypothetical matchups for 2024. Polls themselves can certainly be inaccurate but so too can they accurately represent public sentiment. Why shouldn’t Trump be leading Biden given the historic failures of the Biden administration?

And yet while all historical indications point to what ought to be virtually a guaranteed Trump victory in 2024, many Republicans choose to remain dubious; not just dubious but actively engaged in sabotaging GOP chances, as if they themselves would rather will Trump’s defeat than...