Andrew Bolt: Daniel Andrews’ mask mandate ignores the science
Nothing is more important than protecting the old during this pandemic, given a third of our dead were in nursing homes. Yet the media have rushed to embrace desperate Dan’s mandatory mask rules while ignoring what would really stop people from dying, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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How the bullies love it! Forcing all Melburnians to wear face masks — even when walking all alone in the sunshine and fresh air.
Is there no end to this virus hysteria?
Other states may copy Victoria’s mask law if this second wave of virus infections keeps spreading. Another 484 new infections in Victoria on Wednesday, the worst so far.
In the panic, who dares point out the science that says face masks can sometimes hurt more than help?
I did on Monday, and was damned as a “danger to the welfare of Australian society” by Melbourne University’s Centre for Advancing Journalism.
In fact, the real danger to Australia’s welfare is the media’s rush to embrace the latest useless or peripheral “protection” while ignoring what would really stop people from dying.
Just look at who has died since the catastrophically inept Victorian government got amateurs off the street — recruited on WhatsApp — to help run its quarantine hotels, letting the virus escape and run riot.
Of the dead since July 6, just one was in his 60s, two were in their 70s, 10 in their 80s, 10 in their 90s and one over 100.
This is typical. Around Australia, a third of our dead were in nursing homes.
So nothing is more important than protecting the old. Yet it’s only now that visitors to Victoria’s nursing homes are being sharply controlled.
It’s only now that Victoria’s government says it will stop staff from working across several homes, to stop the virus spreading where it’s most likely to kill.
Not surprising, then, that this virus meanwhile got into more than 63 aged care homes.
But here we go again. The government that once banned golf and shut schools — how many of the dead played golf or went to schools? — in desperation to seem to be Doing Something now demands Melburnians wear the face masks that it for months said wouldn’t help.
Same old story: weak on what is critical, tough on what isn’t.
Even now, the federal health department says making everyone wear face masks is “not generally recommended ... (unless) physical distancing is difficult to maintain, e.g. in public transport”.
What’s the point of wearing masks when playing golf? Walking in the park? Sitting on a beach? This virus spreads almost always indoors.
The World Health Organisation agrees. In its latest advisory it says “widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence and there are potential benefits and harms to consider”.
Er, “harms to consider”?
Before I get to those “harms”, let me make clear masks could help indoors, when you can’t keep your distance.
That’s why France and Britain are going to make masks obligatory in shops, for instance, but not outdoors.
That’s why the WHO says masks should be recommended for just “specific situations”, as when people are indoors with “limited or no capacity to implement other containment measures such as physical distancing”.
Even the recent Lancet journal study that allegedly prompted Victoria’s new mask law admits it has low confidence in its findings that masks stop the virus spreading, adding that the “optimum role (of masks) might need risk assessment”.
That risk is not just the obvious dangers spelled out by the White House’s top coronavirus advisor, Dr Anthony Fauci: wearing them makes you more likely to fiddle with your face, bringing any virus on your hands close to your mouth and nose.
A new study — not yet peer reviewed — from Yale University also warns that masks tend to make you feel safe, and more careless about keeping your distance, one of our main protections.
It said: “We find face mask mandates lead people to spend 20-30 minutes less time at home per day ... (and) increase trip taking to a variety of locations, chief among them are restaurants.”
It warned: “Such substitution behaviour could be the difference between controlling the epidemic and a resurgence of cases.” Yes, a mask law could make it harder to stop our second wave.
But what do politicians — desperate to seem tough — care about such warnings, or a new Bond University study that said “use of face masks should be restricted to higher risk circumstances, including crowded, indoor spaces”, since “there is insufficient data to quantify all of the adverse effects”.
Forget that. Face masks for all! Sell any scrap of cloth as good — “whether it be a bandana, a scarf,” blathered the Premier.
But in the nursing homes, the old keep dying.