About Masks

Wow Von Gruff

Maybe a person from New Zealand that sells on the Internet should spend more time telling us about how the country he lives in. Locking all tourists out of the country has beat COVID-19.

I am sorry I spent the money to order one of your knifes after reading this.

I hope no one else wastes there money buying from you!!

Tom
I'm not sure if you're serious or just trying to get a rise out of us.

Let's assume you're serious. Your argument is that no one other than an American has the right to express a view about how the US has handled this outbreak? What kind of logic is that? Currently, the US is No. 10 on the highest number of deaths per million population. I'd say listening only to your own people is like living in an echo chamber where the echo can bite you in the ass. Given these numbers, you might just want to listen to other people.

As for Von Gruff's knives, I own several. And I too don't always agree with his politics, but I believe he has every right to express his views - which he has always done politely, I might add (lesson here, perhaps?). And here's where I know you're wrong. It's a fact that buying one of his knives is not money wasted. They are an incredible value for hand made knives. Anyone who regrets buying quality craftsmanship at an incredible price, well, I'm not quite sure what to say to someone like that!
 
Well that first article makes claims that are partially substantiated by partial evidence with no real meaning. None of the numbers are presented with a data set of any sort. The confounding variables in the examples given are many. None of these are addressed in the article. Pseudo science, much like science fiction, sounds downright plausible if you’re not paying close attention.

It presents itself with an air of scientific knowledge and then devolves into religious dogma. While religion nor science exist in a vacuum, religion doesn’t belong in a discussion of a subject that’s wholly dependent upon science. Religion can comfort people in times like this but is unlikely to be the solution to the problem.
I personally abhor smugness. It is not an attractive characteristic. It rarely carries discussions or debates. Did your mother mention that as well?

Daniel Horowitz is certainly not an epidemiologist, but he is a well respected attorney whose writings tend to generate thoughtful discussion rather than fact checking. I am somewhat privy to the military decision making evolving with the progress of the pandemic, and the conclusions he sites track pretty exactly with what the DOD has discovered thus far.

That may not fit with your own conclusions and world view with respect to the pandemic, but debate it. Offer alternative statistics or analysis with respect to the military experience.

My personal belief is that we have vastly overreacted to a pandemic that is far less lethal than we originally thought, that politicians can not back away from earlier decisions, and that this politicized nonsense will continue through the election. Had the vast powers of the respective states been focused on protecting the most vulnerable, I am confident that the mortality numbers would be far lower. Certainly that would be the case in New York's nursing homes.

One day, likely decades from now, historians will do a cost versus gains analysis of the human and economic costs of this insanity. Delayed medical testing, ruined businesses, destroyed lives have immediate and even multi-generational costs. Moreover, the masses of unemployed young people have contributed to the current lawlessness in or major cities. Those costs are measured in lost lives, lost opportunity, and lost security from want. Was saving the next Covid patient worth .25 other lives? .5? perhaps 1 for 1?

This period will not be like rereading the Spanish Flu of 1918. It will be the cautionary tale of a media promulgated mass hysteria flavored with the most divisive political environment since 1857.
 
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I think Jerome must have seen a thread like this coming when he installed a "dislike" button....I can think of several posts that need it. I shall refrain.....
What is it about masks that elicit such strong emotions? That is not a criticism of anyone's opinions, just an observation. And not just this site, across all social media.
And I might add, I own a Von Gruff knife and donated one to the AH dinner. Should I ever need another, I will certainly get one from him.
 
I personally abhor smugness. It is not an attractive characteristic. It rarely carries discussions or debates. Did your mother mention that as well?

Daniel Horowitz is certainly not an epidemiologist, but he is a well respected attorney whose writings tend to generate thoughtful discussion rather than fact checking. I am somewhat privy to the military decision making evolving with the progress of the pandemic, and the conclusions he sites track pretty exactly with what the DOD has discovered thus far.

That may not fit with your own conclusions and world view with respect to the pandemic, but debate it. Offer alternative statistics or analysis with respect to the military experience.

My personal belief is that we have vastly overreacted to a pandemic that is far less lethal than we originally thought, that politicians can not back away from earlier decisions, and that this politicized nonsense will continue through the election. Had the vast powers of the respective states been focused on protecting the most vulnerable, I am confident that the mortality numbers would be far lower. Certainly that would be the case in New York's nursing homes.

One day, likely decades from now, historians will do a cost versus gains analysis of the human and economic costs of this insanity. Delayed medical testing, ruined businesses, destroyed lives have immediate and even multi-generational costs. Moreover, the masses of unemployed young people have contributed to the current lawlessness in or major cities. Those costs are measured in lost lives, lost opportunity, and lost security from want. Was saving the next Covid patient worth .25 other lives? .5? perhaps 1 for 1?

This period will not be like rereading the Spanish Flu of 1918. It will be the cautionary tale of a media promulgated mass hysteria flavored with the most divisive political environment since 1857.

If I came across as smug it was not my intention until I was attacked personally. At that point I reacted as the primal redneck I am. Up until that point I feel that I was simply responding to questions asked of me. If you can point out where this is untrue please do.

You and I differ greatly in our views on most things outside of the usefulness of the 375 H&H. This pandemic is a subject you and I have addressed in another thread already. Do you feel there is any middle ground between our views?
 
Several leading epidemiologists, Sweden's in particular. have expressed something close to amusement with regard to how long an island can remain cut off from the 21st century world. Yes, New Zealand controlled the virus - now what?

Now what - is we wait for the country to be opened up to the rest of the world again and have to go through what the rest of the world has gone through as our leaders crippled the country to close it down not to stop the virus but only to postpone its tracking accross the population untill some proportion of immunity slows its progress.
Our leader "Cindy" is already talking about further outbreaks as they struggle to contain those who are supposed to be in isolation (but keep leaving and mixing in the general population) .Masks are being touted as being necessary or recomended so I have a stake in any information that reflects on their effectiveness or otherwise which is why I posted the two pieces I did.
 
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If I came across as smug it was not my intention until I was attacked personally. At that point I reacted as the primal redneck I am. Up until that point I feel that I was simply responding to questions asked of me. If you can point out where this is untrue please do.

You and I differ greatly in our views on most things outside of the usefulness of the 375 H&H. This pandemic is a subject you and I have addressed in another thread already. Do you feel there is any middle ground between our views?
That was a very good rhetorical question. I am not sure what "we" think about most things, though we clearly have a different view of the pandemic.

I think a national policy (a set of thou shalts) to respond to a pandemic for a continental nation governed by a republican form of government would have been folly. Places like the PRC can pull it off, but a European country looks a lot like Texas, Florida or New York. Therefore, putting the onus on the States, as we do in natural disasters, was the most effective approach. Unfortunately, with fifty governors, for every Kevin Stitt there is a Whitmer.

I believe that we can trace a lot of the original bad decisions to initial flawed modelling. There is a huge difference between a 2% and .2% (now probably less) mortality rate. Government, national and local, lost focus on critical threats (the aged in particular) in ramping up for the flood of hospitalizations that never occured. New York is a case study. Moreover, that worry about hospital beds certainly contributed to Coumo’s fatal nursing home guidance. We even managed to politicize a generally harmless drug (that I and soldiers under my command have personally taken for months on end) that does in fact seem to work in early treatment.

I have no disagreement with your contention with respect to Fauci's responsibility to offer medical recommendations. Those, of course, need to be balanced against economic, social, and even political consequences. What I can not forgive the media or the "loyal" opposition is the cavalier discounting of all those other factors to the exclusion of the medical for perceived political gain in November. The canonization of Fauci prevented any broader, even-handed debate or discussion of all those other factors - particularly the long term human effects of an economic shutdown. The frustration and quiet revolt among so many small business owners is a swelling response to that narrative. I would also personally note, that I have not seen anyone quite so irritatingly pleased with his new found fame as Fauci since Judge Ito.

I truly believe that we are in the midst of a media driven mass hysteria that found fertile soil among a people that have grown up in such a protected environment that any threat is terrifying. Whether for ratings, or for political reasons, the media has only stoked that hysteria. It plays out here as it does everywhere else.
 
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I think Jerome must have seen a thread like this coming when he installed a "dislike" button....I can think of several posts that need it. I shall refrain.....
What is it about masks that elicit such strong emotions? That is not a criticism of anyone's opinions, just an observation. And not just this site, across all social media.
And I might add, I own a Von Gruff knife and donated one to the AH dinner. Should I ever need another, I will certainly get one from him.
I have that donated knife. Nice.
 

Horowitz: From Fort Benning to Japan and Hawaii, face masks are not working
By: Daniel Horowitz · Conservative Review – August 3, 2020

One will not find a greater degree of compliance to a mask mandate than with one placed on military trainees by drill sergeants. That’s why, if masks are really the viral placebo their devoted cult worshipers make them out to be, one would expect mask mandates to work wonders in these environments. Except, they didn’t work – just like they didn’t work in Japan, Hawaii, Israel, California, Miami, or any other place where they’ve shown near universal compliance for months, yet the virus spread rapidly.

In the military, they don’t just virtue signal and wear masks as a symbol. If they are led to believe mask-wearing will work to stop the spread, they will wear them seriously with the boot of the drill sergeant behind them. Yet, despite universal mask wearing, the super social distance rituals, and all precautions imaginable, it failed to stop an outbreak at Fort Benning in Georgia in May.

Here’s how the outbreak unfolded, according to Elizabeth Howe of Connecting Vets. About 640 recruits from the 30th AG Battalion and 2nd Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment arrived at Fort Benning in May for training and were immediately tested for COVID-19. Four recruits tested positive and were removed from the group while the remaining soldiers were placed in isolation for 14 days without any training exercises. After the 14-day quarantine, they were all retested and every single one was negative.

Only then did the training commence – with the full panoply of obsessive social distancing measures, including mask wearing. You can imagine that there will never be greater compliance to these rules than during military training. Yet, just eight days later, after one recruit exhibited symptoms, 142 of the trainees tested positive. That is 22% of the entire group isolated and quarantined together. As they were young, none of them were hospitalized and most were asymptomatic.

The case of Fort Benning should have served as a harbinger of what was to come in June with the surge of cases throughout the country, and now, the entire world. You cannot run or hide from God’s respiratory viruses that spread as ubiquitously as the flu. However, at the same time, we see God’s mercy – that the majority of cases are asymptomatic and there are very few serious cases outside of those who are immunocompromised.

Another important observation from this Fort Benning outbreak is in order. Notice how the masks did not help and the virus spread far and wide, but stopped at the 22% threshold? This is another great example of what Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, and Stanford professor John Ioannidis predicted early on based on the natural case study of the Diamond Princess cruise ship outbreak – that the virus hits a brick wall in most places around the 15%-20% marker. Seventeen percent of passengers on the Diamond Princess tested positive. The working theory is that most people have some degree of cross-immunity from other coronavirus colds and that the virus does not transmit homogeneously from every infected individual.

While there will be places where the virus hits up to 40% of the people, albeit with most not exhibiting symptoms, most states and countries seem to get a respite from the disease once they reach 15%-20% seroprevalence in the population, or even less. We are beginning to see this in the southern states that have already peaked and are seeing plummeting rates of new hospitalizations.




Thus, we see God’s judgment and mercy mixed together. On the one hand, nothing seems to prevent a spread in the population, but on the other hand, a de facto herd immunity threshold is hit around 20%. The quicker we achieve this through the younger population, the more we will see results like we’ve witnessed in the military.

There is no greater petri dish and natural case study of a confined universe than on an aircraft carrier. During the spring, there was an outbreak on the USS Theodore Roosevelt whereby 24% of the sailors tested positive. Yet, there was only one fatality.


Hence, it’s not like the mask mandate at Fort Benning worked even a little bit. They seemed to have suffered roughly the same infection rate as those places caught by surprise, such as the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

How much more evidence do we need before this mask cult takes its Jonestown mentality and seeks mental health treatment?
What we saw at Fort Benning is now playing out throughout the world.

Japan is a country where people have been wearing masks for months with a degree of discipline we would expect in our military. Yet, cases are soaring, despite the fact that they are not testing nearly as much as we are:



They are now panicking in Hong Kong with cases surging despite a universal mask mandate in place for months.

Countries like Japan and Hong Kong are as disciplined and as clean as they come. But you can’t stop a pandemic flu. Thankfully, there really is no reason to panic because the rate of serious cases is even less in Asia thanks to their inherent partial immunity.

We are seeing the same pattern here in America. Hawaii has had the most severe lockdown of anywhere and it’s enforced very zealously. They also have had near universal compliance to their long-standing mask mandate in place since April. They are also an island country. Yet, it has experienced a 700% increase in cases over the past 30 days!

The same holds true for a state like California, which had the earliest stay-at-home order in March and has never exited a modified phase one reopening. We all know how that has turned out. The same holds true for Israel and Australia. In fact, in the ultimate irony, the only countries that seem to remain flat are the Nordic countries, which have aggressively resisted the idea of public masking.



COMON!!! SCAMDEMIC!!! ITS ALL ABOUT THE BROKE CENTRAL BANKS EUROPE AND JAPAN ARE SO SCREWED!!!!!! DIGITIZE ALL CURRENCY SO THEY CAN DRAIN THE LAST LIFE OUT OF THE POOR SAPS LIKE US- MASK PANDEMIC CURRENCY HAS DISEASE IS A DIVERSION WHY DO YOU THINK THEY LOVE THE ESCAPED FROM A LAB IDEA SCARES THE SHIT OUT OF ALL THE SHEEP HAHA SO MUCH BULLSHIT , WHEN EVERYONE RELIZES GOV BONDz WILL BE TOILET PAPER AT BEST - KEEP THE FEAR!!!!!!
 
Well, that was deleted quickly.

I am thoroughly thankful of the "ignore" function on the site due to some of the responses on this thread.
 
i for one love this site,anybody who doesnt,dont let the door hit your ass on the way out.
 
I think the SEC(Southeatern Conference) got it right! Let’s play football! And they all have to wear helmets with face mask! LOL
 

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