Recently, a group of Tulsa, Oklahoma businessman and two of the area’s physicians sued both Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum and Tulsa Health Department Executive Director Bruce Dart over the mandatory mask edict.
The businessmen joining the lawsuit against mandatory mask-wearing claim the mayor’s edict puts the onus on business owners to force their employees to wear them for prolonged periods of time, which makes some people sick.
Dr. James Meehan, one of the doctors leading the lawsuit, is a preventive medicine specialist who has peer-reviewed thousands of medical studies. Dr. Meehan said, “I’m seeing patients that have facial rashes, fungal infections, bacterial infections. Reports coming from my colleagues, all over the world, are suggesting that the bacterial pneumonias are on the rise.”
Dr. Meehan cited the reason for the health problems is because “untrained members of the public are wearing medical masks, repeatedly… in a non-sterile fashion. They’re becoming contaminated. They’re pulling them off of their car seat, off the rearview mirror, out of their pocket, from their countertop, and they’re reapplying a mask that should be worn fresh and sterile every single time.”
He also noted he has been reviewing medical studies for over 30 years regarding the effectiveness of wearing masks to stop viral infections, with the result of his studies being that masks provide “very marginal, at best, efficacy, and those studies are in health care workers and hospital settings in which we have an optimal environment, nothing like our community is encountering.”
Why Not Wear Masks as a Precaution?
Dr. Meehan contends mandated mask-wearing by the public creates more problems than solutions. Two of his key observations:
“The COVID-19 pandemic is about viral transmission. Surgical and cloth masks do nothing to prevent viral transmission. We should all realize by now that face masks have never been shown to prevent or protect against viral transmission. Which is exactly why they have never been recommended for use during the seasonal flu outbreak, epidemics, or previous pandemics.”
“If you can’t help but believe and trust the weak retrospective observational studies and confused public health ‘authorities’ lying to you about the benefits and completely ignoring the risks of medical masks, then you should at least reject the illogical anti-science recommendation to block only 2 of the 3 ports of entry for viral diseases. Masks only cover the mouth and nose. They do not protect the eyes.”
In his article, Dr. Meehan also discredits the false analogy that masks must be effective because surgeons use them to protect themselves. He points out, “If a surgeon were sick, especially with a viral infection, they would not perform surgery as they know the virus would NOT be stopped by their surgical mask.”
He goes on to state, “Surgeons and operating room personnel are well trained, experienced, and meticulous about maintaining sterility. We only wear fresh sterile masks. We don the mask in a sterile fashion. We wear the mask for short periods of time and change it out at the first signs of the excessive moisture build up that we know degrades mask effectiveness and increases their negative effects. Surgeons NEVER re-use surgical masks, nor do we ever wear cloth masks.”
Dr. Meehan pointed out, “In February and March, we were told not to wear masks. What changed? The science didn’t change. The politics did. This is about compliance. It’s not about science… Our opposition is using low-level retrospective observational studies that should not be the basis for making a medical decision of this nature.”
TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal reported on a number of occasions that back in February and March, Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. Surgeon General; the CDC; and the WHO all agreed that the wearing of masks would not be effective at slowing the spread. (See article about Dr. Adam’s here, article about the CDC here, and article about the WHO here.)
TRENDPOST: As we have previously reported in the Trends Journal, when read carefully, the studies claiming to prove the efficacy of wearing masks cannot provide hard, scientific proof. To cite three significant examples:
In a 21 June NPR article regarding the effectiveness of wearing masks, they quoted a Lancet “meta-analysis of 172 studies that looked at various interventions to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, SARS and MERS from an infected person to people close to them.”
They went on to note, “Now, most of the studies in the analysis looked at face mask use in health care, not community, settings. And they were observational, not the gold standard of science, a randomized controlled trial, which would be ‘very unethical in a pandemic,’ says Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University.”
On 20 August, the International Journal of Nursing Studies reviewed 19 controlled trials and stated this in its conclusion:
“The study suggests that community masks used by well people could be beneficial, particularly for COVID-19, where transmission may be pre-symptomatic. The studies of masks as source control also suggest a benefit, and may be important during the COVID-19 pandemic in universal community face mask use as well as in health care settings.”
Note the words and phrases “could be beneficial,” “suggests a benefit,” and “may be important.” No conclusive proof. If these studies revealed substantial evidence, “could,” “suggests,” and “may be” would be replaced with “does,” “proves,” and “concludes.”