WMBRIGGS.COM -- Until April 2020, WHO COVID-19 guidelines stated that "[c]loth (e.g. cotton or gauze) masks are not recommended under any circumstance." This was updated in June 2020 to state "the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence." But why do surgeons wear them? A paper in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England studied that question and here's the entire abstract: "No masks were worn in one operating theatre for 6 months. There was no increase in the incidence of wound infection." No difference after thousands of operations compared. Viruses which are lighter and much smaller than bacteria, so go through and around masks much easier, but even bacteria from maskless surgeons aren't causing infections ...

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BROWNSTONE.ORG -- Here are 10 papers (of more than 150) that describe the ineffectiveness of masks and mask mandates, and 14 papers on the harms and potential harms of masks. ~~ New England Journal Of Medicine: "We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.... It is also clear that masks serve symbolic roles. Masks are talismans that may help increase health care workers' perceived sense of safety." ~~ Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health paper on NIH website: "No evidence was identified that examined a potential role for surgical face masks in protecting staff from infectious material encountered in the operating room" ~~ Cochrane Database of Systemic Reviews ...

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AEI.ORG -- Today is the 52nd Earth Day. Here are 18 spectacularly wrong scientific predictions made around the first Earth Day in 1970. Harvard's George Wald predicted that, if immediate action is not taken, "civilization will end" by 1985 to 2000. In January 1970, Life reported "scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence that in a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution ... and, by 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." Scientific American published predictions that lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would run out before 1990. Kenneth Watt predicted that, by 2000, the world will be about "11 degrees colder," about double needed for an Ice Age. Barry Commoner predicted ...

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CEI.ORG -- None of the apocalyptic predictions made with due dates, since the 1960s, have come true ~~ Stanford population biologist in 1967: 'Dire famine by 1975' and in 1970: 'America subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.' ~~ NCAR scientist in 1970: 'Ice age by 2000' ~~ International team of scientists in 1978: 'No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend' ~~ UN in 1989: 'Rising seas to obliterate nations by 2000' ~~ Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in 1989: 'New York City's West Side Highway underwater by 2019' ~~ US Defence Chiefs in 2004: 'Britain to have Siberian climate by 2020' ~~ Al Gore in 2008: 'Ice-free Arctic by 2013' ~~ Nature in 2013: 'Arctic ice-free by 2015' ...

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AREOMAGAZINE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2014: "Too often, as the world grows more complex, the temptation for some is to shield themselves from complexity, we seek the comfort of our own simplicities, our own specialities.... Progress is possible when complex issues are subjected to competent, intelligent, nuanced and sophisticated analysis, free from dogmatism."] ARTICLE: Critical Social Justice (CSJ) does not see reality the way the rest of us do. Many of its tenets are bizarre, blatantly false and cartoonish oversimplifications of reality. CSJ scholars and activists believe they have a much more sophisticated understanding of social justice issues than the average person. They do not. CSJ is based on two big falsehoods that perpetuate the idea that CSJ is fundamentally about goodness. CSJ is rooted in postmodern ideas that science, evidence and reason are tools of oppression and these are merely white, male, Western cultural traditions. By rejecting science, evidence and reason, CSJ cannot be falsified. This is a very neat theory and ...

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CLIMATEREALISM.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2007: "A wise observer once said, it's not so much what we don't know that hurts us, but also all those things that we are sure we know -- but which are just not so."] ARTICLE: The Economist recently claimed climate change is harming coffee and tea production in East Africa; Kenya in particular. This is false. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) tracks crop production and, according to their data, coffee production in East Africa has increased by 57% and tea production by 97% between 2000 and 2020, reportedly the warmest on record. What is true of East Africa, is true for most countries, regions, and the Earth as a whole. Worldwide, FAO data shows coffee production has regularly set records over the past 20 years. Rather than report these facts, The Economist chose to take anecdotal evidence from a single person or group's experience, and extrapolate it into a ...

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