please not masks again!

That’s what they’re saying in Philadelphia. No doubt the same cry will go up some other. Still required on planes and trains, I don’t mind the face diaper so much since my wife found the UnMask (1), which lets me breathe and doesn’t fog up my glasses.

I swore I wasn’t going to blog any more about Mr. Corona. I consider myself done with him. His effete mutant progeny will always be with us, but catching one should make no more than a bad cold, just like it was before the boys and girls at the Wuhan lab started tinkering. The next volume, #V, in my Musing Through a Pandemic series, about food and drink, will be my last.

But a couple days ago, I came across two articles on masks so excellent and so right on I felt compelled to share them.

Dr.Jeffrey Barke writes about the psychological effects of masking, particularly what they do to kids (2)

Steve Kirsch reviews a recent controlled study on whether masks protect, then discusses those results in the context of the only two earlier controlled studies of that sort from the COVID era (3). His treatise is quite extensive and concludes with a funny video.

I may never blog about Mr. Corona and masks again, but I may not be finished writing about the topic. One of my Barnes buddies Dave, a one-time academic endocrinologist now in a boutique internal medicine practice in Marin County, has observed two types of acid-base disturbances developing in chronic mask wearers. Each is an acidosis, i.e. more circulating acid than the system is supposed to have. The first is a respiratory acidosis, seen mainly in older patients, where the patient does not get rid of sufficient amounts of carbon dioxide, which turns to acid. Underbreathing, basically. The second is a metabolic acidosis, developing when tissues cannot get sufficient oxygen and switch the way they use energy to a pathway that generates more acid. Neither is very good for the patient. Unlike me in my day, Dave does not practice with an eye on what could be the next paper. I’m looking over some of the data he sent me to see if we have enough for, say, a letter to the editor.

References

1. theUnMask. breathe with us. https://getunmask.com/
2. Jeffrey I.Barke. Behind the masks. American Thinker April 16, 2022. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/behind_the_masks.html
3. Stever Kirsch. Masks fail their latest test. Steve Kirsch’s Newsletter April 14, 2022. https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/masks-fail-their-latest-test?s=r