Intellectuals for Sale: CDC Retaliates Against Its Own For ‘Wrong’ Mask Research

CDC Warns CDC’s Own Scientists That Their Finding on Masks “Is Not Scientifically Correct”

During a congressional hearing, CDC Directory Mandy Cohen did not rule out mandating masks again for toddlers.

In a congressional hearing last November on restoring trust in science, CDC Director Mandy Cohen kept evading questions on whether she would bring back mask mandates for toddlers.

“We have a lot of different tools to protect our children,” Dr. Cohen said during her cagey response.

Six days later, a BMJ journal published a study that found “mask recommendations for children are not supported by scientific evidence.”

Director Cohen’s scientific bumbling continued last week as her agency began fighting with CDC’s own researchers over another contentious declaration: N95 respirators work better than surgical masks. In recent years, mask advocates have shifted goalposts and demanded N95 respirators, which they claim perform better than surgical masks at stopping the COVID virus.

Not true say CDC’s own scientists, according to CDC documents I uncovered.

During a presentation last summer, a CDC expert stated there was no difference between N95 respirators and masks in stopping viruses. These findings have been supported by CDC scientists in a study CDC published on the agency’s website last November—just a few weeks before Director Cohen testified before Congress.

To shut down this controversy, CDC wrote a blog last week warning researchers that to suggest that facemasks and respirators are the same “is not scientifically correct.” (See link for article)

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**Comment**

Thacker drills down and finds a CDC meta-analysis comparing the effectiveness of surgical masks with N95 against viruses. Result: NO DIFFERENCE.

But truth simply does not matter in the CDC Twilight Zone.

A systemic review noted that N95 respirators filter particles better than surgical masks, but they are NOT any better at stopping viruses in real world conditions.

Thacker then calls out to whistleblowers inside the CDC to contact him privately to discuss what is going on inside the hopelessly corrupt CDC which is beyond all hope and rehabilitation.

For more:

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The Treason of Intellectuals

In this interview, Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, discusses his stunning essay “The Treason of the Intellectuals,” published in December 2023 in the Free Press.

The essay delves deeply into the changes Ferguson has observed in his 30-year career as an academic, especially over the past 10 years. He has witnessed the willingness of trustees, donors, and alumni to tolerate the politicization of American universities by an illiberal coalition of ‘woke’ progressives, who have betrayed their role by pursuing a specific political goal, but pretending they are engaged in an academic activity.

In the first week of March 2020, as news of a virus was everywhere, intellectuals associated with the Yale University School of Public Health penned a letter expressing the conventional wisdom of the moment: we should not lock down. That harms the poor and vulnerable populations. Travel restrictions achieve nothing.

Quarantine, if it is deployed at all, said the letter, should only be for the very sick and only in the interest of the health of the community. Government should never abuse its powers but instead find “the least restrictive measure” that still protects community health.

The letter writers gathered signatures. They found 800 others in their profession to sign it. Of course the whole text was discarded by governments at all levels everywhere in the world.

Reading it now, we will find that it makes mostly the same points as the Great Barrington Declaration that came out seven months later. After that document, which was wrongly seen as partisan, many of the people who signed the original Yale letter then signed a new letter, this one called the John Snow Memorandum, calling for a zero-Covid policy and universal lockdowns.

What happened?

(See link for article)

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Summary:

Academics, think tankers, authors and pundits all over the world who were initially against draconian measures changed suddenly once every nation in the world other than Sweden locked down.
When “Trump’s” COVID ‘vaccine’ came out, Anthony Fauci, Kamala Harris, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Dr. Eric Topol, Dr. Peter Hotez and Dr. Ashish Jha all said that the public should be extremely wary, but turned on a dime a few months later stating it should be mandated despite no data, no evidence, and no new information.
Very few have apologized for anything despite the fact these measures not only did not have any positive impact on COVID, they actually killed people.
Currently, those of the professional intellectual class who are truth-tellers are mostly retired.
Those dependent upon an institution are less likely to speak the truth.
In order to ascend up the ranks in intellectual pursuits, you must be wise and that means not bucking the prevailing ideological trends.
In hopes of rekindling apolitical science, Brownstone Institute began a series of retreats for experts free of back-stabbing faculty politics and bureaucracy, in which serious research and ideas are put on display and valued for what they are. There is no unified message, no action items, and no hidden agenda.

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