Mr. President, there is a very distinct possibility that the mask mandates saved no lives. There is a very distinct possibility that the mask mandates did not change the trajectory or incidence of…
Mr. President, there is a very distinct possibility that the mask mandates saved no lives. There is a very distinct possibility that the mask mandates did not change the trajectory or incidence of the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, there is a distinct possibility that mask mandates were simply coercive security theater that did not enhance the public safety at all.
While the efficacy of masks is debatable, the question of whether or not the Federal Government possesses the power to mandate that you wear a mask is not debatable. The 10th Amendment clearly states that powers not specifically enumerated by the Constitution for the Federal Government are retained by the States and the people respectively.
In United States v. Lopez, the 10th Amendment is affirmed. The Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution withholds from Congress the plenary power that would authorize enactment of every type of legislation. The Supreme Court went on to say that allowing the Federal Government a general police power of the sort retained by the States would violate the principle that the Federal Government is one of enumerated and limited powers.
Furthermore, no statute exists that remotely conveys a power to mandate masks to any Department of the Federal Government. Yet, since March of 2020, unelected bureaucrats from the Centers for Disease Control have incessantly declared that we should ``follow the science'' and submit to their mandates. But those bureaucrats defy science and practice something closer to sorcery.
For 2 years, they have incanted the magic word ``emergency,'' which they believe conjures up special powers that require each one of us to wear face masks they tell us have talismanic qualities. The only problem with this assertion is that none of it is true. The CDC does not have limitless authority during emergencies, and masks are not effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19.
This, after all, is the same Agency that decided merely by uttering the word ``emergency'' that it empowered itself to tear up every rental contract in America. Fortunately, the Supreme Court put the CDC in its place, saying that it ``imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.''
But the CDC has yet to learn its lesson. For a third time, the CDC extended the mandate, forcing everyone wishing to exercise their right to travel to wear a mask. The mask, to the CDC, is effectively a passport. Those who work for airlines are compelled to incessantly remind paying customers not only to wear a mask while we board but in between bites and in between sips. ``Sir, please put your mask on in between peanuts. Sir, after each peanut, please put your mask on.'' The absurdity.
Is it any wonder that the Federal Aviation Administration has logged a surge in reports of bad passenger behavior? According to the FAA, nearly two-thirds of the more than 800 reports of unruly passengers this year have been related to masks. Thus, the CDC's mandate is a safety risk to airline employees and passengers alike.
The populace, which has been pushed around too far for too long, no longer sees a flight attendant entrusted to make travel more comfortable but, rather, a border guard who polices the unfriendly skies. And who can blame them when the head of Delta Airlines wants to put the names of vocal opponents of mask mandates on a no-fly list, a place we had supposedly reserved for those suspected of terrorism?
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that, as all 50 States either dropped or plan to drop the mask mandates, the CDC stubbornly perpetuates its mandates.
The history of the last 2 years is a history of the CDC making recommendations despite the evidence, not because of it. From the beginning, the CDC has ignored the scientific data that demonstrated the ineffectiveness of masks.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci advised Americans to refrain from wearing masks, but as we were so often told, the science has changed--except that it really hasn't. At least 30 studies demonstrate that masks have little to no impact on transmission, including those that predate the emergence of COVID, which highlight the lack of effectiveness of masks outside the hospital setting.
In May 2020, an article by researchers at Harvard Medical School published in the New England Journal of Medicine not only held that ``wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection'' but that one of its few useful functions would be to serve as a reminder of ``other infection-control measures.''
The article went so far as to state that masks are not only tools but they are also talismans that may help increase healthcare workers' perceived sense of safety. In other words, the masks are a placebo. They might not do anything, but at least they can trick people into thinking they are protected.
Unfortunately for those who support mask mandates, the article went on to warn that ``focusing on universal masking alone may, paradoxically, lead to more transmission of COVID-19 if it diverts attention from implementing more fundamental infection-control measures.''
Translation: The mere symbolic benefit of universal masking comes with the cost of a false sense of security, which potentially risks further spread. For example, imagine the 80-year-old husband who chooses to wear a cloth mask to take care of his COVID-stricken wife. The CDC has prompted him to believe that wearing a cloth mask will keep him safe, when in reality this misinformation has prompted him to engage in risky behavior.
Among the reasons why masks have such poor results outside a hospital is user error. About a year after the initial reports of COVID cases, a large controlled study of about 8,000 participants was published by the Public Library of Science. That study found that face masks ``did not seem to be effective against laboratory-confirmed viral respiratory infections nor against clinical respiratory infection,'' which was likely due to poor adherence to the protocol.
People simply cannot replicate the hospital setting at all times, in all locations. Even N95 masks cannot help a person who does not know how to use
it. Multiple studies show surgical and cloth masks are not effective in reducing transmission.
In November 2020, a Danish study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that high-quality surgical masks failed to demonstrate significant reductions in confirmed viral transmissions. This is a large study. This is a randomized controlled study in Denmark with thousands of people who wore masks and thousands of people who didn't wear masks. And--guess what--they had the same incidence of disease.
Additionally, a randomized trial in Bangladesh found that cloth masks did not have a statistically significant effect on COVID transmission.
But we should not be surprised by these results because we have known the limitations of masks for a long time. A 2015 Vietnamese study of 1,600 participants found that cloth masks allowed 97 percent penetration of particles. They took sodium chloride particles the same size as a virus, and they blew them through a cloth mask, and they got 97 percent of the particles on the other side of the mask. They didn't work.
A 2019 study from Nepal found that the pore size of the cloth mask-- the opening that air goes through in the cloth mask, the pore size-- ranged from 80 to 105 micrometers, but the size of the COVID particle is only 0.12 micrometers. That means that the pores in the cloth masks are more than 650 times as big as the COVID particles.
Science.
If the virus is 650 times smaller than the pore, it is not going to work.
Wearing a mask to stop COVID is like trying to catch flies with a chain link fence. The virus can simply travel right through and around the mask.
And what was Dr. Fauci's prescription, after studying and concluding that masks were ineffective? Wear two masks. He is wearing masks all over his face. Just another one. If only we had four masks, maybe we would be safe. That is not science; that is theater.
The CDC announced that it would look into two masks, but we never heard back from them. A few days later, even Fauci conceded there is no evidence that double masking is going to make a difference. I guess he was just wearing it for style.
Actually, there is data even on double masking, just not the kind likely to be approved by Dr. Fauci. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in late 2020 monitored nearly 2,000 marine recruits who were subjected to anti-infection measures, including double masking.
What did it find? It found several incidences of COVID still being transmitted despite the double masks. Yet our President, our Governors, and our mayors routinely lectured us to ``just wear the damn mask.'' Now, 2 years later, what benefits did we get from all that masking? Not a damn thing.
A 2021 study published in the International Research Journal of Public Health found that there was no association between mask mandates imposed by the respective States and reduced spread of COVID-19. The study verifies what we have seen in the real world.
If you look at mask mandates that were put on State by State or country by country and you compare that to the incidence of the disease, there is no relation. In fact, often the relation is inverse.
Here you have California and Florida. In Florida, if you have been down there--look, even AOC goes to Florida because they won't make you wear a mask. You can do what you want. Nobody has been wearing a mask for 2 years in Florida. California: If you are paddle boarding by yourself, they will send the Coast Guard after you. If you are jogging on the beach in California by yourself, they will arrest you.
Wildly different mandates, yet this is the infection curve for California and Florida. It is the same. Death curves, infection curves, there is no evidence that any State mandate changed anything. In fact, if your objective--at the end of this pandemic, people are going to discover--I don't know if they will ever admit this--that the truth of the matter is nothing that man did other than the vaccine and natural infection, accumulated immunity from both natural and from vaccine sources, slowed this down, as well as the mutation of the virus.
Plexiglass--give me a break. You think the virus doesn't go in and around your plexiglass? We spend millions of dollars on stickers: Stand 6 feet apart. You are on the plane 2 inches from people for 2 hours, and then what do they say?
Please, as you exit the plane, we are going to practice
social distancing.
And you can stand 6 feet away from the person you have been 2 inches from for the last 6 hours.
It is ``Moronville.'' It is medieval. They knew more about infectious disease in the medieval ages than they do in today's modern age with the government directing this.
But despite very different mask policies, California and Florida ended up with about the identical outcome. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health, who provided one of these charts on Twitter, noted that the infection rates for California, which had a mask mandate, and Florida, which did not, have ``strikingly similar'' infection rates--specifically, 9.5 percent for Florida, 9.54 percent for the draconian mandates of California. They were the same. One place had no freedom; one place had their freedom--and the rate of disease was the same.
Is nobody willing to really look at the science? Are we willing to submit to wearing masks forever?
As journalist Jacob Sullum pointed out, if you compare California to Texas, another populous State that had no mask mandates, the case trends also are very similar. The same basic pattern was discovered in almost every State. In short, States with mask mandates fared no better than States without them.
Unsurprisingly, nationwide, masks did not prevent transmission or even death. This is a chart looking at the death rate and with the mask mandates. So the dotted line is the mask mandate. Oh, my goodness, we put a mask mandate on, and many more people began to die. Did the masks cause death? No. They just are unrelated. But if you are trying to prove that a mask mandate lessened death, there is no evidence of it. Death went up and then down and then up and down again.
The trends on death, the trends on incidence have nothing to do with plexiglass; they have nothing to do with stickers; they have nothing to do with masks. Yet we did all of these things in medieval fashion.
In the 14th century, the Pope burned incense. They thought they could protect themselves from plague. People wore garlic around their neck, even up to World War I. It didn't work; except the garlic did probably scare some people and keep them away from you.
When the CDC reversed itself--again--in July 2021 and recommended that vaccinated people--who they said didn't have to wear a mask--now had to wear a mask again, the death rate, which had been going down for months, sharply rose again. No relationship unless it is inverse-- unless putting on the mask caused the death rate to get worse, there is no relationship between mask mandates and lessening the incidence or lessening death. This is, sadly, yet more evidence that masks do not prevent transmission of disease that, for some, proves deadly.
It has distracted us. We have been distracted and actually comforted by something that is not working. And we have been tricked into engaging in risky behavior: wearing a mask thinking we are safe. With 80 percent of people wearing a mask, most of them are still getting infected. They have been vaccinated, and they are wearing a mask and still getting infected. Maybe we ought to reassess.
Despite all of this evidence, the CDC still cannot bring itself to end its travel mandate. Is it any wonder why this Agency lost so much credibility over the last 2 years? They have lost their credibility because they have treated every American as if we all have the same level of COVID risk.
Because of this approach, our children have suffered the most from the CDC's unscientific mandates. The CDC guidance on school masking is as aggressive as it can get, recommending universal indoor masking by all students aged 2 and older, staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools--regardless of vaccination status. With the CDC calling the shots across the country, kids have not experienced a normal day of school for 2 years. Schoolchildren
have to wear masks all day, which results in complaints of difficulty breathing, headaches, acne, anxiety, and depression.
And by covering the lower half of the face, we have robbed the students of effective visual communication. So profound has been the change in our learning that we have now changed the definition for adequate number of words for children to know. It used to be 50 for normal development; we changed it to 30 because they can't see the faces to mimic people. For people who are hearing impaired, they have even more difficulty if they can't see the lips.
Here is really the big insult of insults. We go to the State of the Union. Now, we have these elderly Senators and these elderly Congressmen, and, finally, they are free of their masks. They take their masks off, and your 4-year-old at home--the chance your 4-year- old dies of COVID is 1 in 2.32 million. They are going to be struck by lightning before they get COVID and die--but these old guys are fine now. They are a thousand times more likely to die from COVID, but they are fine with no mask; but your 4-year-old has to wear a mask--no logic whatsoever in this, no science involved in this. But it is authoritarians run amuck.
Sweden took a dramatically different approach. Swedish schools remained open for the majority of the pandemic and wore no masks--1.8 million kids, not one of them died. If you look at the incidence of the disease among teachers--you say, ``We have to put masks on the kids or the teachers will die.''
In Sweden, no masks on the kids and the incidence of disease among the teachers is the same as every other profession in Sweden--no difference. There were lower death rates there than in the U.S. But the one thing the Swedes did not suffer is their test scores were not lower. Their test scores are up, and no one is concerned about the lost years of education or mental development.
Mask mandates on planes don't make any more sense than mask mandates in school. While testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said that 99.97 percent of airborne pathogens are captured by the airplane filtration system, and it is turned over every 2 to 3 minutes. I think the case is very strong that masks don't add much, if anything, in the air cabin environment.
This is from the CEO of Southwest.
It is very safe and very high quality compared to any other
indoor setting.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby added that, in fact, air quality on planes is safer than an ``intensive care unit'' and that sitting next to someone on a plane ``is the equivalent of being 15 feet away from them in a typical building.''
It is not just airline CEOs who agree that mask mandates do not make sense. When discussing mask policy, even CNN, even the doctors on CNN-- the radical disciples of Dr. Fauci--now admit that cloth masks are nothing more than facial decoration and the responsibility should shift from a government mandate to an individual mandate. When the leftwing doctors on CNN are getting it, really, you would think the CDC might wake up. Doctors, scientists, airline CEOs are all presented with the science, and those who are all truthful will tell you that the mask mandates are nothing more than COVID theater.
But the mandates have been more like a curse. Think about what you have lost: Fathers were not there and allowed to see their babies born; mothers have given birth to babies alone; our children have fallen behind in education and mental development; weddings were postponed and ceremonies were drastically scaled back; many of us were deprived of one final goodbye to a dying loved one.
We are about to return to normal, and it can't happen soon enough. We are about to get our lives back, to get our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness back. But it won't happen until we finally wake up and say the science doesn't indicate this; until this body that supposedly represents the people votes to say: Enough is enough--enough of the theater, enough of the pseudoscience. Let's let people make their own decisions. But the CDC says no. It has extended again the travel mandate. We have another month of this.
But people are upset. I don't care whether you are a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent. There are Democrat moms, Independent moms, Republican moms and dads frustrated at their 4-year-old, their 6-year- old going to school for a nonfatal disease--nonfatal to children. Meanwhile, elderly Congressmen and Senators are now running around without their mask on, and they have no problem, but they are going to make your kid wear a mask. It makes no sense.
Now is our chance to say, Enough is enough. We have it within our power today to assure the American people that we are irreversibly going back to normal. We can tell our constituents that the unscientific mask mandates are on the way out once and for all. For once, we can follow the science and put an end to the travel mask mandates.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
