Crazy thinking, and irresponsible too in an epidemic

October 15

GUEST: Monica Gandhi MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine and Associate Division Chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/ San Francisco General Hospital, talks about the paramount need to wear masks, socially distance and track the contagious if we hope to stop the Pandemic.

Dr. Gandhi on Democracy Now

We were privileged to have Dr. Gandhi on Activist Radio to talk about COVID and the battle to contain the virus in this country. The science is there, of course. Wearing masks, socially distancing and tracing are the way to contain the pandemic. It is just that the Trump White House has so politicized the disease and lied about its dangers that millions of Fox News followers think that COVID is a hoax. It is no wonder that America is number one when it comes to COVID deaths, despite the fact that we spend so much more on our healthcare than other countries do. 

But it is not just right wingers who refuse to wear masks. There are any number of conspiracy addled folks who think that Big Pharma, the medical establishment, and international financiers are somehow behind efforts to make people wear them in public. They tout the joyous "freedom" to gather together and socialize without worrying about masks or social distancing. They urge others to resist the "deep state" tyranny by attending rallies that turn out to be superspreading events. The freedom to not only die of COVID, but to infect all your freedom loving friends. 

I thought I would share what some listeners have written in about Activist Radio's COVID coverage. One listener claimed that masks make it easier to catch the virus, and included a medical study to prove her point. Here is my response:

Lynda,

The abstract you sent me is typical. The study in question reviews the "difference between medical masks and cloth masks," and obviously, medical masks are more effective. But the study never says that cloth masks in themselves are harmful to the wearer. It speculates that masks worn "on every shift for 4 consecutive weeks" might harbor virus. Rates of infection were higher with cloth masks, but there is no control group that didn't wear masks at all. Who would be that stupid not to wear some kind of mask working around infected patients?

That study looks like it was published in 2015. There have been hundreds of studies since then that have measured the efficacy of wearing some type of cloth face mask, especially since COVID 19.

The study was done in Hanoi, Vietnam. Vietnam has been one of the best countries in the world when it comes to controlling the pandemic. Have you looked at a picture of Vietnam during the last several months? Everyone is wearing a mask.

When challenged for some sort of proof that masks, social distancing and tracing don't work, the response has always been the same. I have watched my share of flaky videos, with dubious white coated "experts" applying their tortured logic to completely unfounded theories (please don't send us any more). 

Is our neoliberal system corrupt? Are some doctors and pharmaceutical companies willing to kill people for profit? Will they distort their own science to make money? There are so many examples of this that I don't know where to start. Maybe I do. Dr. José Baselga, the chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center was caught failing to disclose: "millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in recent years, omitting his financial ties from dozens of research articles in prestigious publications like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet (NYT Sept. 8, 2018)." That is how our current kleptocracy works.

That doesn't mean all doctors are on the take. Nor does it justify believing that there is some international conspiracy to rob the American people of "freedom" by making them wear face masks. That is just crazy thinking, and irresponsible too in an epidemic as dangerous as COVID 19.