Case Closed: Masks STILL Don't Work

(This is a repost of an article from February 2023, as we thought the reader might need a reminder now in light of current events involving mask zealots.)

A major new gold standard Cochrane review study has come to a conclusion that only the utterly brainwashed would consider at all shocking at this point:  masks don't really work to stop the spread of respiratory viruses.  Never did, and never will.  Not even the vaunted N95.  Handwashing is likely modestly effective, but masks are basically a joke overall, and not a very funny one either.

This concurs with over a century of research that came out overwhelmingly in support of the anti-mask side of the debate.  In fact, by 1919 it was practically settled science that these devices aren't anywhere near what they were cracked up to be, a consensus which prevailed until March 2020.  Then the pandemic narrative took over and turned the science upside down for nearly three years straight, while any studies were to the contrary were systematically file-drawered for far longer than those supporting the narrative.  And now the entire pandemic narrative has collapsed faster than formerly healthy young athletes on the field after being jabbed.

We recently noted how the ever-insightful Ian Miller has so thoroughly debunked, deboned, sliced, diced, and julienned the pro-mask arguments, and laid waste to their utterly scorched remains for good.  And be sure check out the excellent Fargo study from Josh Stevenson et al. about masks for kids as well, likely the very best one yet, with the very least biases or confounding.  Spoiler alert:  masks STILL don't work.  Not for kids, not for adults, not for no one.

Oh, and let's not forget the dreaded Foegen Effect as well.  And other harms as well, see here.  That literally makes masks WORSE than useless.  Jettison them!

To the anti-mask side:  you are now hereby overwhelmingly vindicated, and really always have been in fact.  You have literally passed the biggest functional IQ test in all of modern history.  To the pro-mask side:  we are still waiting for you to apologize.  Yesterday.  And to those who switched jerseys anytime after February 2022 (that is, only when it became socially acceptable to do so), you are fooling no one.

QED

UPDATE:  Some may pedantically point out that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", therefore "no one can really say" that masks don't work.  True, you cannot (definitively) prove a negative.  But given the totality of the research and real-world evidence, it would be slothful induction (if not magical thinking as well) to still believe that masks have any sort of net benefit at all. If they did have a net benefit, it would have been self-evident long ago.  We need to see the forest for the trees.

"But...but...they worked in Japan!" See here for a good debunking of that myth as well.

And in case the pro-masker zealots pathetically trot out the fatally flawed Boston school mask study in desperation, rest assured that Ian Miller has successfully laid waste to that one as well.  And so has the ever-insightful Emily Burns, as well as Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, one of the authors of the Fargo study. 

Oh, and another study found that masks in HOSPITALS make no difference to infection rates.  Thus, if they don't even work in hospitals with all of their universal multilayered precautionary measures, they simply don't work at all, period.

UPDATE 2:  A re-analysis of the infamous Boston mask study has now thoroughly debunked it.

UPDATE 3:  For more on the harms of masks, see here.

UPDATE 4:  And another school masking study can be found here as well, co-authored by the aforementioned Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg.  Again, surprise surprise, masks STILL don't work.  Period. 

UPDATE 5:  And that's before we get into the toxins that can be emitted from some types of masks, including the vaunted N95.

UPDATE 6:  Pushback works.  Contrary to Carl Jung's famous saying, what you resist does NOT persist, as long as you resist enough.  DO NOT COMPLY!

UPDATE 7:  Looks like masks are even more harmful than we thought, especially for children. 

And finally, see here about the ultimate success of one of the most anti-mask (and anti-lockdown) countries in the world, Sweden.  As a result, we think "Stockholm Syndrome" should really be called "Melbourne Syndrome", because #SwedenGotItRight.

(Mic drop)

Smile And Say "Birth Certificate", Donald!

Found this on social media recently.  A picture is worth a thousand words:

Fool Me Once, Shame On You. Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me.

Time warp much?  Last I checked, the calendar says 2023, not 2020 or 2021.  Some people apprently didn't get the memo, based on their recent behavior.

The zealots are at it again, it seems.  Whether it is to sell more jabs, attempt to vindicate themselves, or something even more sinister, they are dusting off their old playbook once again in regards to the virus.  Fortunately, it seems to be just a few outliers for the time being, and most people are largely tuning out the fearmongering.  Looks like We the People have finally reached "herd immunity" to their BS, God willing.

At this juncture of history, pushing for any sort of virus-related mandates will truly be political and career suicide for anyone pushing it.  Are they really that stupid? Or do they just want us to think they are that stupid?  Either way, they are truly insulting the intelligence of 99% of the population by doing so.

All of the virus-related mandates, fearmongering, and the totalitarian ideology behind them need to be completely eradicated, root and branch, lest they ultimately grow back the moment it becomes politically expedient to do so and/or when "generational forgetting" eventually sets in. And of course, they can be repurposed for the next "crisis", real or manufactured, whatever that may be (climate lockdowns?).  We truly ignore that fact at our peril.

Whatever happens next, DO NOT COMPLY!  Give them an inch, and they will take a mile every time.

UPDATE:  Looks like much of the incipient revival of mandates by the outliers is being stalled or even reversed due to pushback.  Good for them!  Imagine if that much pushback had occurred in March 2020, how differently things would have gone.

Do Interest Rate Hikes Really Fight Inflation?

Short answer:  In a word, NO.

Long answer:  It's a very nuanced and complicated issue, but in practice, hiking interest rates generally does more harm than good, and at best is really not very effective in fighting inflation. 

Interest rate hikes, far from being a "razor-sharp, double-edged sword" (as we at the TSAP used to say) in theory, they are in practice just as blunt of an instrument as tax hikes are.  And they only "work" insofar as they cause a recession, as history has shown.  When the FERAL Reserve raises interest rates, it is "pushing on a a string" when they raise them insufficiently to cause a recession, and "blunt force trauma" to the economy when they raise them enough to do so.  And when they cut rates, it is even more so like "pushing on a string", as the damage is usually already done by that point, and of course they cannot cross the "zero lower-bound" into negative rates without inherently turning the world of finance upside-down.  There seems to be no "Goldilocks zone" for interest rate policy during times of high inflation, and the "therapeutic window" is generally closed.

Knowledge says that choking the economy until it goes limp and then choking it some more technically reduces inflation by killing demand for goods and services.  But wisdom says that one could hardly call that a success.

Not only are interest rate hikes inherently recessionary, they can also paradoxically increase one of the two types of inflation, "cost-push inflation", even as they tamp down the other type, "demand-pull inflation."  Both types are two sides of the same coin, so it can easily result in (or exacerbate) chronic stagflation, for which the only "cure" is to hike the rates so extremely high to cause a deep recession or depression, followed by cutting rates very quickly, at the cost of massive collateral damage.  A "cure" that is worse than the disease.

And the fallout falls not on the rich, who are largely insulated from the consequences, but overwhelmingly on the poor and working class, and also the middle class as well.

Cutting the money supply, whether fiscally via austerity or monetarily via quantitative tightening, is also similarly recessionary and damaging as well.  Both forms of tightening, along with interest rate hikes, are at best "break glass in case of emergency" measures that should almost never be used, period.

In other words, if you "burn the village to save it", the village will eventually return the favor.  You reap what you sow.  That's literally how karma works.

Even Rodger Malcolm Mitchell himself has recently turned against the idea of interest rate hikes, a policy he once strongly supported.  That really says something indeed.  Ellen Brown would agree as well.

So what works instead?  According to Mitchell, the root cause of ALL inflations is shortages.  Whether it's oil, gas, energy in general, food, labor, or otherwise, shortages are the common denominator.  To cure inflation, we must cure the shortages.  Now that is often a lot easier said than done, but governments who issue their own currency can help resolve shortages by fiscally incentivizing more production of such scarce goods and services.  And, of course, to also refrain from creating shortages in the first place with things like price controls or other artificial restrictions by fiat that are known to backfire. 

Oil, gas, or energy shortage?  Incentivize more domestic oil/gas production in the short term, followed by renewable energy production in the medium to long term as well.  Buy oil/gas or energy at at premium and resell it or give it away at a loss.  Food shortage?  Buy food at a premium and resell it or give it away at a loss.  Computer chip shortage?  Incentivize domestic chip factories.  Labor shortage?  Implement a "reverse payroll tax" like the EITC but simpler and more straightforward, to boost the paychecks of workers without increasing costs for employers.  Or the government can hire the most in-demand workers directly at a premium.  And consider replacing all or some means-tested social welfare programs with an unconditional Universal Basic Income (UBI) that does not perversely penalize people for working.  And so on.  That's the power of creating one's own currency via Monetary Sovereignty. 

QED.  Case closed, at least until we find even more compelling evidence otherwise. Therefore, the TSAP's new position in interest rates shall supersede everything we have said in the past about the topic.

UPDATE:  So what is the ideal interest rate then?  Should we do what MMT advocates, and just park it at zero and leave it there? There is a good case to be made for that, and the answer probably depends on a number of factors.  But negative interest rates are really not a wise idea for a national currency (too negative and people just hoard cash under the mattress, while not negative enough is really no better than zero).  For complementary and alternative local currencies, negative interest (aka demurrage) can perhaps make sense, like the Austrian town of Worgl famously did during the Great Depression, but the benefits of such likely do not scale up very well.  Thus for national currencies, zero is the practical lower bound.  And if zero interest (i.e. being able to borrow money for free) is still not stimulative enough, then do "QE for the People" by printing more money and giving it directly to everyone, rather than the banks in "regular" QE.  Problem solved. 

James Gailbraith makes a great case for low interest rates overall.

Thus, like MMT, the natural interest rate should be assumed to be zero by default, but unlike MMT, we should still not tie our hands and take higher rates off the table completely as a "break glass in case of emergency" measure.  Nor should Treasury bond sales be completely discontinued either, as those help stabilize the financial system in times of instability.

But what about speculative bubbles?  Don't low interest rates encourage those?  Yes to some extent, but only if Wall Street is deregulated like the Wild West (like now).  Therefore, better regulation of the big banks and shadow banking system, and a financial transactions tax, are a better idea to rein in reckless speculation than high interest rates. 

TL;DR version:  In a nutshell, raising interest rates has a tendency to backfire and generally does more harm than good, once all the jargon and accoutrements are stripped away. Occam's Razor would say that deliberately making everything effectively more expensive across the board (by making money itself harder and costlier to get) to engineer a recession is a terrible way to fight inflation, and can only encourage a perpetual quagmire of stagflation.

What about the Canadian experience in the 1980s?  Well, their inflation and unemployment were even worse than the USA despite (or more likely because) they kept their interest rates higher for longer.  And that disparity persisted well into the 1990s, until they devalued their overvalued currency, and then cut interest rates, which seemed to solve the problem.