I believe it is time to get away from hearsay and start listening to what the facts say. The COVID-19 response has been confusing in part because we have become unable to discern fact from opinion. I spent the last four years studying communication at Boston University. I grew up in Los Osos. Boston University provided me an amazing education. Growing up, I did not receive a wholistic view of the world from within SLO.
I just presented two facts, and then two opinions. The difference between them is nuanced, yet essential to communication. The first cannot be debated or argued. They are facts. The latter may be discussed, agreed with, or refuted. They are opinion.
Essential information must be properly understood. By learning how to separate facts and opinions, we can appropriately focus our energy while discussing pandemic response.
Whether or not we should wear masks, as a community, is an opinion, clearly. San Luis Obispo debates over where and who should wear a mask. If everyone wore a mask, we would save lives. That is fact. The difference lies in the implementation of information. Saving human life is a pro to wearing a mask. Communication issues created by wearing masks are a con. Facts can be implemented into debates over opinions.
The best opinion, in my opinion, rests on a bedrock of facts, not on a bedrock of opinions. Use facts to inform your opinions. Assert facts, discuss opinions.
Robby Saligman
Los Osos
This article appears in Last-Minute Gift Guide 2020.
Robby, you stated as a “fact” that “if everyone wore a mask, we would save lives.” What makes you confident in this statement? Do you have research to back up your claim of “fact”? I recently earned a degree in Communication Studies (magna cum laude) from Cal Poly SLO, and all my department professors made sure that I learned to explain and back up my claims, warrants, and arguments. All I see you are doing in your letter is making a statement and calling it “fact,” something that any child could do. But as an adult and a communication scholar, don’t you feel that you have far greater responsibility with your words?
As a matter of actual fact, there are exactly ZERO properly done scientific studies proving that wearing a face mask prevents transmission of viruses. Zero studies. I have done my research, reading medical journal articles which all conclude that “more studies are necessary in order to find that face mask wearing prevents transmission of pathogens including viruses.”
On the side of the boxes containing medical grade masks, there is a printed warning stating that the masks do not prevent transmission of pathogens including CV-19. So where are you getting your “facts”?
If you are referring to the use of medical masks in the operating room, this is procedure is to prevent bacterial infection that could occur if droplets from the surgical team’s mouth/nose accidentally fell into a patient’s open wound or body cavity. The mask has nothing to do with transmitting viruses or similar pathogens.
Furthermore, germ theory is just that, a theory — one that was lamented by Pasteur himself later in life and has been debunked in many studies by many medical doctors and researchers who have been discredited, de-platformed, and defunded. But Western allopathic medicine recognized a life-long money-making scheme in persuading people that silent, invisible “viruses” transmit between humans. This theory completely ignores the human immune system and its natural functions for healing the body of toxic overload. But of course, the mainstream media will never talk about that because humans would learn that we are each responsible for our own bodies and individual health, and then all the fancy-hair, highly paid mouthpieces would lose their cushy jobs and the house of cards would come crashing down.
And even if CV-19 is real and deadly (which it is not), why is the recovery rate quickly approaching 99.99%?
Once again, Robby, and with all due respect: Where are you getting your “facts”? I’d love to read your follow-up letter so we can continue this conversation.
Wow Sharine. Great ‘rebuttal’, even including the rarely picked-apart bases for modern western medicine. Kudos to you on those parts.
However, as I indicated once before in this forum, working in a hospital has provided me with an up close and fairly personal look at -as you call it- CV19 and/or its effect on various people I’ve been privileged to assist providing care for.
Using the systems and tenets of logic and your communications degree (congratulations by the way- no easy feat I’m sure), I’m certain it could be debated whether all the people who’ve expired while hospitalized under at least a partial diagnosis of Covid-19 actually died of that or of some primary or secondary effect of or from Covid-19.
So I guess my next statement that it is a truly ugly way to die carries so much less weight because maybe that’s not literally what caused them to die. However equally true is that they’d likely still be alive had they NOT contracted Covid-19. The renal failure, the multiple embolic occurrences would not have occurred as they weren’t that sick prior to contracting this virus.
Sure, you can search amd find no definitive data which would, evidently, encourage you or convince you to ‘mask up’; however it’s also true that looking that literal at our experience we call life also indicates seatbelts may be a waste; no real literal evidence exists which shows they save lives- they merely restrain you. Besides it’s the head, spine, or internal trauma which kills you in an accident, all the seatbelt does is restrain you. Huh.
I guess I’ll try and convince infection control staff where I work masks are useless. I truly marvel at smart people such as yourself who can matriculate the intellectual minefield which is the college degree, stuffing all sorts of knowledge and methods inside, then choose to throw alot of the common sense which also helped one through right out the window.
Breathing carries droplets, masks help stop droplets. Are they absolutely effective? No! Will they help? Yes! Kind of like studying for exams; no guarantee that you’re going to pass if you do, but you do anyway because it certainly increases the chance of a positive outcome.
Sharine, I found your “recovery rate” on Breitbart – is that where you got your information? (Hint – using the words “mainstream media” sort of gives you away.)
Thank you Robby and SDSMITH.
This Letter is an excellent example of marketing disguised as science. The author understands that repeating falsehoods over and over is a technique used to trick people into believing it’s true. The author used the word “fact” 9 times in a piece under 200 words, that’s a lot of “facts” with no data.
Wearing face masks isn’t an opinion, it’s an obligation to the community. Wearing a condom is an opinion, because to only people affected are the male and his sex partners. Whether you wear a mask or not affects everyone within a 10 feet radius, where ever you go. BIG DIFFERENCE.