Mask Mandate? Mainstream Media Malpractice

Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true.  But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly-and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.

 —  Thomas Sowell

On reviewing the article in the California Globe from October 10, 2024, titled “California Mask Dictators Bring Back Mask Mandates,” let me add a couple of medical scientific facts to this already superb journalistic masterpiece. These points are focused on both ethics and journalistic and medical malpractice on the part of those dictators defined in the article.  

The first area of concern relates to mask function.  In the article, the vape cloud demonstrated by the physician using various masks shows without question that masks don’t work against viruses. His analysis is spot on. He points out that the size of viruses mimic the particle size of the vapor molecules easily going through the mask.

As a previously very busy but now retired general surgeon in Sacramento with a primary focus on concern for helping you heal, there was and is no authority in America who can tell you anything about surgical masks and how they work in a “sterile” surgical field better than myself or a colleague of equal experience. It is profoundly annoying to know what I know, and  not being believed by mask fanatics, until now!  

Let’s dig in a little deeper. In preparation for med school, I did research in biochemistry and wrote a master’s thesis as a requirement to obtain the Master of Science degree. This was all done to make my med school application more attractive. It worked. It took two years and lots of lab time. The topic was the study of DNA in cesium chloride density gradients with an antioxidant used in food preservation called nordihydroguaiaretic acid. The reason was to determine the binding characteristics of this interaction, as this molecule was touted to have antineoplastic (anti-cancer) potential. Furthermore, it was a physical biochemical investigation, meaning that I  very truly have tiny particle size down!  My thesis was published in “Biochemical Pharmacology”, Vol.29. pp.3299-3306.  Please look it up and check it out. I don’t expect you to understand it, however.  And I tell you this only to further my qualifications in factually defining mask function in a common sense fashion. From this experience I also have more in-depth knowledge than the average physician when discussing bacterial and viral topics at the molecular level.

The simplest way to convey fundamental size  information and teach you (which is my sworn obligation as a physician) is to compare the size of our moon to the size of our sun. Because the sun is ninety-three million miles from the earth compared to the moon, which is two hundred thirty-nine thousand miles away, they look approximately the same size. Yet the sun is 400 times larger than the moon. These are physically measured facts. This is called scientific method, also called reproducible scientific fact, that which is demonstrably true.

Compare the size of an opening in a chain link fence, maybe an inch and a half rectangle, to a mosquito. Now consider a mosquito going through that fence compared to a virus going through a mask. That’s how easy it is for a virus to go through a mask. You could line up a bunch of mosquitoes, wingspan to wingspan, and they would go right through. To believe otherwise would be foolish.  

Very early in my career, I was taught some common sense wisdom by a seasoned scrub nurse. He or she said that if I am sick, sneeze or cough directly toward the open sterile wound which I created, (approximately twenty inches from my face), right through the mask. Why? It’s because the mask protects the patient from my mouth germs called bacteria. Yes, those are the germs that cause cavities and periodontal disease, for which we all go (or should go) to the dentist. And those germs are much bigger than viruses.  

Bacteria are the organisms that contaminate sterile surgical fields and cause wound infections. That’s a no-no. And we all have a wide variety of infection producing mouth bacteria, thus I demanded that anyone in my operating rooms wear a mask. It’s the standard of care. Compare bacteria to viruses. It’s the size difference between the sun and the moon. Bacteria are like tennis balls, and as above, viruses are like mosquitoes. What happens when you throw a tennis ball at a chain link fence? Correct, it is stopped and can’t get to the wound.

Surgeons occasionally get sick and must operate. I was sick multiple times during my career, even with fever. Surgeons don’t take time off. There is too much at stake. Patients need life sustaining surgery, and that’s what surgeons do. Flu, a snotty nose, sore throat, miserable, yet under perfect control and safe and clinically sterile for the patients is what and who surgeons are. My colleagues do it today! There is no time for playing hooky. The patients’ lives depend on those surgeons and sterile fields are a must.  Clinical sterility is the standard of care of the surgeon.

If you look at the blow pattern in the excellent presentation by the vape physician, notice that massive amounts of bacteria and viruses escape from the sides of the masks.  Thus, politely turning the head and coughing or sneezing puts the patient’s wound at considerably increased risk of contamination and a subsequent surgical complication called a wound infection. And paradoxically, the unpolite action of coughing directly at the wound makes for patient safety.   These are facts.  The quantity of the inoculum is also of major importance when considering the establishment of clinical disease.  Thus, the “entirely sterile wound” is not likely, even in a modern operating room.  But viruses shower the wounds, especially if the surgeon is sick. 

The moral of the story is that masks stop suns, not mosquitoes.  When it comes to viruses, please put to rest any notion of surgical masks protecting the wearer from the patient, or the patient from the wearer.  It just isn’t clinically or measurably true.  Therefore, the only prophylaxis keeping a non-sick person from a sick one is isolation while the patient is sick, and nothing more.  It takes seven days or one week to cure a cold, whichever comes first.

There is a process among physicians called informed medical and surgical consent.  It is a lawful requirement or obligation of that physician, public health doctor or not, to obtain a comprehensive, thorough explanation of the rationale, risk, and alternatives to any omission or commission of diagnosis or treatment or operation on the precious human patient.  Indeed, it is a Hippocratic Oath sworn responsibility of that physician.  Not to uphold this Oath is called allowance of harm or battery on the patient, not abjuring harm at all cost. Not upholding this Oath is punishable! 

In like fashion, it is a moral responsibility of a journalist to uphold the principles of the first amendment of the Bill of Rights in protecting free speech. Censorship or lying, to further untrue and imagined assertions, is journalistic malpractice or negligence. It should be punishable! We must make it punishable.

In both cases, i.e. the practice of journalism and the practice of medicine and surgery, there is potential for widespread corruption and danger to unsuspecting citizens.

For example, wearing masks for a simple flu is arguing with herd immunity in a group already healed by measured endemic status, and is medical and journalistic malpractice with malice to claim otherwise. Getting sick and getting well is natural immunity or natural vaccination! There is no need to test and identify which virus you have contracted!  You are immune.

Prescribing a vaccination with unknown efficacy, being used for the wrong reason, and identifying severe and life-threatening side effects without attention to the risk is gross malpractice or negligence with malice. Closing businesses and shutting down a vibrant economy is journalistic and medical malpractice with vengeful malice. Spreading fear into the minds of regular Americans, especially those predisposed to hypochondria, such that they boycott needed medical and doctor visits and hospital activities needed for diagnostic and therapeutic interventions is clearly journalistic and medical malpractice with intent to harm or destroy. Keeping kids out of school and social interactions is journalistic and medical malpractice with malice.  

All of  these evil, tyrannical, dictatorial edicts in combination (plus others) are killing the spirit of hope and healing in the lives of us Californians. And it is all based on assertions, or fake or pseudo-science, and not because of demonstrable, repeatable, measurable truth.

It is time for medical truth, the kind requiring the pinning down of public health physicians and all the of the Hippocratic Oath sworn physicians in California, to emerge from the shadows. It is time to yank the socks out of their mouths and for them to speak up to the atrocities of Newsom’s tyrannical exercise of unauthorized power, now arbitrarily scaring them into cowardly submission. It is time to grow a spine! Tear open the curtain and expose the evil wizard for exactly who he is.

Reading the comments at the end  of this excellent pushback article shows just how informed and involved the patient patriots who read California Globe are. Please extend your wisdom to everybody you know and encourage them to get out and vote for Trump and everybody down ticket, and my prognosis is that Gavin Newsom will soon have his  world  rocked.  California will be on track to be the exceptional, premiere seat of capitalistic medicine and science for the nation. Hats off to Katy Grimes and California Globe, the enemy of journalistic malpractice!