Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Everyone and welcome to the 109th episode of the Atlas society asks. My name is Jennifer Anju Grossman. Everyone calls me JAG. I'm CEO of the Atlas society. We are the leading nonprofit, introducing young people to the ideas of iron ran in fun, creative ways, like our graphic novels and animated videos. Today, we are joined by Ian Miller and before I even get into introducing our guest, I wanna remind all of you who are watching us on zoom on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram. Uh, LinkedIn, please start teeing up your questions. Now this is a tremendous opportunity to talk to Ian Miller, um, and we will get to as many questions as we can. So, uh, my guest Ian Miller has been closely tracking COVID 19 data since March of 2020 and spent most of the past two years analyzing information and publishing his very unique, uh, and now famous charts, um, on social media. And now in, uh, his book, um, on mask the, um, unasked, the global failure of COVID mask mandates. And of course, uh, also his unasked subst. Ian, thank you again for joining us. Welcome.
Speaker 1 00:01:26 Oh, thanks so much for having me really appreciate it.
Speaker 0 00:01:29 So, um, Ian first, congratulations on your book. Uh, did you have any difficulty in finding a publisher and, uh, what has the reception been to your book so far?
Speaker 1 00:01:44 I, I actually, it was a bit easier to find a publisher than I thought it would be. I didn't think that there would be a lot of publishers willing to kind of tackle the subject matter, um, postal press, which did publish the book has been very supportive and they were very, uh, supportive of the book and the idea behind the book. And, and they've been great about, you know, writing whatever you want there, we're not concerned about any of that. I think the reception has been generally also more positive than I would've expected. I think people have been very, I I've been very gratified and humbled to see the response and people have been very, uh, found it very useful and, and informative and, uh, recommended it. I've seen a lot of people recommending it to friends and family or saying that they've bought copies for friends and family, which is great or have brought it to, to school meetings. There was famously a, a, a young man in Colorado drive to a local school board meeting and offered to, uh, buy a copy for anybody who wanted it. And unsurprisingly, they turned him down, but it, it's definitely been, been very flattering and gratifying to hear people that have found it useful and have enjoyed reading it.
Speaker 0 00:02:40 So, Ian, um, you and I are both in Los Angeles county, so, uh, we endured much of the, the past two years, um, under some of the most strict and intrusive, uh, mandates and lockdowns, uh, in the country. Um, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about you, about your origin story and what primed you to, uh, take such an interest in the data surrounding COVID and mass policies.
Speaker 1 00:03:14 Yeah, I was born in LA, born in Burbank actually, but grew up in near San Diego, just outside of San Diego. And I've been in Southern California pretty much my entire life, but I had been living in LA when everything hit. And, um, as you mentioned, it was the restrictions here were very intense. It was very dystopian in a lot of ways. And, um, I think what really motivated me to get into it was how restricted the policies were. And, and also being here, I was able to look at the data for, from Los Angeles every day saying, oh, we know we have this many cases, that many cases and going well, if, if all this stuff that we're doing was so important, why isn't it working? Um, and that kind of gave me the idea to look and compare data from Los Angeles to other parts of the country that didn't have the same kind of lockdowns didn't have mass mandates.
Speaker 1 00:03:56 And oftentimes those areas were doing significantly better. Uh, and that kind of set off a light bulb like, oh, you know, this might not be as effective as they think it's gonna be. Um, and it became, you know, and there were a lot of people doing this kind of work on Twitter. I found a community of people that were all kind of questioning lockdowns at a time when you really couldn't, couldn't do that on the internet, um, questioning mask mandates. And, and it became a goal of mine to consistently show, you know, day in, day out are, what are we doing? What is the policy that we're, you know, uh, enforcing here and has it having an impact? Um, and I think that it, it, the book and although other work I've been doing is shown a pretty consistent pattern that it doesn't make a big difference.
Speaker 1 00:04:33 You can try mask mandates, you can try lockdowns, try capacity limits, which we did, and, and it didn't make any difference. And, and even as, as we knew more about COVID over the next six to nine months of 20, 20 California brought back lockdowns, essentially where they were closing businesses, they were closed dining. You know, we couldn't go to a restaurant from December to January or February of 2021. Um, so it was, it was really kind of personally affecting me, but also I realized that there were a lot of people looking for this information because they, their businesses were shut down or were, were limited. Uh, their kids, if they were in school at all, were being forced to go to school with masks. And they were looking to see is all this stuff necessary because I'm experiencing the negative consequences of it right now. And, and there was an international community experiencing the same thing as well. So it just kind of spiraled out from, from looking at really Los Angeles data and saying this isn't really making much of a difference.
Speaker 0 00:05:26 Yeah, certainly not making much of a difference in terms of, um, controlling this, the spread of COVID made a huge, uh, negative diff difference in terms of, uh, destroying people's lives, shutting down businesses, um, terrible, terrible, uh, mental health outcomes, addiction all around, quite the disaster. And, uh, very little to show for it. Um, let's go back to March of 2020, uh, you know, it's not as if there was zero planning, I'm assuming, um, and forethought in terms of public health officials, expectations of future pandemics and what measures should be taken. So what were some of the planning scenarios at the CDC at the world health organization specifically with regard to the role of masks in com combating airborne infectious diseases?
Speaker 1 00:06:24 Right. Uh, well, it's, it's a really important point to bring up and I wrote a sub piece about it called if, you know, if masks worked, why didn't we plan to use them? I think that kind of sums up what a lot of the pre guidance was. Uh, and there was also a really important quote that I've found. I shouldn't say quote, it was an email I found in kind of doing the research for the book, uh, that was released from Dr. Fauci saying, uh, you know, we, uh, from one of his employees at the ni I, I D saying that we reviewed all the high quality randomized controlled trial evidence on mask learning. And all of it suggested that would be no significant benefit by mask wearing the general public. This was March 31st, April 3rd, every Fauci and the CDC come out and say, everybody should be wearing a mask.
Speaker 1 00:07:00 So it's, it's very obvious when you go back and look at these pandemic planning documents, but there is no science to suggest the mask ING would work the CDCs planning documents when they gave a briefing in February of 2020 saying, you know, here's what we're expecting. And here's what we're experiencing. Here's what we planned for. They never mentioned mask learning. This is a tele briefing given by a CDC spokesperson, never mentioned mask as an important intervention. Uh, I think that again, that shows you that all of the guidance and all of the evidence from, from just Premar 2020 suggested that masks would not work. You know, the world health organization, their playing documents said the same thing. There's, you know, they list all those same studies, all the good studies suggesting masks don't work. Uh, the UK health services agencies said masks do not work against aerosol transmission of, of viruses.
Speaker 1 00:07:43 So it's very consistent. They're all in agreement that there is no benefit. And that's why you see so many statements from back then saying fast don't work. So, uh, I, it was a very important point to bring up in the book. It's very important to bring up consistently because it's, it's showing how much of this response and the flip flop was not guided by side science or data or evidence. It was just guided by fear, panic, political pressure, and, you know, pick your, pick your, uh, your choice there. But it it's really concerning when you think that scientists are willing to kind of abandon what they had, all, all the work that they had done over years and years of research, uh, and flip flopped in just a matter of days.
Speaker 0 00:08:18 So, uh, let's go back also to Fauci. You mentioned some emails that, uh, later I think became available due to freedom of information, uh, requests. So early on Anthony Fauci appeared to be following that body of science that existed, uh, prior to this particular pandemic, um, both in public remarks and private emails. So, uh, if you could elaborate a little bit more on that and then, you know, walk us through the about phase.
Speaker 1 00:08:55 Yeah. So, uh, Fauci beyond that email that he received saying the mask wouldn't work, he also was emailing people privately saying you don't need to wear a mask. And it, it, I think it kind of connects to his excuse for why he said, uh, later on that he went on 60 minutes and said, nobody should wear be wearing a mask. They don't really work very well. And his excuse for that later was, well, I said that because we were trying to protect supply for healthcare workers that doesn't really hold up when you're telling people privately that they don't need to wear a mask because obviously one person traveling, you know, in February or March of 2020 without buying a mask would not impact the supply for healthcare workers whatsoever. On top of that, I think it doesn't really hold up because the CDC and Fauci were saying, uh, after they flip Flo saying, you should wear a cloth mask.
Speaker 1 00:09:39 You know, the surgeon general was out there with a video, rolling up a t-shirt and saying, you can hold a t-shirt in front of your face. Um, there's no way that a surgeon or a healthcare provider would be wearing a t-shirt as a mask. So telling the public to buy a cloth mask is not going to impact the supply that N 95. So surgical grade masks for healthcare workers, um, cuz they would never be wearing those kinds of cloth masks. So I think his, his later flip flop, you know, excuse for the flip flop was completely unsupported. And, and he's saying this privately, he's saying it publicly. Um, and it's ironic because he claims to be the science. And, but yet when he actually was, he was actually following the science before COVID, before he, he turned into kind of a political, uh, animal really in, in March of 2020 to in flip Flo on mask wearing.
Speaker 1 00:10:21 Um, I think it's, it's, it's a really, again, it's a really important point to bring up because of how it explains so much of these, the decisions that we've seen later on, you know, you can flip flop once, but you can't flip flop twice. So once Fauci kind of committed to that change, I think he had to fully, uh, fully committed and could never go back. And you know, he even said, and there's another quote that I, I used in the book that I think was really important. He said, you can go back and compare areas that have, that followed our advice to areas that don't and I guarantee you will see a difference. So that's what I did with the book. I compared all these areas that followed his advice, areas that didn't, and you can see a difference and it's almost always the places that didn't listen to him did better, but he was, he was not only wrong. He was wrong in the opposite direction. Uh, but I think it's really illustrated that there was no justification for, for the, uh, the FFA. And then he was telling people privately the same thing he was saying publicly.
Speaker 0 00:11:11 All right. I wanna remind those that are watching us to start, uh, teeing up your questions, please go ahead and type them right into the, uh, comment section on whatever platform you're on. Um, I will get to as many of them as we can, but first Ian, what is the current status of studies on the effectiveness of masking? Um, you know, roughly how many studies really high quality studies had been done prior? How many have been done since and what are the studies that the mask advocates use in justifying their policies and what issues do you take with, uh, the countervailing evidence?
Speaker 1 00:11:53 Well, there were two conducted after COVID randomized controlled trials. One was conducted in Denmark and it showed that there was no benefit for, uh, people wearing masks to protect themselves from COVID. There was, they randomized it and gave people masks and another group didn't wear masks. And there was no difference, um, whatsoever, which aligns with, again, all of the other studies and there were about nine or 10 high quality randomized controlled trial studies that were done and referenced by the world health organization saying it, it didn't work. And that lines up. The other one that was conducted was, uh, in Bangladesh where they studied a number of villages and compared different villages with and without masks. Um, and that also really showed no benefit. Uh, the, the authors kind of, I, you know, misled may be a strong word, but they tried to highlight a specific demographic and say, this is it, it works.
Speaker 1 00:12:37 But all it showed was that certain demographics over the age of 50 had a 10% reduction by wearing surgical mask cloth mass showed no benefit over 50 at a 10% benefit. If you, if you ignore their interpretation and analyze that study conventionally, you like with the Basian method, it is, there is no benefit. So it disappears. I think it's kind of a statistical trick to show a benefit. And even then there's no explanation for why only those over 50 would have a benefit from mask learning and not anybody under 50. So I think you can pretty safely say that both high quality randomized control studies on masking after the pandemic have shown that there's no benefit, uh, as well as the kind of observational studies that people have done put an academic bent to what I've been doing and, and compared counties across the entire United States also showed no benefit from, from mass mandates in particular.
Speaker 1 00:13:26 Uh, there was another study conducted recently that showed no benefit from, from mass compliance. You know, we've seen smaller studies. There was one at Cornell university that showed, uh, there that mask wearing made no difference that was mandated in every setting in Cornell. And it made no difference to preventing cases among students or staff, uh, this past winter. So I, I think it's a pretty conclusive body of evidence against mask wearing the studies that mask proponents try to use to, to justify it are unbelievably flawed, where the CDC has put out a lot of really, really terrible research over the last couple years. One of which was a hairdressers study where they, they had two hairdressers that had COVID and were wearing masks and didn't infect their clients. That was the headline. Except if you read the report, um, only half of their clients got tested.
Speaker 1 00:14:09 So there were half of their clients that never got tested. Wouldn't even know if they had COVID. So ignoring half the dataset feels completely insane to me. And also it's just such a limited sample size and could be explained by any number of factors above and beyond mask wearing. Um, but that was used by Deborah BES and others to try to justify it. There's been other ones like in Arizona that I wrote about in the book where they had, they claimed a 75% reduction in cases due to mask mandates. Uh, and this was very widely publicized and is still used, except they ignored that not every county in Arizona had a mask mandate. So if you compare the ones with, and without mandates, they decline at the same time and at the same rate. So I put up a chart in the book showing if you compare these two curves, they're exactly the same.
Speaker 1 00:14:47 So you can't claim a benefit to masking when counties that didn't have it also saw the same benefits, but that's what the CDC did. So I mean, you can go on and on, there are many more examples of this where there's very deeply flawed research that, um, is used that they kind of present this graphic to get the headlines, but unless you, and so unless you read this, the actual report, read the data behind it, you would never know that there really isn't actually a benefit there that they're kind of cherry picking to get the, the headline they want.
Speaker 0 00:15:14 So Ian, one of the things you're most famous for are of course your charts. Um, you mentioned just this, this one about Arizona recently, um, and, uh, they're, they invariably go viral on social media. You've included a bunch of them in, um, in your book. Uh, I wonder if you could maybe share some examples so we can give the audience, uh, a visual of, of, of the way that you were able to take publicly available data and present it in a way, uh, that I think is really instructive.
Speaker 1 00:15:51 Yeah, absolutely. Let me, uh, pull up a couple right here right now. Uh, so this is one I did on the state of Texas and it's, it's kind of conversely to mass mandates going in place and in cases rising, uh, when, when Texas lifted their statewide mass mandate last March, this March, 2021, um, there was this huge outcry of, of negative attention from celebrities. I mean, Matthew McConaughey's spoke out about it, uh, from politicians. I, I think it was veto O'Rourke that said that, uh, the governor Abbott was leading a death cult. Um, so there was this huge outcry of, of criticism for them lifting their mask mandate and, you know, Joe Biden called it Neanderthal thinking. Um, and then of course the mandates lift and three months later cases had continued to drop dramatically and were as low as they'd ever been. So, you know, all these predictions that you get, uh, from people saying you're gonna have a huge surge, as soon as you lift masks, doesn't play out, uh, in the data, but they don't ever follow up and tell the whole story.
Speaker 1 00:16:45 Um, the other side you have the, uh, you have India as well, which, you know, the wall street journal in last, uh, December in this December of 2020, um, said COVID was consuming. Yeah. Until everybody started wearing masks, that was a big story. And an epidemiologist were quoted saying, oh, mask wearing is what brought cases down. And then you can see on the chart that within just a couple of months, cases had gone up, you know, 10 times higher than they had been at any point in the past and were had broken previous records. Um, but that kind of is, is the same story of where they don't ever follow up with saying, well, how could COVID, how could COVID have been stopped by mask wearing only to go up just a couple months later, if, if masks were the reason, um, that it was working and they still had a mask mandate, but they, again, they just never follow up on these stories.
Speaker 1 00:17:32 And finally, uh, this is another one I have from, from Israel, which is kind of the same thing, where there was a story that wall street journal was quoting. All these, these experts saying masks were the reason that the cases had come down in this kind of third wave, um, because their, their lockdown hadn't been really followed very much. They had a lockdown, they had a mask mandate and experts were saying, oh, nobody really listened to the lockdown, but everybody wore masks. That's why cases go, went down. And then of course, just a couple weeks later, they're much higher than they'd ever been. They break previous records. Uh, but there's just never any, any follow up to these, these, uh, stories that are, you know, very misleading. And, and they just kind of, I think it, it's, it's really dangerous because it, people get this interpretation in their heads based off of the story. But unless you're really looking for the data or, or, you know, reading Twitter or reading books like mine or other books or other information, you would never know that just a couple weeks after they credit masks cases have broken every record. So those are kind of, uh, some good examples of, uh, to me, what I think is, is illustrative of how COVID policy has been handled by the media and by other outlets and by experts. Uh, they always try to give credit to masking, but don't ever admit that it didn't work later on.
Speaker 0 00:18:40 So you, you said in the book that, um, at its heart, the debate around masks revolves around ideology. How so?
Speaker 1 00:18:49 Well, I think it, it's, it's pretty obvious when you look at which locations continue to mandate masks, which governor's mandated masks, that the overwhelming majority were Democrats. And, you know, I think it's, it's simplistic to say it's just a, a problem among that ideology, but I think the it's more broadly, this, this, uh, mentality, I'm sure everybody has seen yard science. You see them around Los Angeles all the time that say, you know, in this house, we believe in all these things, including we believe in science, science is real. Um, and then you have Anthony Fauci making public comments saying, I am science. I represent represent science. So any criticism of me is a criticism criticism of science. So if you're telling people to have the ideology, that's so powerful that they're willing to put a yard sign in front of their house, uh, declaring their allegiance to this, this ideological principle.
Speaker 1 00:19:34 And then somebody says, I am the ideological principle embodied in a human being. You kind of have to listen to 'em. And, and so I think that's really been damaging because it's, there's this huge subset of the population that likes to think of themselves as very enlightened because they, they believe in science. Um, oftentimes it's aligned with the left, but it's not exclusively that way. And so you get this, uh, this, this continuation of policy long after it's been disproven, because they can't admit that their, their ideology has been wrong or that somebody like Anthony Fauci lied to them or has, was not infallible. It's, it's this kind of, uh, almost religious belief in, in people that represent science and science as a whole. But of course that's not how science works. It's a process it's testing, it's hypothesis and evaluation. Um, and you know, that's, it's not an, an absolute set of principles, but I think that that mentality kind of all plays into why these measures have continued on for so long.
Speaker 0 00:20:25 All right. I have many more questions for you, Ian, but, uh, we're getting back logged here with the audience questions. So I'm going to take a few one from YouTube guardian gamer asks, what do you think played the biggest role in there not being a spike in Texas after the mask mandate was lifted. And, you know, there was the big hue, an outcry that, uh, governor Abbot was leading a death cult in Texas. So, but what, what contributed to, they're not being, um, a big spike other than the fact that the, the masks weren't making any difference, but do you think that it was vaccinations? Is that what was, um, helpful, uh, COVID weakening common sense or just, you know, the seasonality of this thing?
Speaker 1 00:21:18 Yeah, that's a good question. I think you brought up a lot of the explanations right there. I think a big part of it is seasonality that, um, it, it seems at this point we have a pretty good sense that COVID is, is, is seasonal and also impacted to some extent by variance. So at that point, you know, we had gone through whatever, a new variant that had been there. Hadn't been a Delta variant. Hadn't really emerged at that point yet as a major contributor. And, and it was the seasonal impact where they were going into spring and summer. And generally numbers have been much lower in late spring and early summer across Southern climates, you know, Texas and in particular, Florida has also seen those numbers go up, go down at that point. Um, we've seen spikes later in summer in July and August. Um, so I think it was, it was kind of the timing of it made sense vaccinations at that point might have played some impact as far as limiting infections.
Speaker 1 00:22:00 I mean, obviously at this point with Aron and, and other variants, there's zero protection against infection from, from vaccination. But at that point there might have been some, um, so that may have played a part. Uh, but, and I think the largest contributors, obviously that masks just are completely irrelevant to the curve. I don't think they make it worse or make it better. I think they just are completely COVID does what it does and masks are kind of, uh, are theatrical. Don't really make much of a difference one way or another. Um, so I think it's all of those explanations probably play a part in that. Uh, why it didn't go up.
Speaker 0 00:22:29 Okay. Interesting question from Facebook, from our friend, Jeff minder, uh, he wants to know, do you have heard of the use of dogs in identifying COVID-19
Speaker 1 00:22:40 I've heard of that? I don't know much about it as far as why dogs are able to, to identify it to some extent, I mean, I, or, you know, how useful that would be as far as controlling infections. I mean, you know, if you wanted to be, uh, I think at this point when you have the elderly have been given the chance to, to be vaccinated and now boosted, and maybe even twice boosted, um, you know, there, there's not really a justification for continuing restrictions in nursing homes, things like that. But had we known that earlier on, maybe it would've been something useful to have at, at nursing homes to say, you know, have dogs check, cause sometimes tests are, are not accurate. You know, we've, we've many false positives or false negatives. And so if a dog is able to reliably tell that could've been something that could have been very useful at those in those specific scenarios where they could kind of be stationed out there and try to ward off any potential cases,
Speaker 0 00:23:25 Uh, Joe, on YouTube asking why was self isolation of the immune compromised, unpromised unacceptable for our country. I'm not sure I get that right. Because if people wanted to self isolate, no one was objecting to it. Right?
Speaker 1 00:23:49 Yeah. I think what he's, what he's trying to say is that there's a, you know, why do we do lockdowns for everybody instead of trying to focus on getting immunocompromised people maybe to, to, to self isolate. And that's a fantastic question. And, uh, you know, I don't think we have a great answer other than just, they didn't think that people would listen. I think they, uh, I, I think there's a lot of panic and fear that, that played into this. It's why my personal view is a lot of explanation for why they took all their pre pandemic planning and just throw it out the window. The CDC tele briefing, I mentioned earlier, they recommended that was their only recommendation really was that people that were sick, self isolate that's they said, this is how we deal with severe pandemics people that are sick, stay home.
Speaker 1 00:24:28 I mean, that's good advice in general, but it, you know, why they didn't just specifically target it. Um, I think it was just that they didn't believe people would comply. I think that they saw other countries and especially China at the time, people thought that they had beaten COVID because of their, their lockdowns and then Italy followed China. So it became, oh, wait, we can do this. And it, it seems to be working. It seemed to be bringing cases down. Um, but I, I think it's very, obviously that's not the explanation for it and I, I, nobody should have believed any data coming outta China at that point. Um, but that's essentially what the great Barrington declaration had tried to tried to explain later on famously and they were criticized heavily for it. So, uh, almost immediately that became an untenable solution, even though it seems to be the most obvious one.
Speaker 0 00:25:14 All right. Um, have another question for you about Sweden recently, we had Johan Anderberg, uh, on this show to discuss his book, the herd, which told of Sweden's experiment, unlike other European countries, Sweden never mandated face masks, uh, what were the results compared to other countries? And, um, in particular, maybe you can speak to, um, when you present this information and let's say you present Sweden, uh, in the context of other European countries. Um, I understand you've said, well, somebody will say, well, uh, Norway did slightly better, right? <affirmative> and you can't compare nor, you know, you can't compare Sweden to, uh, Germany. So maybe talk a little bit about Sweden's experience and then, uh, this fallacy of how people want to kind of pick and choose what they compare.
Speaker 1 00:26:09 Right. Um, I wrote a subs about this recently looking at excess mortality data, which was basically, you know, there's an expected line of how many people will die in a given year. And did you exceed that or not? And when you look at excess mortality across all of Europe, this was from the world health organization to this report. Sweden was one of the best performing countries in Europe. I think it was like 30th out of 35 countries. Um, and that's all causes, not just COVID. And obviously there are people that have died as a consequence of lockdown as well. So excess mortality kind of captured that, that data too, and Sweden vastly outperformed the rest of Europe. I think it's, it's really important to highlight that even in terms of COVID outcomes, Europe, uh, Sweden has done much better than the average European country at this point.
Speaker 1 00:26:48 And if you go back and look at interviews from some of their key, uh, you know, public health experts at the time defending their policies, they said, this is not a two month thing. Talked to us in a, in a year, talked to us in a couple years. So if you looked early on, a lot of people tried to credit countries like the Czech Republic with beating masks. There's a, a USA today story. I quote in the book about how, uh, it was a life saving lesson to wear masks from the Czech Republic. Cause they seemed like they were doing well. Then by later on in, I think it was early 2021, the check Republic at one point had the highest death rate from COVID in the world. Uh, Sweden was nowhere, never nowhere near that at any point. So it's, it's a, I think comparing them to rest of Europe is a great indicator of how unimportant a lot of these measures are.
Speaker 1 00:27:29 As far as saying they can only be compared to Norway or Finland. I mean, I, I don't think that that holds up to any kind of scrutiny because if that's the case, if only neighbors can be compared, the us can only be compared to Canada and Mexico, right? I mean, there's no other, you can't compare them to Europe, can't compare us to Australia or New Zealand or Taiwan. We can only be compared to Canada or Mexico. And obviously even those comparisons are, are widely inaccurate because Canada's, you know, 10% of our population widely different demographics, same with Mexico, very different demographics there. Um, and, and on similarly, you know, if you said that about something like Australia or Japan, well they're island countries. So can you only compare them to the ocean? Is that how it works? Are we limiting it to just neighbors? Um, and you know, Sweden and Germany are right across, uh, the water from each other very close together. So it it's, it doesn't really make a lot of sense that Sweden is the exclusive country that can be compared to their neighbors. And Sweden also has different demographics in Norway and Finland do too. So it it's really, uh, I think it's kind of a disingenuous comparison made by people trying to defend lockdowns, trying to defend mask mandates. Um, it's not really backed up by any other comparisons like this. It's more just kind of wishful thinking on their part.
Speaker 0 00:28:34 Okay. Instagram, uh, Lawrence Olivo asks masking culture seems to have already been a long time facet of Asian cultures. Is there data that shows it actually being effective against diseases?
Speaker 1 00:28:51 Uh, no, not really. And that's a lot of these studies that were conducted pre COVID were done in Asian countries. Um, obviously they, you know, there's been flu seasons in Japan forever. It's not like they've eliminated the flu because of masking. Um, I think that's another key point to bring up is that, you know, Japan had, uh, a wild, different response in Sweden, but they both had flu numbers in the last couple years go to zero, regardless. They both went to zero, you know, Sweden has nobody wearing a mask, Japan everybody's wearing a mask and the flu went away in both countries, which shows you, it's not the mask that are doing it. Um, so I think that there's a, uh, there's not really a great evidence base to suggest that Asian countries have don't have the flu or have lower severity of, of, uh, respiratory viruses than any other countries.
Speaker 1 00:29:34 Uh, there was a huge RSV outbreak in Japan in, in summer of 2021, despite all the, you know, 95% mask wearing. And obviously their numbers, even with COVID have gone up significantly from, from 2020 when everybody was crediting them as, uh, you know, look at South Korea beat COVID because of their mask flaring. And then they broke every record and their numbers cumulatively have shot up. It's unfortunate, but it's it's reality. So it's, it's tough to, I don't think there's any way to defend that like culture of mask wearing being beneficial. Uh, and I certainly hope it doesn't become a cultural thing here in the United States either.
Speaker 0 00:30:07 Um, well, let's also talk about one of the most egregious aspects of this, um, mask mandate madness, which is the masking of children. Um, tell us about how America's policies may have, uh, differed from other countries. Um, why did it persist here in the United States, uh, for so long after other countries abandoned it? And, um, it seems like if it there's with children being at, you know, vanishingly, uh, little risk for, for any kind of severe consequences from COVID that, that it, uh, there's the least justification for asking children.
Speaker 1 00:30:53 Yeah. Uh, it, it's probably the most, one of the more frustrating aspects of this whole thing is how specifically targeted children have been. I think the best explanation for it is really just to how powerful the teachers unions are in much of the country. And they've been very heavily, uh, trying to enforce masking. Um, and I, I think we, you know, we're an outlier as far as masking kids, as young as two years old, the world health organization said nobody under six should be wearing masks. Um, we went down to two for, I, I don't, I haven't heard a good explanation for why. And a lot of, you know, obviously we saw in New York city, uh, up until just a couple of a week ago or 10 days ago, uh, continuing to enforce masks on kids as long as two, because they couldn't get vaccinated long after we know that the vaccines don't prevent transmission or infection.
Speaker 1 00:31:35 So it it's, it's a really indefensible policy. I think it's very damaging. And, and the fact that there's no evidence to support it in adults, uh, means that, you know, you should be much more precious about imposing these, these interventions on kids. You know, it's one thing to do it on adults, but you should be much more cautious about it with children. And we've done the exact opposite where in many parts of the country, a lot of school districts are still requiring masks. You long after, you know, mandates for the general population have been lifted. So I think it's, it's, it's probably in large part two, the teachers, the unions, I think school board administrators are overwhelmingly part of that ideology that we were talking about earlier that have been very supportive of mandates and, and lockdowns because it kind of conforms to their other belief system.
Speaker 1 00:32:15 And, uh, so you have this kind of perfect storm where, you know, you'll watch a school board meeting even today of parents complaining or, or, you know, saying we need to end this policy and everybody that's listening is masked. So they're still all doing it. And that's why I think that they don't really see a problem with continuing to mass mass kids in schools, despite the lack of evidence. Uh, it would also bring up real quickly. One other example of how ineffective it is is, yeah, Virginia was one of the first states kind of traditional blue states, uh, at this point that lifted their mask mandates in February and had huge criticism. The white house press secretary was talking about it received a lot of attention in cases among kids, uh, ages zero to 18 dropped over 90% within a matter of, of, you know, just six weeks or something like that. So every time that they try to say, if you lift mass mandates, we're gonna have this huge wave of infections. Uh, it doesn't pan out and it we've seen it now happen with schooling. And instead of, I don't, to me, I don't understand this, but instead of taking that as good news and saying, we don't have to do this to children. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it just becomes an excuse to double down for these people. For some reason, it it's just bewildering
Speaker 0 00:33:18 Now, uh, given your presence on social media, I'm sure that a lot of people reach out to you with their stories. And of course you are, um, filtering through vast, uh, numbers of news reports. So what are some of, uh, maybe the more egregious anecdotes that, that you may have, um, heard with regards to, uh, child masking, whether it's, um, the effects or just what they had to suffer through cause of the policy.
Speaker 1 00:33:50 Yeah, there's, there's a lot, there's a lot of examples of, I think one of the biggest things is that we're all seeing now like huge percentages in learning loss, like 30 or 40%, uh, learning loss and, and, you know, there's anecdotes of teachers saying, you know, I'm a fourth grade teacher and all the kids that I'm getting now into my classroom feel like they're still in second grade. And in terms of education level, um, you know, some of that could be D down to school closures as well, but all of these policies have been incredibly damaging and I think mask ING plays a huge part in that. Um, there's there were negative side effects. There was a study done in Germany about how, uh, parents were surveyed asking, you know, have your, has your children, have your children had any reported any problems with masking?
Speaker 1 00:34:28 And it was like 70% said, yes. And you know, things like anxiety and difficulty breathing. Um, and it sounds small, but these are children, you know, as a, as a 35 year old adult, it's a lot easier to deal with a small moment of breathing difficulty than when you're five or six years old. You don't understand why this is happening to you or why you need it. Um, obviously we've seen many reports where young kids have not, when we have mass manages on planes, you know, young kids were unable to keep a mask on or had difficulty, you know, uh, developmental difficulties and they're still being forced to mask. And you see flight attendants kicking people off of planes because their two year old isn't able to keep a mask on properly. And I mean, it it's all just, it it's so frustrating thinking about it now, when it all, it seems so obvious that it hasn't worked, that we kept these policies going for so long, and there's so many, many who want them to, to keep coming back.
Speaker 1 00:35:13 Um, so I think there's, and any policy really has trade off, uh, you know, whether that's benefits and harms to the, to every policy and the fact that for so long, nobody was even willing to discuss harms. They weren't even willing to, to mention that there could be any potential, uh, side effects. I mean, I could tell thousands of times you would say, uh, on Twitter or on other places, experts say there are no difficulties for wearing a mask for kids. Um, so it kind of, they kind of excused, it ignored it. And, you know, my hope is that as we get further away, there will be more exploration of all the, the harms that we've done in learning loss and, and damaging that we've damaged, that we've done for no benefit. That's the trade off. There is no benefit. We're only getting harms. Um, so yeah, like I said, hopefully that intellectual honesty comes back down the road where we can do more examination of these, uh, of these policies.
Speaker 0 00:35:57 Yeah. I, I do remember one story about, um, a, a young girl with down syndrome who had a mask exemption, um, but who was still forced to wear a mask, but, you know, she, she just didn't have the capability to understand what was going on or why. And so the teachers actually taped the, the mask to her face. I don't know if you had heard of any other stories along those lines.
Speaker 1 00:36:25 Yeah, I've had, I've heard people say similar things where teachers they'll send kids home, you know, with mask tap to their face, or if a, a child will, uh, you know, they'll write, people will get notes on an assignment to the parents like, oh, you're, you know, Timmy, wasn't wearing a mask in school today and it's gonna be discipline of this. Um, and it's just ludicrous. It's, it's so damaging. And it's, you know, very, it's heartbreaking to hear stories like that because it's, it's just so there's no benefit to it. And you're, you're confusing somebody that may not be able to physically deal with it or, or mentally deal with it and, and harming them in the process all to make you feel better. And there's no consideration for how the children feel. And there seems to be, there doesn't seem to be any consideration for how this affects young children.
Speaker 1 00:37:03 It's, it's all consider, it's all comes down to fear and panic of adults who are supposed to be protecting kids. And they've been doing the exact opposite over the last two years where they've been demanding that kids, uh, you know, change their behavior to make them feel better. And this is, again, it's even more absurd when you consider that a lot of schools were closed until vaccinations were widely available. And once they were widely available, every teacher had the opportunity to be vaccinated. But these stories continued into 2021. And even into this year, um, long after teachers had the ability to get vaccinated. And if you believe it works, if you're so convinced that it works, how can you justify making others do, you know, change their behavior to make you feel safer when you're supposedly have the best protection you can possibly have? Uh, so it, it, it's very, it's a very frustrating and concerning sequence of events because it, it just doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. And, and it's really concerning. There's a kind of a loss of empathy really among on the part of teachers, uh, with, with kids and, and not just teachers, but other, other walks of life too.
Speaker 0 00:37:58 Oh, it just seems to be, uh, a terrible loss of empathy all around, uh, even whereas those of us who've questioned the, uh, the efficacy of things like, uh, and the legality of things like lockdowns, um, that we, we are excused of, of being callous and lacking, um, compassion, uh, for people that, uh, are going to be killed because of COVID. Um, while there's just absolutely no regard for people whose lives, uh, their businesses are destroyed, their livelihoods are gone. Um, so I'm happy to hear that you did not have a problem finding a publisher and that the reception to this has been good, but you, so many of your colleagues have experienced, um, censorship de platforming on, um, social media. Uh, did you experience any of that or do you think you were kind of exempt because you just kept it pretty cut and dry and you just kept on putting the, the charts and the data out there.
Speaker 1 00:39:08 There definitely seems to be a few very specific subjects that, uh, that the kind of sensors on Twitter and other platforms really like to, uh, to be stickler about. I think I, I made a concerted effort to try to save mask mandates and not masks because they were willing to let you criticize the policy, but you can't criticize masks work or don't work mm-hmm <affirmative>. So I think that was, I, I realized that pretty quickly, I did have some stuff labeled where all I did, I presented a chart that was just a, I think it was the Northeast somewhere of showing the case rates and vaccination rates. And at the same time, and, you know, we had reached 90% of people were vaccinated and people like Fauci had been saying, if we just get 70% of adults vaccinated, we will eliminate the possibility of any future surges.
Speaker 1 00:39:50 And then we, we far exceed that and cases break every record, just a couple of months later, they basically showed that and said, you know, why does nobody ask these questions of him? Why does nobody ask him? What, what were you wrong? How did you get this so wrong? Um, and Twitter put a label on, it said it was misleading and etc, et C. So, you know, obviously I didn't get kicked off, but that's the kind of thing where it makes you think twice about everything that you're saying. Um, and that's, to me that's just UN unacceptable. It can't be acceptable that you're not allowed to make criticisms about government policies that are affecting tens of millions of people. I mean, you know, they were trying to thank God it was declared illegal, but they were trying to mandate that everybody of, of vaccinations on private businesses, everybody had to get vaccinated for anything under a hundred people or, or over a hundred people, I should say.
Speaker 1 00:40:36 So that's a policy that's gonna affect a huge amount of people. And when the social media, which is, uh, I Musk describe it as the town square, it's the modern town square. You're not a label able to discuss the, the harms or the benefits of the trade offs of that policy, um, without being censored or kicked off of a platform. Um, you know, that's, that's really dangerous to me. I've been very happy with, uh, when I've, you've been doing the subs and subs has come out and said, we don't, we're not gonna censor anybody. We believe in freedom of speech, freedom of ideas. And historically in the America, that's been the, that's been the goal. You don't censor bad ideas, you beat them. So if you think my ideas are bad, fine, tell me where I'm wrong, but that's not how it's, it's worked out these days.
Speaker 1 00:41:14 And a lot of people have been, have been kicked off of, of Twitter and other platforms, YouTube, Facebook, uh, just for, for speaking out and, and telling what they believe is the truth, their interpretation of data. And oftentimes it's people that have incredible credentials that are, are qualified experts. And even then, that's not enough to protect the censorship and the, and, you know, labeling or whatever it is. Uh, so I think that that shows you how much of this is just, it's kind of that they, what, what authoritative information means to them is something that comes from those that shared their, their ideology. It doesn't mean expertise. It doesn't mean credentials. It just means, do you line up with the, the, you know, liberal ideology for lack of a better word, uh, same thing with the lab league story, how Facebook was censoring, anybody, or de platforming anybody that, that said that there was a possibility COVID had come from a lab, as soon as the white house acknowledged it, then it became okay to talk about. So I think we see that it's an incredibly harmful trend towards censorship, and it is very concerning. It's concerned me, even though I haven't been as victimized by it as other people have. Uh, it's, it's frustrating to have people that share your, you know, share your opinions or contribute to the discussion being kicked off just for having the wrong think ideas.
Speaker 0 00:42:23 Are you, uh, over the past year, 2, 2, 2 and a half years, are you starting to see any shifts in, uh, opinion, um, are people maybe the panic is wearing off? Some of the fear is, is wearing off, um, or, you know, is, is politics still kind of ideology still driving people's ideological kind of commitments, um, on things like masks and mask mandates.
Speaker 1 00:42:54 My personal view is that every day it does seem to get a little bit better. You know, we we've had rolling mandates in California where, you know, you go six months without a mandate, then it comes back and then it goes away for a couple months. And every time they do this, they bring it back. Uh, it seems to get a little bit less there's compliance seems to go down a little bit more every time. And, you know, you can go now in places in other, maybe not in Los Angeles, but other parts of California and not see anybody wearing a mask in any of these stores or, or, uh, on trains or anything like that. Um, I think it's, there's still a huge segment of the population that is very committed to it. I mean, literally just, I think it was today or yesterday, uh, the Broadway theaters in New York announced that they're gonna be lifting mask mandates just for the month of July.
Speaker 1 00:43:34 They're gonna reevaluate by mid-July decide they wanna bring them back, but just for July, they're lifting it. And there's been a huge outcry of, of performers and patrons that, that our locals that live in New York, uh, saying that they don't want this to go away. They're gonna cancel their tickets cuz they won't feel safe, et cetera, cetera. So you just have, you know, maybe 20% of the population that is just never going to go back to normal. They're never going to get out of this mentality of we're in the middle of a pandemic. But I do think every time and it's an entertainment term, but they jump the shark, meaning like they're, they keep going too far with the recommendation. So when they brought in double masking, I thought maybe that'll be a big moment. People realize they don't actually have that much of an idea of what they're doing here.
Speaker 1 00:44:10 And then they said, oh Nope, cloth mask don't work now. Now it need N 90 fives only. And so I, you know, was hoping people would realize, well, cloth masks are what they told us to wear for two years. All of a sudden now they don't work. Um, you know, we need N 90 fives. That that would be another moment. People would kind of wake up to that. So I do, I, I am hopeful that we are kind of moving in that direction slowly but surely and, and the further we'd get away from it. And the more that people live normal lives, they're gonna want that to continue permanently and they're gonna see the numbers are not skyrocketing even with nobody wearing masks all the time.
Speaker 0 00:44:41 Well, you know, I, I know that there, there was some statements like on CNN that these cloth masks are facial decorations, but I mean, is it now official policy that the CDC says clock masks aren't effective?
Speaker 1 00:44:58 Cause
Speaker 0 00:44:58 Whenever you go, people are still wearing clock masks.
Speaker 1 00:45:01 I know, I know. Um, I don't think it's official policy. I think they still say that anything is better than nothing, but they say that higher quality masks are better, you know, more protection. Um, there's, there's no evidence to suggests that that's true either. I think cloth, the facial decorations remark from the way I think that's, uh, a good example of how a lot of these experts have approached this, where they, they don't wanna say masks don't work. So what they'll say is, well, the cloth masks don't work, but N 90 five's work. Uh, except if you and I have done this on, on Twitter and elsewhere that if you compare, uh, in Germany, for example, they've had multiple states that had N 95 grade mask mandate. So not only could you not go into a store without a mask, you had to wear an N 95 grade mask.
Speaker 1 00:45:41 And those states did worse than the states that just had a regular mask mandate. Obviously that wouldn't be possible if N 90 fives were, were so much more effective than regular masks. Um, Austria also had N 95 mandates and broke. Every record, Germany broke records within 95 mandates. Um, their numbers went way, way up over the winter when they had been praised previously to another one where they had been praised as a masterclass in science communication. And everybody was a great example of how to handle COVID and then their numbers break records within 95. So, um, it's not, I don't think it's official policy, but it is again, I think it's an excuse to kind of explain away why all the mass they've been promoting for two years, didn't work.
Speaker 0 00:46:19 One of the other observations you made that I think helped me to understand why politicians would persist with policies that they either, you know, in, in the case of, of Fauci and the CDC, they previously knew were INE ineffective, not going to be effective, um, or that they're, you know, continuing after these mask mandates have failed every single time continue with them, uh, is that, you know, people, maybe these mandates are unpopular with some people, but politicians don't really care about that. What, what really frightens them are accusations that you they're, they're not doing enough, even if they know that doing something is not gonna have any effect and is going to have all of these other negative, um, consequences that, that what they're really sensitized to is accusations of not caring and not doing enough.
Speaker 1 00:47:20 Yeah. I, I think that's, that's really another important point that, uh, especially with media coverage, because I think politicians live in fear of negative media coverage and very early on the media and to this day really has been very supportive of mandates, lockdowns and other policies. And so obviously a lot of these politicians realized that they could kind of shield themselves from media criticism by doing too much, but that if they did not, if they didn't do enough, they would get the Ron DeSantis treatment where, you know, he's vilified and he's called death status. And every he's, you know, everybody in Florida is dead now because the open beaches in April, 2020, um, and same thing with Abbot being called the leader of a death cold, you know, you're, you're not gonna get that criticism if you do what the media wants you to do, which is mandate masks and vaccine passports and any other of these types of policies.
Speaker 1 00:48:07 So it, I think it, it, it's all kind of a, a symbiotic relationship there where, where politicians were very, as you say, became very sensitive to criticism and realized that the criticism would only come if they didn't do these mandates. And, uh, you know, I think especially from their base, uh, their base has been very heavily supportive of these mandates. And so when you lift a restriction, you're gonna upset your base. Um, and you're gonna open yourself up to media criticism. Whereas if you keep it longer, they're not, they, you know, well, if it didn't work, it's just they have something else to blame. They can say not enough people were wearing masks, not enough people were complying with what we told them to do. That's why it didn't work. So it kind of gives you benefits on both sides, you avoid criticism and you get kind of a, a, an alternative blame where, you know, someone else to lay the blame on when whatever you tried didn't work.
Speaker 0 00:48:52 I think many of us have seen these figures, but it's worth revisiting. If you just give us a snapshot of how Florida, how Texas, uh, how they did compared to, you know, the perfect policy states. So called like California and, um, New York. What were the, what? The strictest states, New York, California, New Jersey, Illinois.
Speaker 1 00:49:17 Yeah. New Jersey. Yeah. Illinois, definitely Michigan, things like that. Um, I just, again wrote about this too, where, uh, Florida, when you compare age adjusted mortality, because, you know, Florida obviously has a much higher average age than a lot of other states. And when you compare by age adjusted mortality, Florida, overperformed across the rest of the country and did far better than New York and New Jersey in about the same as California. So when you take out that, that, uh, disadvantage that they had, the numbers are better than the us average better than the, the strict lockdown states and the same is California. So, uh, as far as I'm concerned, that's as clear of an indication as you're gonna get that. These policies really didn't make much of a difference because if Florida, which was very lax and some areas had mass mandates, but many didn't and, and governor basically blocked vaccine passports, blocked, forced vaccination as a condition of employment, things like that.
Speaker 1 00:50:07 Um, if this was so important to do those numbers, shouldn't be possible. Um, and also by excess mortality, which was 20 earlier with Sweden, um, Florida has vastly outperformed and I think has done better than California over the last two years where more people have died than, uh, over the expected level in California than in Florida. So it, it really goes to show you that if these policies just aren't that effective, they really don't matter very much. And, but yet, you know, you can look at just some numbers and say, oh, well, they did better. But when you take out those, make those adjustments, you can see that the advantage disappears. Um, so I think it's, it's really, uh, a key to point. Those things out Texas has, you know, been kind of around the middle of the pack as well, but all these states are not leading the country in, in negative results.
Speaker 1 00:50:49 And that's what we were told was gonna happen if they didn't do all this stuff, that's what Fauci was saying. That's what they're all saying. It's, it's dangerous. It's a huge risk to open the economy in Florida. He said that twice, he said that about Florida's latest September of 2021. Um, and they never follow up and, and come out later and say, well, actually Florida's results are better than average, or they're about average. And they've done no worse than New York or New Jersey or Pennsylvania or Illinois, whatever. Its, uh, there's never a followup to that. And I think it, again, it gives people the wrong impression about what the results have actually been.
Speaker 0 00:51:18 Do you think lockdowns and where mass mandates are coming?
Speaker 1 00:51:23 Uh, I think it's gonna depend on location. I don't, I think we're past lockdowns, at least for COVID. I don't think that's coming back anywhere, but I can definitely see masks coming back in, in different parts of the country. You know, we're both in Los Angeles here in LA. They keep threatening to bring back mask mandates. Uh, every time we see an increase in cases or, or small increase in hospitalizations. Um, and so I think I was very concerned about that and that's why I wrote the book and been doing the work is because I, as soon as you open that box of saying masks work to prevent respiratory viruses, there's always going to be a reason to bring them back COVID is never going away. We know that the flu is never going away. So what's to stop them from every fallen winter during respiratory virus season, bringing back mask mandates or bringing them back in schools, uh, you know, what have you LA still has masks required in certain settings, public transit and the airport, things like that.
Speaker 1 00:52:13 Um, so I think it, I think it will come back this fall and winter in some parts of the country, possibly places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York. Um, I, I do hope that every again, I think every time we get to a surge a little bit more, a little bit more, a few more places kind of say, we're done, we're not doing this again. Um, but I, I think there are some places where it could be a rolling thing forever. Germany. Just, there was a story recently about Germany saying that they're considering making masks a permanent thing from some, I think it was like October to March every year. Uh, so it it's yeah, this is the kind of consequence we're living with now of allowing people to my view play, pretend that masks made a difference.
Speaker 0 00:52:50 All right, well we are, we have seven minutes left and I do wanna leave enough time for you to talk about, um, what's next for you and how we can help and what we should be doing should, um, mass mandates, uh, get imposed again. But uh, we have a question from mud and Toine asks, um, cuz we haven't talked about airlines. So do you think that airlines should still be mandating masks?
Speaker 1 00:53:17 Well, the short answer is no. Um, I also wrote about this on tack as well that uh, when, when airlines were kind of forced to lift mask mandates from that court ruling, uh, I think it was in April. I kept tracking the data on flight cancellations afterwards. Like, is this making a difference with flight cancellations and no, the answer's no, it did not. There were like couple weeks later. I, I, I posted this on Twitter. It was the, the highest cancellation rate among any of the major USA airlines was 1%. So there were again, a lot of experts, uh, CNN expert, Jonathan Reiner was saying, as soon as we lift mass mandate, there're gonna be a rash of cancellations cuz people will be calling out six since they all get COVID from VAs travel. And it's been the exact opposite, but we've seen a lot of cancellations in recent days, but that's not, it's not related to mass mandate at all because if it was, it would've been happening two or three weeks after the mandate was lifted on planes, it's staffing issues for other reasons.
Speaker 1 00:54:07 But um, there was never any justification for it on airplanes, even if you think they work because airplanes have these filters that are incredibly powerful and circulate air constantly, that's probably the most effective thing you can do to prevent the transmission of COVID on, on planes is just to have air circula. That's like why being outside is much more protective than being inside. So, uh, airlines are much better at simulating an outdoor environment. So it never made any sense. The data we have has shown that there's not been a big difference after the lifted mask mandates on planes. Uh, so the short answer to that again is, is just no, they should not, hopefully never come back on planes.
Speaker 0 00:54:42 Agreed. Well, uh, again, the book is unasked, the global failure of COVID mask mandates. The author is Ian Miller. We've put that link, uh, in all of the platforms where you guys are watching. Um, you can just Google unasked and it'll bring up your subs stack. Uh, how frequently do you post there and um, and what are you, what are your next plans? Um, after this book?
Speaker 1 00:55:12 Yeah, yeah. Uh, I post usually a couple once or twice a week. Uh, the articles are pretty long, so it's a, it's a bit of an undertaking to put them together, but I think it's helpful to have more information sometimes in one place at one time. Um, I'm hoping that I can write another book. Uh, you know, the book just by virtue of the way the publishing world works, even though it came out in January, I finished it in July of 2021. So there was obviously a lot that happened between July of 2021 and, and now, and into 2022 that, uh, I think it's really important to cover and it continues to kind of erode the justification for, for mask mandates for all the, any other kind of vaccine passport requirements, things like that, um, that are still affecting people. I mean, colleges mandated vaccines for college kids boosters and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 00:55:55 Um, so I think there's a lot to cover that would be good. And, and kind of go a little bit deeper into the story of, you know, I think this is all kind of comes from an illusion of control that people like to think that they're in control of situations even when they're not. Um, I think that you can probably point to that with Dr. Fauci and all the other experts early on. And so that would be kind of a theme I like to explore a little bit further. Um, it's obviously books are a lot of work, a lot. It takes a lot of time to put together, so I haven't, uh, fully committed to it yet, but I like to try to put that together. Um, I've been writing, started writing for out kick.com as well, which is a kind of sports and politics website.
Speaker 1 00:56:28 So I'll be doing a little bit of both there and sort, kind of shorter form stories if you, if anybody wants to, to check that out too. Um, but yeah, I I'm, you know, I try to keep up with it on Twitter. Obviously a lot of the policies have ended thankfully, but there's still areas where it pops up here and there Alameda county just reinstated a mask mandate in the bay area. Um, so keep, I keep track of things like that. Try to keep track of any new research that comes out, um, and yeah, provide some hopefully helpful information for people that they might have might not have come across yet.
Speaker 0 00:56:57 All right. And on Twitter you are E M S C,
Speaker 1 00:57:01 Right? Correct. Yes.
Speaker 0 00:57:03 Great. Well, we will see you there, perhaps we'll even see you at the gala in Malibu, which will be outside and, uh, masks are not required <laugh> but uh, your people are free to wear them. Um, especially those who are, you know, older and, uh, immunocompromised and all are welcome. So thank you so much, Ian. I look forward to getting to say hello to you in person soon. And, um, congratulations again on book and best of luck with your next exploit.
Speaker 1 00:57:38 Thank you so much. Thanks for having me really appreciate it.
Speaker 0 00:57:41 Thank you.
