Orthodox Reflections

Orthodox Christians care about other people. Being made in the image and likeness of God – people matter. So couching the current lock downs, mask orders, and social distancing in the language of love and compassion has dampened opposition to moves that would otherwise have elicited a much stouter response.  While shutting churches was definitely controversial, most parishes outside places like California are back open, but with many restrictions. Chief among these in many jurisdictions is the mandatory wearing of face masks during Divine Liturgy, even in states and localities which do not have mandatory mask orders in effect.

If you try to question the masks during liturgy, you will quickly find yourself being told, “It is worth it if masks save even one life.”

But is your church mask going to save even one life?

Let’s explore that, shall we? First, let’s assume you have the virus. The odds of getting the virus have been estimated by researchers as approximately 1 in 3,836. Better than the lottery for sure, though not exactly a given either. But in this case, your number has come up, you have the virus. Beyond just having it, we have to assume you are asymptomatic or at least pre-symptomatic. If you were actually feeling sick, then we assume that you would stay home instead of relying on a mask to protect others at church.

So you feel perfectly healthy, in fact you are healthy, yet you have enough of a viral load to be infectious to others without your knowledge.  That is no easy feat, by the way. To infect another person but not realize you even have the virus, you have to reach a sort of “sweet spot” where your body is replicating enough virus to to be contagious, but not enough that you develop symptoms. So you are healthy, but contagious. There is a lot of controversy over “asymptomatic” and “pre-symptomatic” transmission, but for our purposes, let’s assume you have the virus with enough viral load to be contagious, but you feel completely healthy so there you are at the Divine Liturgy.

Now to infect someone else, you are going to need to have close contact with that person for a sustained period of time. A minimum of 10 minutes, but likely more like 30 minutes or more. The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space has been characterized as “minimal.” So you will need to find a person at liturgy, and really get up close and personal to have a shot at infecting him or her. And that is not guaranteed, of course, as only about 1 in 5 people who live with a Covid-19 patient even get the disease. That means even in the same house, 4 out of 5 people don’t. 

Okay, you have a really long, long interaction with someone at liturgy, you have a high viral load, but no symptoms ( no fever, coughing or sneezing), so your mask will protect him or her from you exhaling aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 with a diameter between 60 nanometers (nm) and 140 nm, or 0.06 to 0.14 microns (micrometers), right?

Yeah, no.

In fact, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that your mask will help protect anyone from Covid-19, including yourself:

Masks and respirators do not work.

There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles.

Furthermore, the relevant known physics and biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work. It would be a paradox if masks and respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective dose is smaller than one aerosol particle.

Here’s another meta-analysis of existing studies:

In our systematic review, we identified 10 RCTs that reported estimates of the effectiveness of face masks in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the community from literature published during 1946–July 27, 2018. In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.

The mask may let you down, but even if you infect someone else, the odds are definitely on his or her side. Well over 80% or better of infections produce either no or very mild symptoms. Research indicates that even an older person in the range of 50 to 64 has only a 1 in 852,000 of being hospitalized as a result of Covid-19. And what people seem to forget is that Covid-19 has a survival rate estimated at over 99.7%, though it can be harder on people with certain pre-existing conditions and the elderly. In the United States, so far, the average age of those dying from Covid-19 is 78.5 years of age.

So no, your mask isn’t helping, and the truth is it could really be hurting you and others.

We listed some of the most prevalent problems with masks at the top of this article, with links to supporting documentation. For now there are two things we want to focus on – masks as a way of spreading Covid-19 and the harm to children.

Masks, the way most people use them, are petri dishes strapped to their faces. The warm, dirty, moist, contaminated material is a perfect environment to grown and sustain bacteria, viruses, and fungi. People constantly touch the contaminated surfaces of their masks, then touch their eyes and spread disease to themselves and possibly to others.

As doctors from the Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, Australia, concluded in arguing against even health care workers wearing surgical masks when treating low‐risk patients:

There is no good evidence that facemasks protect the public against infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID‐19.

One danger of doing this is the illusion of protection. Surgical facemasks are designed to be discarded after single use. As they become moist they become porous and no longer protect. Indeed, experiments have shown that surgical and cotton masks do not trap the SARS‐CoV‐2 (COVID‐19) virus, which can be detected on the outer surface of the masks for up to 7 days. Thus, a pre‐symptomatic or mildly infected person wearing a facemask for hours without changing it and without washing hands every time they touched the mask could paradoxically increase the risk of infecting others.

Isn’t that ironic? Wearing a face mask out of Christian love to “protect” others can actually increase the risk you will infect them.

And what about kids? Well, one pediatrician we know personally has stated that making young children breathe through filthy, contaminated facial coverings is the “worst form of child abuse ever widely accepted by any society.”

Congratulations to all the bishops, priests, and parish councils demanding masks – your actions are actually increasing the risks to your people’s health. The damage of dirty and improperly used masks is probably why suddenly Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx are recommending face shields and/or eye goggles in addition to masks. Face mask mandates have been in place for months in places like California, yet the spread of the Corona virus has not been arrested. Rather than admitting the inability of masks to do much good, the powers-that-be are instead doubling-down and recommending even more protective equipment just to go to church or get your groceries.

Kind of makes you wonder how this will end? Or even if it will?

So if healthy people wearing masks doesn’t work, how did we get here?

In a word – politics.

At one point back in far away March 2020, the CDC, Fauci, the WHO, basically everyone, was against widespread community masking.

For example, Dr. Fauci said on March 8, “No, right now, people should not be wearing — there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet. But it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And often there are unintended consequences; people keep fiddling with the mask, and they keep touching their face.”

By May, the CDC and Fauci had flipped on the issue, and mask mandates have sprouted across the country like daisies in Spring. Did the science change between March and May? No, the studies (even from the CDC) that had found no efficacy and much potential harm had not changed. The political environment changed, not the science.

Peter Hitchens gives a great insight into the process by which politics dictates science in the case of the WHO which recently reversed its advice on mandatory masking:

On July 12, Deborah Cohen, the medical correspondent of BBC2’s Newsnight, revealed an astonishing thing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had reversed its advice on face masks, from ‘don’t wear them’ to ‘do wear them’.

But the key fact was that it had not done so because of scientific information – the evidence had not backed the wearing of face coverings – but because of political lobbying.

She revealed on Twitter that: ‘We had been told by various sources [that the] WHO committee reviewing the evidence had not backed masks but they recommended them due to political lobbying.’ She said the BBC had then put this to the WHO, which did not deny it.

Why did masks suddenly become such an article of faith and a mandate of the ruling class? For a variety of reasons. Mandating masks might help churches and businesses in the legal realm by giving them a “we’re doing everything we can” defense against Covid lawsuits. That reason seems to loom large with Orthodox jurisdictions, especially the Greek Archdiocese that makes you accept a legal waiver to attend liturgy. Politicians are always interested in looking like they are “doing something” in the face of a perceived crisis. Medical professionals who buck the CDC, which many of them denigrate in private, can find themselves out of a job or even out of medicine.  Of course, there is real and genuine hysteria among some people who want to feel any sense of control in the face of an unseen threat to their health. And let’s not forget that some people, Christian and secular, want to feel virtuous and included among society’s elect. Masks are a moral statement to such people.

There could be more nefarious reasons, of course.  Masks keep a sense of panic alive in advance of the election. Masks could also promote eventual acceptance of a rushed, unproven and possibly unsafe vaccine to protect against a virus with a 99.7% survival rate. Regardless of the reasons why any one supports the mask, “science” cannot be counted among them.

Dr. Fauci has already indicated that he believes masks should be used in the future for every Flu Season forever. Unless community leaders such as priests and bishops stand up to this unscientific assault on our freedom and health, it is very likely to become permanent in one form or another.

For those who want more information about issues surrounding the novel Corona Virus, we highly recommend this video of a trauma physician giving the truth about the virus, the real risks it poses, and how out-of-proportion our response has been.

Your mask will not save a life in church, or anywhere else. Wearing it is not a mark of your moral superiority or even your own common sense. Forcing this practice on young children who are practically immune from Covid-19 is socially-enabled child abuse. Bishops and parish councils need to immediately re-evaluate mask requirements, with an eye towards abandoning them altogether in the interest of health and safety.