Ashes of COVID Part Two: The Ritualization of Science

“It is in their faces that humans unwillingly drop their guard; it is in the face—and before any words are spoken—that they express and reveal themselves. And what the face expresses is not only an individual’s emotional state but, first and foremost, their openness, their exposure, and their communication to others…. A country that decides to renounce its face, to cover with masks the faces of its citizens everywhere is, then, a country that has purged itself of any political dimension. Inhabiting this empty space, which is at every moment subjected to a control which knows no limits, individuals now live in isolation from one another.”

-Giorgio Agamben

COVID demonstrates the power and resilience of medical rituals that, although antithetical to facts and scientific rigor, are held up as being the very bastion of science. The morphing of nonsensical rituals into dogmatic symbols of scientific certainty marks one of many ways that COVID decimated science and replaced it with a religion of faith, one that has been politicized and abused by those who seek to control people and generate profit, one that has cheapened the very word science by acknowledging no dissent from its priestly proclamations, one that caused Americans to become victims to a liturgy that they refuse to renounce and which they use to condemn true scientists.  How did science transform into a ritualistic religion during COVID, and why have COVID’s bankrupt rituals endured?

Medical “experts” such as doctors at academic centers and authoritative agencies orchestrated these rituals to create a plausible if manufactured lore that people would believe.  As one mask zealot told me (a nurse practitioner): “You can’t argue with something that so many reliable people say is true.”  But never were COVID rituals backed by any scientific inquiry as even most of their creators timidly acknowledged.  In fact, science has largely invalidated their worth, even revealing their potential harm, but that has not stopped COVID adherents and those bound by COVID’s persistent rulebook from touting their necessity as bedrocks of medical science.  In fact, so many COVID rituals become normalized during the pandemic that their liturgic indefatigability has made them seem unassailable.

Recently a COVID outbreak struck several long-term care centers in which I work.  Why patients with mild colds were even tested for COVID is beyond comprehension, and why COVID still engenders fear and a need to institute draconian measures is similarly mindboggling, but regardless, none of these patients was very sick.  In fact, we know that over the past two years COVID acts more like any other viral cold than the monster it once was.  A recent article shows its mortality rate to be 1/100,000 in the unvaccinated (0.3/100,000 in the vaccinated), with a miniscule risk of severe outcome or hospitalization.  And yet, because patients in long term care now had COVID, a ritualized response ensued.  In one facility, elderly residents were locked in their rooms and denied access to communal activities and meals. Such actions during the height of COVID led to a massive wave of depression and deaths of despair which had to be weighed against the risk of COVID, but now clearly the risk of isolation and fear from quarantine far exceeds the non-risk of COVID.  All workers in these settings were forced to mask anytime in the building and wear cumbersome and (to the elderly) frightening personal protective equipment when entering a resident’s room.  Multiple times a day facility administrators were forced to disseminate the latest COVID statistics showing how many had COVID and how many were tested.  All this for a common cold.

Masks have hardly disappeared from the landscape.  Where I live, virtually every doctor believes in their value and some wear them in cars and while walking around parking lots.  People wear them in stores, gyms, and gatherings.  The mask ritual has become perversely normalized in our medical society, with robotic doctors simply accepting their worth, medical groups adhering to their benefit, and the media touting their necessity.  But like many absurdities spit out by Dr. Fauci, the CDC, the pharmaceutical-sponsored media, and the compliant medical community, masking has no scientific validity.

We knew before COVID hit us that masks could not work for viral respiratory infections.  100 years of research on influenza showed that masks (even double masks and N95’s) did not protect the wearer, did not prevent transmission, and did not reduce viral burden.  And since flu is a smaller virus than COVID, any thinking person would know that masks similarly could not stop COVID.  It would be like putting up a chain linked fence and hoping it would keep mosquitoes out.  It is medically absurd.  And yet, masking became the law of the land and equated to science itself.  When Dr. Fauci, the CDC, Democratic politicians, and the media created a binary that pitted masks as the path to salvation and mask critics to the greatest risk to society, they never once utilized data to prove their point.  They simply said it, and people believed it.  People not only believed it, they proselytized it, demonizing mask critics and claiming that COVID’s death toll emanated from those who refused to mask. 

As COVID progressed, many nations conducted randomized trials as to whether masking would help protect wearers and prevent disease spread.  One of the first studies in Denmark definitively showed no benefit, and that nation subsequently dissuaded people from wearing masks as did all Scandinavian nations.  That those nations had among the best outcomes during COVID (we had the worst) with lower death rates and less societal disruption did not stop the mask zealots from proclaiming not only that masks were necessary and effective, but also that Scandinavian nations like Sweden which opened society and rejected masks were anti-science and dangerous.  In this nation, our medical leaders in academia and the government, including the CDC and Dr. Fauci, sponsored no mask studies and simply held firm to their utility.  But more and more studies out of Europe and Asia showed the same thing: masks will not protect the user or slow transmission.  Recently, Cochrane published the results of nearly 80 such studies, all of which showed no benefit to masking.  This is how science works; we formulate a hypothesis and then subject that to scrutiny by studying it.  That was done (outside our country) and the result unequivocally debunked masking as a valuable tool in COVID.  Science spoke, but in this nation, our scientists refuse to adhere to the results.  They doubled down on the mask ritual.  They forced people to mask against their will.  They ridiculed scientists who believed the studies, claiming such data to be dangerous.  To me, who had read the studies and lived through the failure of masks to protect anyone, it was if our medical community, liberal media, politicians, and most people I know were no better than those who claim the earth is flat and the sun goes around the earth.  The mask ritual to them was so enduring, so holy, that as they touted it as science, they simultaneously rejected every scientific tenant in which we believe.

How is that not religion?  How can we take anyone seriously who so vehemently clings to a ritual and rejects all data that refutes the value of that ritual?  How can we respect doctors and the medical community who demand that people mask, who insist that it must work, when every shred of reliable evidence says otherwise?

Five years later, many people still mask voluntarily, and we are often forced to mask such as in long-term care who too many people have a runny nose and test positive for COVID.  Most doctors still believe masking is beneficial and often necessary, the CDC endorsed it until recent changes pushed it away from turning its back on science (which ironically caused people to label the CDC as anti-science), and public health laws have inscribed the necessity of masking in their gospel. 

Masking and other similar COVID rituals tell us a great deal about how medicine has become a religion in a nation whose medical community steers us far from any reliance on science.  In our last blog we showed how doctors are taught to be complaint, not to think critically, to exhibit a herd mentality, and to be pawns for those who seek to achieve a certain agenda.  Thus, their complicity in supporting masks is not surprising.  Likely most have not read the studies or choose to believe what organizations like the CDC or CNN tell them rather than what facts demonstrate.  That’s just who doctors are, sadly.  But why are masks so enduring across society?  As Georgio Agamben notes, masks effectively erase faces, eliminate individuality, and transform us all into an obedient non-thinking horde. Masks endure because they have become a holy ritual to those who adhere to the religion of COVID.

In the fall of 2020, having been inundated by COVID at most of my facilities and (against CDC and public health dictates that suggested COVID was not treatable) keeping most of my COVID patients safe through common-sense treatments derived from Italian data, I was asked to appear on a liberal radio station in Boston.  I had been on the news before because I wrote a book on COVID, but, despite my liberal inclinations, most of those who sought any discussion about COVID from me or anyone not fully inundated with CDC/Fauci talking points were conservatives.  In fact, this was the first liberal show that believed it worthwhile to discuss COVID rather than to simply shut up and listen to Dr. Fauci’s minions and their singular dogma.  In the interview, I informed the host that in my facilities we were seeing hundreds of COVID cases despite a rigorously enforced masking policy.  I suggested that perhaps masks were not slowing spread and we should investigate that possibility and look into better solutions.

Within a week of that interview, my life changed.  I was informed the next day that the interview was going to be pulled because it was dangerous, given that I was spreading misinformation about masks.  Misinformation?  I merely stated a fact and sought a better solution to prevent elders from getting sick.  A few weeks later I received a letter from the Maryland Board of Physicians stating that my license was under review for spreading false information.  It took me many months and tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees to get my license back, all for simply stating a fact.  To the medical world and largely liberal media, any attack on masks, even an attack based on fact, was akin to heresy.

It became clear to me that masking represented a political strategy being used by both sides of the aisle.  Democrats equated masking to survival, to science, to intelligence, thus labeling any non-maskers as dangerous anti-science goons.  Republicans deemed mask mandates to be a violation of liberty.  Neither side actually cared about science, cared about whether masks would help in our war against COVID, cared about people, cared about reality; they simply saw masks as a means to an end.  And thus did masking divide on political lines with liberals unabashedly demanding mask mandates and mask validation, and conservatives assailing forced masking.  The ritual of the mask was no more than a symbol of our political divide, although when it comes to masks, conservatives were right, not because they understood science, not because they cared about outcomes, but because their political stance happened to be correct.  But even though we know masking is antithetical to science and unhelpful in viral outbreaks, liberals, who stand a flimsy pedestal of faux science, won’t give in.  The reason that to this day, liberals and those in the medical community refuse to admit they were wrong is that doing so would implicate them in instigating a falsified witch hunt that prevented us from confronting COVID rationally and scientifically and instead dropped us into a state of forced religious obedience.  With masks, liberals became anti-choice, anti-science, anti-kids, anti-compassion, all the attributes they ascribe to conservatives.  Should they now acknowledge their error, they would be deservedly discredited.  So to them, the mask ritual must endure, must be forced upon people when too many of them get runny noses and test positive for COVID, must be deemed to be scientifically valid.  They refuse to look at Scandinavia, at the Cochrane Report, at the reality of masking’s feckless failure.  If they did, if they turned away from this ritual that they swore up and down was our one and over savior, then they would be complicit in something horrific, including the fact that we clung to masks even when we should have devised other solutions especially to protect our elders.  To them, masks are not a ritual but are the reflection of science.  And that is scary as hell!

But masks did more than merely help satisfy a political need, they also enabled pharmaceutical companies to exploit COVID for their own designs.  It should be known, based on a 2021 report, that drug companies during COVID spent far more on advertising than on research, and that many of our most esteemed sources of information during COVID—from CNN to the New York Times to most medical journals and doctors who talked on the media—received huge amounts of money from drug companies.  They all pushed masks, because drug companies wanted them to push masks.  Why?

The answer is simple: FEAR.  The driving force of our expansive, costly, and inefficient healthcare system is to frighten people into taking actions that are profitable for those who recommend them and either ineffective or dangerous for patients.  This is true across the medical landscape, whether in pushing blood thinners in atrial fibrillation especially in frail elders, in advocating measuring and treating cholesterol with statins, or in advocating medical treatment for dementia; in recommending several debunked screening tests such as PSA for prostate cancer, carotid ultrasounds, EKGs at medical visits, stress tests, and so many more; in creating phantom diseases such as Stage 3 kidney disease, prediabetes, osteopenia, hypertension based on fallacious criteria, hyperlipidemia; and in insisting that only with aggressive medical treatment and testing can we overcome disease and live longer.  Ironically, the more doctors push such myths, the more they frighten patients into accepting tests and treatments contrary to science and to their own interest, the more expensive our healthcare system becomes at the cost of lower life expectancy and a higher burden of chronic disease.  Fear is the engine that keeps medical care profitable even as it is harming trusting souls through over-testing and over-treatment.  Fear provides a shield over the chest of white-coated doctors who maintain respect from patients even as they spew out drug-company talking points to bolster their own incomes.

Nothing is more frightening than a society draped by masks.  Just watch any post-apocalyptic show and that’s what you’ll see, masking, fear, horror.  The masking of America during COVID not only achieved political unity, not only effectively muffled those who sought a more scientific path forward, but it created a never-ending atmosphere of fear.  Because of that fear, people were willing to listen to the drug salesmen who preached on their favorite TV stations, who cluttered the media through endless frightening commercials, and who spoke through the mouths of robotic doctors programmed with talking points derived from drug company literature.  For many years, the masking of America created compliance through fear.  That helped the sales of mRNA vaccines even when we discovered them to be ineffective and even dangerous.  It helped to sell drugs like Paxlovid despite multiple studies showing them to be similarly ineffective and dangerous.  It lofted drug companies onto the perch of being life-saving experts, as fearful people sought an escape from the masked hell in which they lived.

Masks of course were not the only ritual invented by Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and others who were deeply embedded in the pharmaceutical industry, such as academic doctors and medical societies.  None of these players ever presented evidence that masks were effective and none of them ever revealed their ties to Big Pharma or were asked about their motives, because they did not have to.  A fearful populace inherently trusted them.  And so, they also created other rituals that they have even acknowledged lacked any basis of scientific credibility.  These include 6-foot separation, 20-second hand washing, and the need for personal protective equipment (PPE).  The latter is especially absurd since COVID does not live on surfaces and thus PPE is entirely ineffective.  But it is frightening.  And that’s what the architects of our COVID policy deemed to be necessary.  The early deaths of healthcare workers was blamed on lack of PPE, something so egregiously fallacious from what we know about COVID transmission, and yet a myth that has persevered.  Even today, anyone in long term care with sniffles who tests positive for COVID must be greeted by healthcare workers and family wearing a Hazmat suit, gloves, hats, masks for a virus that is both not virulent but that also only spreads through the air, right though masks, not surviving on surfaces such as clothes and hands.  PPE is a ritual without scientific justification.  And it is a deadly one, as we learned throughout COVID.   Elders, especially those with memory loss, are locked in their rooms, deprived of social contact, and greeted only by inhuman creatures buried within frightening suits.  All this for a cold.  And such isolation and fear cause them to be depressed, more confused, more agitated, less likely to eat; it kills them even as COVID is harmless.  This is what our adherence to rituals has led us to become.  We value the rituals more than the science, more than common sense, more than human life.

It is ironic that to this day the primarily liberal media and medical establishment deride any who seek to unmask COVID’s ritualistic approach to this viral cold, to reveal what it really is: fictive posturing bereft of any scientific core.  They vilify all the opponents of these rituals as anti-science misinformers, and they refuse to acknowledge evidence and experience that thoroughly debunks their precious rituals.  They are fully religious in their devotion to a liturgy and its rituals, fully engrossed in a narrative that robust science cannot discredit in their minds.  Theirs is a world of faith misrepresented as one of science. 

COVID science, its doctors, and its rituals, is a horrifying assault upon true science and its call to question everything, to always reassess, to decry dogma and “experts” who demand unassailable compliance, and to invite discourse.  COVID science is a religious aberration created for financial and political agendas, but not one that advances medical care or that has any interest in human beings or scientific integrity.  In many ways, these persistent rituals are credible because they are roared by alleged experts who we now look to as the most viable source of information.  But who are these experts, and why has COVID helped make expert opinion more compelling than facts and scientific research?  That will be the topic of our next blog.