White House Tells the Philadelphia Inquirer and Health Commissionor Betigole MASKS DON’T WORK
Back in mid-December the Inquirer and Independence Blue Cross decided to produce an online panel discussion called The Future of Covid and Public Health. Health reporter Jason Laughlin and Health editor Letitia Stein of the Inquirer hosted a talk with White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha and Philadelphia Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole.
The topic of air quality was featured prominently by Dr. Jha and he hinted that Philadelphian’s start asking about where the missing Covid billions went.
At minute 18′ in the interview Dr. Jha appears to have changed the Covid crisis script. Sounding like an industrial hygienist Jha says the best thing we can do to help our schools is use the Federal billions of dollars our American cities now have to improve air quality. “There are a lot of dollars that came out of the American Rescue Plan that could be used for infrastructure” for air quality issues Jha stressed.
Philadelphia schools desperately need this money for its infrastructure. Somehow the children of Philadelphia haven’t seen very much of it. City Council members have confided with PA-CHD that over a billion Federal dollars was sent for Covid relief to City Hall. Has there been any accounting for it?
Jha is practically begging for this money to be spent on air quality remediation and not, curiously, not boosting, masking and testing as was previously the White House’s stance. But wait, wasn’t he once a strident masker before, you might ask? Yes, but he doesn’t want you to know that now and has decided to follow what the science has known for decades and was incredibly suppressed when needed most.
Jha is correct, air quality is the first thing any 4th grader or industrial hygienist would point out to remedy and not the last option, which is forcing children to bare the full burden by wearing masks for 7-9 hours a day.
But let’s get to the part that went viral. This was the clip where Dr. Jha drops a succinct but huge truth bomb and makes this statement about masks like you would be stupid to not know it. “The notion that you could cut respiratory infections…um…There is no study in the world that shows mask work that well.” Dr. Jha states that making substantial improvements in air quality is a proven way to prevent infections but masking is “a lot easer to implement”. And cheaper he might add.
Dr. Bettigole followed Jha’s comment by declaring that getting the booster into all peoples arms was the major thrust of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s efforts now. An incredibly blind and reckless policy considering what is now known and still not known about the booster shots.
Bettigole must not have got the script but it appears the White House is about to change its tune on masks which has become a most curious and disturbing trend particularly amongst coastal hugging Democrats.
Go to minute 18′ for the nugget on air quality, the money to fix it and the fallacy of mask as a viral protection.