Unmask the danger of face masks

Dr. James D. Veltmeyer

Special to Village News

Perhaps one of the most annoying – and wholly unnecessary – government-imposed mandates during the COVID-19 crisis is the increasingly widespread demand that healthy Americans wear face masks. Of course, just a few months ago, practically everyone in the elite medical establishment – from the surgeon general to Dr. Anthony Fauci as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization were advising against the use of face masks. Now, they have all shifted gears, and we are being told that we must use face coverings whenever we leave our homes or enter stores. These mandates are usually being imposed by unelected and unaccountable county health directors without the approval of any elected body of lawmakers. While many law enforcement jurisdictions are refusing to enforce the mask edicts, some are and innocent individuals are being threatened with fines or jail time. And, what exactly is the science behind all of them?

The truth is there is no scientific evidence affirming the value of face coverings in preventing the transmission of viruses. Recent studies have been unable to establish any conclusive relationship between mask and respirator use and protection against influenza infection, according to nationally recognized neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock. While it’s too early to report any studies related to COVID-19, it’s unlikely masks would be any more effective against it than against the flu virus. Surgeon general Dr. Jerome Adams said in March that, “The data doesn’t show that wearing masks in public will help people during the coronavirus pandemic.”

Even the CDC in its April 13 directive only recommended the use of masks when it was difficult to maintain social distancing or in areas of significant community-based transmission. Yet, mask mandates are being imposed everywhere, regardless of any social distancing issues and even in small rural counties which have been hardly impacted by the coronavirus. We now see perfectly healthy young adults and teenagers walking down the streets or going to the park or the beach in masks, inhaling their own carbon dioxide instead of fresh air. Employees of supermarkets and other chains are being forced to wear these masks all day long and are finding themselves unusually fatigued at the end of the workday. Drivers have even wound up in accidents because the masks have made them light-headed. One individual who crashed his SUV into a pole in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, April 23, was reported by police to have fainted due to “insufficient oxygen intake/excessive carbon dioxide intake.”

Blaylock cited recent studies of health care workers using N95 masks indicating increasing episodes of headaches caused by a reduction in blood oxygenation or an elevation in blood carbon dioxide. The excessive use of N95 masks can reduce blood oxygenation by as much as 20%, leading to a loss of consciousness. The National Institutes of Health said that inhaling high levels of carbon dioxide may be life-threatening. High levels of carbon dioxide are associated with headaches, vertigo, double vision, inability to concentrate, tinnitus, seizures or suffocation due to displacement of air.

And, can the use of face masks make people more susceptible to COVID-19? The answer is yes. Blaylock observes that a drop in oxygen levels is associated with lower immunity. Low blood oxygen can inhibit the type of main immune cells used to fight viral infections called the CD4+T-lymphocyte. By increasing the level of a compound called hypoxia inducible factor-1, which inhibits T-lymphocytes and stimulates a powerful immune inhibitor cell called the Tregs, face coverings could be setting us all up for contracting COVID-19 and other infections. Masks can also cause people to rebreathe viruses within their own bodies instead of expelling them, thus concentrating them in the lungs and nasal passages and eventually even traveling to the brain, which can even lead to the deadly “cytokine storm” that we often hear about in COVID-19 patients.

Masks are especially dangerous to cancer victims or those suffering from cardiovascular or cerebrovascular diseases in which low levels of oxygen can promote inflammation that leads to the spread of cancers as well as to heart attacks and strokes.

Isn’t it ironic that the very face coverings that the political and medical elites in this nation want us to wear might just make us sicker and more vulnerable to a deadly second wave of the coronavirus this fall, just about the time of the presidential election? Of course, no one could be planning something like that. That’s just a silly conspiracy theory. Or is it?

For now, let’s defend both our health and Fourth Amendment rights to be secure in our “persons, houses, papers and effects…” It means that the government, especially unelected bureaucrats, has no legitimate authority to force you to wear any kind of face covering in public. If the Democratic Party wants to substitute the cloth mask for the donkey as the symbol of its party, that’s their business, but don’t try to force the rest of us into doing it too.

Dr. James Veltmeyer is a La Jolla physician voted “Top Doctor” in San Diego County in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2019. Veltmeyer can be reached at [email protected].