The Highwire with Del Bigtree - NEW STUDY SHOWS MASKS DON’T WORK AGAINST ILLNESS, BUT WHAT DOES

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

A definitive study from the Cochrane Collaboration has solidified the uselessness of masking to prevent COVID-19 and other illnesses. However, more studies now show both vitamin D and exercise as cheap, empowering and extremely effective strategies against COVID.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

For a reminder for people, because I know everyone wants to put this behind, but let's look at what they did with the masks. Take a look. Whether homemade or medical grade, nowadays it's not hard to spot them around Chicago, Macs that are meant to reduce the spread of COVID-19. In order to avoid the acquisition and transmission of this virus, which is highly transmissible, you should have uniform wearing of masks. We can turn this thing around in two to three weeks if we can go. get a critical mass of people wearing face coverings, practicing at least six feet of social distancing.

This is the moment to get it under control. Wear masks. If you are going to be in a situation in public where you may come into contact with other people in a situation that is not socially distanced, you must have a mask. That is by executive order. Los Angeles gave his support to masks in public on Wednesday. Let me lead as mayor and let people know this is how we're going to be seeing each other. The one thing we do know, these masks make a gigantic difference. I would do everything I'm possible to make it required that people had to wear masks in public. You wear a mask not to protect yourself.

You wear a mask because you don't feel well and you're being thoughtful and protected of other people. I don't know if you're infected, you don't know if I'm infected. And in that case, the best way that we can go forward, is if everybody keeps their droplets to themselves. We know these masks make a difference. The best way we can move forward is to put this mask on your face and your kids' face. Well, I hope there's science to suggest that that was helpful.

But, you know, hey, glad it's over now, right? Unfortunately, these are the headlines coming out, you know, really going back to school in January here. More U.S. schools institute mask mandates as COVID cases rise. These were temporary, but it's still happening. And this is Marin County, in California, mass mandate returns to four Marin County Elementary Schools. That was just a recent

headline. Even the WHO, you know, think of those bills trying to defund that WHO. This is the WHO's updated guidelines, infection, prevention, and control in the context of coronavirus disease. This is their version 4.0 of the living guideline. If you look what it says, number one, a strong recommendation for mass use in community settings in high risk situations. So remember, the high risk situations, that's with the CDC also. That's their stance. They didn't just say mask mandates are gone and they're going away and they'll never come back for COVID. They're tying it to community transmission just like the WHO is. So that's where you're getting these flu, every viral season now, are we all going to have mask mandates,

getting to stores into our schools and to our workplaces? I mean, this is sort of their dream, right, is to sort of turn us into those hypochondriacs. I suppose we should be wiping down every doorknob that we see also. Right. And so we may have some science now. This was from the Cochrane Collaboration. For people I don't know what that is, this is a global network of researchers. Some say they represent the gold standard in research.

And they look at evidence-based medicine to try to inform policymakers and interventions like masking. And this is a study that just came out. This is an updated study on the information they have already put out. So definitely a good read for people I want to read this. Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. going to hand washing, things like that, and masks. What do they have to say about masks? They say this.

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness, COVID-19 like illness compared to not wearing masks. They looked at 78 studies to look at this analysis. They also say wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory confirmed influenza or SARS-CoV-2 compared to not wearing mask. But what did they do? What did they find when looking all this? they found that the harms of wearing masks were rarely and poorly reported.

So you have all these people looking for masks, but hey, let's not look at the damage they're going to do. Let's not study that at all. It's no big deal. But let's look at the fact that they're not working. So that's what they found in this meta-analysis, basically, of 78 different pieces of literature on this. For people out there, I just want to say, I mean, you call us a lot.

You're like, what is the best study to show that mass don't work? This is it. I mean, we had Deney Randcourt on that laid this out very early on, all the studies that exist, crunching those numbers. But the Cochran collaboration is literally the epitome of integrity. They are, you know, totally unbiased, and they do not work for the pharmaceutical institutions or anybody. When they're delivering this to you, this is science at its best, and they are telling you there was no effect. We've had multiple studies that have said that. They have looked at all those.

You said, over 70 studies now that show that this is a joke, that this doesn't do anything. I mean, you only have to see the people, the air pockets, you know, around their nodes. Like, how do you even think this is working? I mean, it boggles my mind. But, you know, at least they did the science, went beyond just the obvious you see with good observation that this is, you know, I think in the end it's just to demoralize us, right? And to sort of keep us in line. Yeah, and a piece on that Cochrane review, you know, we look at this data, we look at the evidence and the timing, and we keep wanting to believe, you know, that we're just following some events. There's just, you know, random things that happen. It's not a coincidence. But Tom Jefferson, he's a British epidemiologist and he's one of the founding members of the Cochran collaboration. He actually did an interview. He rarely does interview. It was a written long form interview. And he talked about this. And he helped put out, he was one of the main authors on this paper. He helped put out the first part of this study. And this was in November

2020 in the Cochran Review. And they looked at it. And this is what he said. He said in early 2020, when the pandemic was ramping up, we had just updated our Cochran Review ready to publish. And at that point, they were looking at mostly flu studies, how mask and erupt flu transmission. He said, but Cochran held it up for seven months before it was finally published in November 2020. Those seven months were crucial, said Tom Jefferson. During that time, it was when policy about masks were being formed. Our review was important, and it should have been out there. And that's now on record, and that did happen.

So you have to ask yourself, what's going on? Who made a phone call? Why did the Cockney review hold that up? Because they had the studies. Obviously, they weren't COVID studies because COVID was just starting, but they had the evidence saying, out of abundance of caution, we know this doesn't work for flu. There's no need to put these on all of these kids for developmental harms,

for, you know, all the list of things that may happen. And so, you know, they have some answering to do. But, Del, you know, you mentioned that the most sound piece of science here. And on the high wire, we like to stay black and white and really just keep to the science. And I think this might be the final say in masking when it comes to this study. And here's the headline out of this. But you show this with your neighbors. Unattractive people are more likely to keep wearing face masks in a post-COVID era.

Study suggests they say people who consider themselves attractive are less. likely to wear face masks and there you have it folks the science as it's written there it is well now we know the the the secret behind those that are still wearing masks that's right just find a good dentist and then you know release the mask now let's look on the flip side of government interventions which is personal responsibility which is how you can do things in your own life to help your own health stuff that governments won't touch with a 10 foot pole one of those is vitamin d and it was really briefly spoken about in the UK Parliament by Health Secretary Matt Hancock. This was early on in the pandemic. And he was asked about vitamin D. Take a listen to what he had

to say. All right. Vitamin D is one of the many things that we've looked into to see whether it reduces the incidence or the impact of coronavirus. And I've seen reports that it does. So we therefore put it into a trial. And unfortunately, the results were that it doesn't have. appear to have any impact. So that is the latest clinical advice, which of course is always kept under review. Yeah. So there you have it. Move along. The imperial model rocks. We believe in that. Millions could die. Vitamin D doesn't work. We're doing our due diligence. That's right.

What a chill that guy is, by the way. I mean, just the ultimate. Yeah. And you know, he said, so we looked at it ourselves because we heard there was some evidence that it may work. So we actually looked at it, our researchers, they must have missed this study or didn't really update their studies with this one. This was in October of 2021. We knew this. COVID-19 mortality risk correlates inversely with vitamin D status. This is an amazing study. It should have been front page headlines for months. And it says this, this is what the researchers write. This is the background of this research. They say much research shows that blood calcidial 25 hydroxy vitamin D levels correlate strongly with SARS-CoVi to infection severity. But at that,

that time, there is open discussion regarding whether low D3 is caused by infection or if deficiency negatively affects immune defense. So the question was obviously like, well, you have a low D because you have SARS-CoV-2, which just depletes your D clearly. But this study looked at that, and they said this, regression suggested a theoretical point of zero mortality at approximately 50 nanograms per milliliter of D3. And they concluded the data sets provide strong evidence that low D3 as a predictor rather than just a side effect of the infection. They go step further. They say despite ongoing vaccinations, we recommend raising serum 25 OHD levels to about

50 nanograms per milliliter to prevent or mitigate new outbreaks due to escape mutations or decreasing antibody activity. I mean, if we would just listen to that, maybe we would have the booster programs in perpetuity here that's happening. I remember one reported on that. It was amazing. amazing information. Yeah.

And so now a new study with vitamin D. So that was from October 2021. We have a new study that came out. This is a meta-analysis, again, looking at all the literature out there, kind of the final say in vitamin D in COVID. And this is a study right here, if you'd like to share this, protective effect of vitamin D supplementation on COVID-19 related intensive care hospitalization and mortality. The big three triad there, obviously that's what we're trying to fight.

After the reviewers screening, only five randomized controlled trials were found to be. be suitable for our analysis. So again, we have all these masks studies, everything. We have five trials on vitamin D. That's how sad the state of research is. We performed a meta-analysis, they said, and the TSA. This is a trial sequential analysis. Vitamin D administration results in a decreased risk of death in ICU admission.

And they go on to say in their discussion, the results of the meta-analysis and respective TSA suggests a definitive, definitive association between the protective role. of vitamin D and ICU hospitalization. Wow. That really at this point is the final say on this here. And so there you have it, folks. I mean, you know, a lot of you are like, you know, where are the solutions? The solutions are going to help.

It's a lot of what we're talking about today. And I'll be honest with you, Jeffrey, I went recently and got some blood tests done. And I was shocked. My vitamin D is low. And I spend time outside. I can't quite figure it out. But those things matter now. We recognize.

And look, whether there's new vitamin D is low. variance or whatever next crazy thing comes flying, you know, onto our shores. We know that vitamin D is this building block of your immune system. And so it's time, folks. You know, we're through it, all the, you know, we've sort of gone through the panic of it. It's now time, I think, to prepare for the future. I mean, Bill Gates is telling you there's another virus coming. I would take his word for it.

I don't know how he knows that. I don't know what he's got up his sleeve, but I would take his word for it when they're telling you to prepare. This is how you should be preparing. Get your vitamin D levels up. working on that right now myself right and these are pennies on the dollar you can do this to help and it doesn't involve government overreach masking your kids putting a 12.5 per 10,000 severe adverse event shot in your arm so what's another thing you can do again personal responsibility this is even free so remember uh during the

the coronavirus response we'll call it gyms and fitness centers were declared non-essential businesses Liquor stores were open, but not gyms. And just to remind people, I think I'm making this up, if you don't remember, this is the headline here, the gyms and fitness chains closed during the coronavirus pandemic and what some are offering instead. They're doing virtual classes and things like that. Same with churches. But now we have a study.

Regular exercise is actually beneficial against COVID. Protects against fatal COVID. That's a new study shows. And this is the study here, associations of physical inactivity and COVID-19 outcomes among subgroups. Now, there's been over 25 studies. but on physical activity, and they've shown very, extremely positive benefits for COVID. But some of the questions were, is it across all demographics and age and comorbidities?

And also, it never looked at really what kind of exercise as far as moderate, extraneous. So this is what they say here in this study. It goes on to say dose response effects were strong. For example, patients in the quote, some activity category had higher odds of hospital, deterioration and death than those in the always active category. So more exercise better. But then besides this, this is incredible. Results were generally consistent across sex, race, ethnicity, age, and BMI categories, and for patients with cardiovascular disease or hypertension. So basically no matter.

So even if you are overweight, but you're exercising, you're doing way better than someone that's not getting the exercise that is at your same BMI or, you know, that that's really, interesting. Yeah, across the board, exercise is only going to help you. It cannot hurt you in this instance. And again, we're looking at hospitalization, deterioration, and death. So three things you don't want. And this is a big study here, vitamin D exercise. I mean, you can't be it, Del.