More than 90% of babies born with heart defects survive into adulthood. As a result, there are now more adults living with congenital heart disease than children. These adults have a chronic, lifelong condition and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) has produced advice to give the best chance of a normal life.
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A new study published reveals that three-quarters of participants in an inpatient addiction intervention program came into the hospital using more than one substance. The findings suggests that a singular focus on opioids may do more harm than good if doctors overlook the complexity of each individual's actual substance use.
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While speakers of English and other Western languages prefer using suffixes more than prefixes, a new study reveals that this preference is not as universal as once thought.
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Sarah Wilson has never been one to play it safe, and after spending three years hiking the globe in search of a more meaningful life, that hasn’t changed. In fact, as she tells Body+Soul, it’s only when you come close to the edge that you can truly achieve greatness.
Breast milk strengthens a child's immune system, supporting the intestinal flora. These facts are common knowledge. But how does this work? What are the molecular mechanisms behind this phenomenon? And why is this not possible the same way with bottle feeding? The reasons were unknown until a team recently discovered the role of alarmins.
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New biomaterials reduce the risk of infection and facilitate the body's healing processes. These nanostructured materials are based on spider silk proteins. They prevent colonization by bacteria and fungi, but at the same time proactively assist in the regeneration of human tissue. They could be used for implants, wound dressings, prostheses, contact lenses, and other everyday aids.
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Whether or not to wear a mask has become one of the most hotly contested debates of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the question of whether or not school children should wear them is causing divisions among parents and within neighborhoods, potentially sparking legal challenges, it's become an added layer of stress on the children.1
As most public health officials are pushing face masks, social distancing and a potential vaccine, by and large they are ignoring the role a healthy lifestyle plays in reducing the severity of COVID-19 illness.
In fact, this disquieting pandemic has presented a unique opportunity for public health officials to create better awareness about healthy lifestyle choices that improve overall health, reduce the risk of infection and lessen the severity of any infectious disease.
Unfortunately, it appears as if their focus is not on health and wellness of the people they serve, but rather on creating an environment in which pharmaceutical agendas can be pushed as better options. For example, Reuters writes that the public can expect an “overwhelming” vaccine campaign in November, and includes comments from an unnamed senior administration official:2
“The fine line we are walking is getting the American people very excited about vaccines and missing expectations versus having a bunch of vaccines in the warehouse and not as many people want to get it. You may not hear a lot about promoting vaccines over the airwaves in August and September but you’ll be overwhelmed by it come November."
As time marches forward, and pharmaceutical companies scramble to release the first vaccination for public distribution, it’s important that members of the public are suitably groomed to accept and even welcome a vaccine that may well come with a high price tag. So far, keeping the mask debate front and center has worked to the advantage of Big Pharma.
NEJM Reverses Opinion and Sends Mixed Messages
In May 2020, five authors published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in which they explored the need for personal protective equipment in a public setting. By the second paragraph they had acknowledged several facts:3
“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes).
The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”
They concluded by saying:
“It is also clear that masks serve symbolic roles. Masks are not only tools, they are also talismans that may help increase health care workers’ perceived sense of safety, well-being, and trust in their hospitals.
Although such reactions may not be strictly logical, we are all subject to fear and anxiety, especially during times of crisis. One might argue that fear and anxiety are better countered with data and education than with a marginally beneficial mask …”
Within months, three of the authors began to backpedal. In a subsequent letter to the editor it appears as if they are calling for universal masking at home rather in a public place, such as the grocery store or department store. They wrote:4
“A growing body of research shows that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is strongly correlated with the duration and intensity of contact: the risk of transmission among household members can be as high as 40%, whereas the risk of transmission from less intense and less sustained encounters is below 5%.”
The newest letter highlights the mixed messages the public is being fed and appears to contradict their newest call for universal public masking since they underscore the knowledge there is a higher transmission in households.
What Does the Evidence Show?
The debate about the effectiveness of masks had been going on long before COVID-19. Nearly a century ago, surgical masks were introduced to help protect patients during surgery. Yet, the question remains as to whether this established routine is necessary.5
In one study published in 2016, scientists found no difference in the infection rates of patients who were undergoing clean surgery, whether the surgical team was masked or unmasked.6 A clean surgery was defined as one in which the lungs, gut, genitals and bladder were not involved.
The authors of another study sought to determine whether wearing a mask during the cold season could help reduce the number of health care professionals who got sick.7 They recruited workers in a tertiary care hospital where it’s likely they had greater-than-passing interactions with patients and coworkers.
Data were collected for 77 consecutive days during cold season. In the group who wore a mask at work, there were significantly more headaches and no evidence the masks had a benefit in protecting the participants against getting a cold.
Another team also compared the effectiveness of cloth masks in protecting health care workers.8 They used 1,607 participants at 14 secondary- and tertiary-level hospitals in Hanoi, Vietnam. The outcome measurement was a clinical demonstration of respiratory illness, flu-like illness or laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection.
The team found that those who wore cloth masks had a higher rate of flu-like illness and all measured infections as compared to those who used medical masks. They believed moisture retention in a cloth mask, along with reuse and poor filtration were potential reasons for higher rates of infection among mask wearers.
CDC Is Promoting Cloth Masks
As I've written before, the size of the virus matters. SARS-CoV-2 is a beta coronavirus that has a diameter between 0.06 microns and 0.14 microns.9 This is about half the size of most other viruses that tend to measure between 0.02 microns to 0.3 microns,10 and much smaller than bacteria that average 0.5 microns to 2.0 microns, against which masks are effective.11
Lab testing has shown that 3M surgical masks can block up to 75% of particles that measure between 0.02 and 1 micron.12 Cloth masks block between 30% and 60% of respiratory droplets, depending upon the material used. However, the virus is not restricted to staying within respiratory droplets and can be aerosolized to particles far smaller, which cannot be caught by any mask.
The CDC is currently promoting the use of masks by the public as “a simple barrier to help prevent respiratory droplets from traveling into the air and onto other people when the person wearing the mask coughs, sneezes, talks, or raises their voice.”13
The study on cloth masks the CDC included in their list of recent studies, notes that while cotton is the most commonly used material, it is the weave density that makes a difference in filtration efficiency, and gaps that occur around the face can reduce the effectiveness of filtration by more than 60%.14
In a press release from July 14, 2020, the CDC affirmed that cloth coverings are a “critical tool in the fight against COVID-19. There is increasing evidence that cloth face coverings help prevent people who have COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others.” Dr. Robert R. Redfield, Director of the CDC, was adamant about the power of cloth face masks, saying:15
“We are not defenseless against COVID-19. Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus — particularly when used universally within a community setting. All Americans have a responsibility to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.”
Yet Masks Are Not Effective Against Viruses
With the push to wear cloth masks, the CDC found that after people in the U.S. were advised to wear “cloth face coverings when leaving home, the proportion of U.S. adults who chose to do so increased, with 3 in 4 reporting in a national internet survey they had adopted the recommendation.”16
And yet, a policy review paper published in the CDC’s own journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, did not support Redfield’s statement. The paper measured the effectiveness of masks against influenza (0.08 microns to .12 microns), which measures very close to the size of COVID-19.17
In it, the researchers reviewed "the evidence base on the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical personal protective measures … in non-health care settings," and found no evidence of benefit:18
"Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
Evidence from RCTs of hand hygiene or face masks did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza, and limited evidence was available on other environmental measures."
Although masks are “not usually recommended in non-health care settings,” they are not making a recommendation for mask use by people who are asymptomatic in the community.19
Universal Masks Remind People To Be Compliant
Without strong scientific evidence to back up recommendations for using cloth masks or surgical masks during flu season or during the COVID-19 outbreak, governmental agencies around the world seem to be using the recommendations to prod the public into compliance with their mostly unsubstantiated and often conflicting demands.20 This may have a far deeper and long-term meaning, as Patrick Wood suggests in this video after years of investigation.
But, in either case, the use of fear and the requirement for mask wearing are the first steps in pushing people into submitting to an agenda. Despite the lack of evidence, the World Health Organization continues to make a case for universal mask wearing.
In a June 5, 2020, report, after listing the health-related reasons for wearing masks and discussing concerns about the practice, they include a list of “potential benefits/advantages” that have little to do with personal health, and more to do with learning submission, likely in preparation for future “recommendations.” These include:21
• "Reduced potential stigmatization of individuals wearing masks to prevent infecting others or of people caring for COVID-19 patients in nonclinical settings" — In other words, we should all wear masks to make people caring for COVID-19 patients feel more accepted, as if that's a significant problem.
• "Making people feel they can play a role in contributing to stopping spread of the virus" — i.e., masks, while providing a false sense of security, make people feel like they're "doing something" to help. Put another way, it makes people feel virtuous and "good."
• "Reminding people to be compliant with other measures" — In other words, people are expected to go along with what they’re told to do.
• "Potential social and economic benefits" — This is perhaps the most ludicrously strained reason of all. According to the WHO:
"Encouraging the public to create their own fabric masks may promote individual enterprise and community integration … The production of non-medical masks may offer a source of income for those able to manufacture masks within their communities. Fabric masks can also be a form of cultural expression, encouraging public acceptance of protection measures in general."
Your Mask Is Useless Without These Guidelines
If you do choose to wear a face mask, then it’s important to strictly follow these guidelines. As this short video demonstrates, just one slip of your hand and you are depositing bacteria on your face, making the mask ineffective against even the bacteria it can filter.
This shouldn’t be scary since you’ve likely been walking around without a mask for years before this, including during cold and flu season. While the symptoms of these two viruses are not the same, they are respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2. They measure about the same size and are transmitted the same way. These are the strategies the WHO recommends for reducing the potential of infecting yourself:22
Before putting on a mask, clean your hands with soap and water.
Cover your mouth and nose with the mask and make sure there are no gaps between your face and the mask.
Avoid touching the mask while using it; if you have to, try to clean your hands with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water first.
Replace the mask with a new one as soon as it is damp. Do not reuse single-use masks.
To take off the mask, remove it from behind (do not touch the front of the mask); discard it immediately in a closed bin; and clean your hands with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.
Documentary filmmaker and BBC journalist Adam Curtis has developed a cult following for his eccentric films that combine BBC archival footage into artistic montages combined with dark narratives that create a unique storytelling experience that’s both journalistic and entertaining.
His latest film, “HyperNormalisation,” came out in 2016 and is perhaps even more apropos now, as many have the feeling that they’re waking up to an unprecedented, and unreal, world anew each and every day — and so-called fake news is all around. The term “HyperNormalisation” was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a Russian historian.1
In an interview with The Economist, Curtis explained that it’s used to describe the feeling that comes with accepting total fakeness as normal. Yurchak had used it in relation to living in the Soviet Union during the 1980s, but Curtis used it in response to living in the present-day U.S. and Europe. He said:
“Everyone in my country and in America and throughout Europe knows that the system that they are living under isn’t working as it is supposed to; that there is a lot of corruption at the top …
There is a sense of everything being slightly unreal; that you fight a war that seems to cost you nothing and it has no consequences at home; that money seems to grow on trees; that goods come from China and don’t seem to cost you anything; that phones make you feel liberated but that maybe they’re manipulating you but you’re not quite sure. It’s all slightly odd and slightly corrupt.
So I was trying to make a film about where that feeling came from … I was just trying to show the same feeling of unreality, and also that those in charge know that we know that they don’t know what’s going on. That same feeling is pervasive in our society, and that’s what the film is about.”2
Living in a Fake, Simple World
“HyperNormalisation” tells the story of how politicians, financiers and “technological utopians” constructed a fake world over the last four decades in an attempt to maintain power and control. Their fake world is simpler than the real world by design, and as a result people went along with it because the simplicity was reassuring.
The transition began in 1975, when the film describes two world-changing moments that took place in two cities: New York City and Damascus, Syria, which shifted the world away from political control and toward one managed instead by financial services, technology and energy companies. First, New York ceded its power to bankers. As noted in The New Yorker:
“New York, embroiled in a debt crisis as its middle-class tax base is evaporated by white flight, starts to cede authority to its lenders.
Fearing for the security of their loans, the banks, via a new committee Curtis contends was dominated by their leadership, the Municipal Assistance Corporation, set out to control the city’s finances, resulting in the first wave of banker-mandated austerity to greet a major American city as thousands of teachers, police officers, and firefighters are sacked.”3
In Damascus, meanwhile, conflict between Henry Kissinger and Syrian head of state Hafez al-Assad grew, with Kissinger fearing a united Arab world and Assad angered that his attempts at transformation were fading. “Kissinger’s theory was that instead of having a comprehensive peace for Palestinians, which would cause specific problems, you split the Middle Eastern world and made everyone dissatisfied,” Curtis said.4
Further, “In Curtis’ view, the Syrian leader pioneered the use of suicide bombing against Americans,” The New Yorker explained, which then spread throughout the Middle East, accelerating Islamic terrorism in the U.S. While the roots of modern society can be traced back much further — millennia — Curtis chose to start “HyperNormalisation” in 1975 due to the economic crisis of the time.
“1975 is when a shift in power happened in the Middle East at the same time as the shift in power away from politics toward finance began in the West,” he told Hyperallergic.5 “It’s arbitrary, but I chose that moment because those two things are at the root of a lot of other things we have today. It’s a dramatic moment.”
The film then takes viewers on a timeline of recent history that appears as though you’re seeing bits and pieces of a scrapbook, but which ultimately support the larger message that the world is being controlled by a powerful few while the rest of us are willing puppets in the play, and we’re essentially living in an unreal world.
Being Managed as Individuals
According to Curtis, mass democracy died out in the early ‘90s, only to be replaced by a system that manages people as individuals. Politics requires that people be in groups in order to control them; parties are established and individuals join the groups that are then represented by politicians that the group identifies with.
The advancement of technology has changed this, particularly because computer systems can manage masses of people by understanding the way they act as groups — but the people continue to think they’re acting as individuals. Speaking to The Economist, Curtis said:
“This is the genius of what happened with computer networks. Using feedback loops, pattern matching and pattern recognition, those systems can understand us quite simply. That we are far more similar to each other than we might think, that my desire for an iPhone as a way of expressing my identity is mirrored by millions of other people who feel exactly the same.
We’re not actually that individualistic. We’re very similar to each other and computers know that dirty secret. But because we feel like we’re in control when we hold the magic screen, it allows us to feel like we’re still individuals. And that’s a wonderful way of managing the world.”6
He compares it to a modern ghost story, in which we’re haunted by yesterday’s behaviors. By predicting what we’ll like based on what we did yesterday, we’re inundated with messages that lock us into a static, unchanging world that’s repetitive and rarely imagines anything new.
“And because it doesn’t allow mass politics to challenge power, it has allowed corruption to carry on without it really being challenged properly,” he says,7 using the example of extremely wealthy people who don’t pay taxes. Although most are aware that this occurs, it doesn’t change:
“I think it has something to do with this technocratic world because it doesn't have the capacity to respond to that kind of thing. It has the capacity to manage us very well. It’s benign but it doesn’t have the capacity to challenge the rich and the powerful within that system, who use it badly for their own purposes.”8
A Complex Documentary for an Oversimplified Time
While the crux of “HyperNormalisation” is that people have retreated into a simplified world perception, the documentary itself is complex and borderline alarming. Its intricacies can be well explored, however, as it was released directly on BBC iPlayer, then passed around on the internet, such that it’s easy to replay it — or sections of it — again and again, something that wasn’t always possible with live television. Speaking with “HyperNormalisation,” Curtis said:
“The interesting thing about online is that you can do things that are more complex and involving and less patronizing to the audience than traditional documentaries, which tend to simplify so much because they’re panicking that people will only watch them once live. They tend to just tell you what you already know. I think you can do some more complicated things, and that’s what I’ve been trying.”9
Watching “HyperNormalisation,” you’ll be confronted with seemingly unrelated snippets ranging from disaster movies to Jane Fonda, which will make you want to rewind and reconsider what you’ve just seen. And perhaps that’s the point.
The gaps in the story compel viewers to do more research and ask more questions, and those willing to watch all of its nearly three hours of footage may find themselves indeed feeling like they’re climbing through a dark thicket, being led by only a flashlight, as the film’s opening portrays.
Meanwhile, the theme of an overriding power funneling information to the masses in an increasingly dumbed-down format is pervasive, right down to the censorship being fostered by social media. Curtis narrates in the film:
“… as the intelligence systems online gathered evermore data, new forms of guidance began to illumine, social media created filters — complex algorithms that looked at what individuals liked and then fed more of the same back to them.
In the process, individuals began to move, without noticing, into bubbles that isolated them from enormous amounts of other information. They only heard and saw what they liked, and the news feeds increasingly excluded anything that might challenge people's pre-existing beliefs.”
Giant Corporations Behind the Internet’s Superficial Freedom
“HyperNormalisation” also touches on the irony behind the “freedom” provided by the internet, which is that giant corporations are largely controlling it. “… [B]ehind the superficial freedoms of the web were a few giant corporations and opaque systems that controlled what people saw and shaped what they thought. What was even more mysterious was how they made their decisions about what you should like and what should be hidden from you,” the documentary states.
And as Curtis noted, “I’m not trying to make a traditional documentary. I’m trying to make a thing that gets why you feel today like you do — uncertain, untrusting of those who tell you what is what. To make it in a way that emotionally explains that as much as it explains it intellectually.”10 On the topic of social media, Curtis described social media as a scam, telling Idler Magazine:11
“The Internet has been captured by four giant corporations who don’t produce anything, contribute nothing to the wealth of the country, and hoard their billions of dollars in order to pounce on anything that appears to be a competitor and buy it out immediately.
They will get you and I to do the work for them — which is putting the data in — then they send out what they con other people into believing are targeted ads. But actually, the problem with their advertising is that it is — like all geek stuff — literal. It has no imagination to it whatsoever. It sees that you bought a ticket to Budapest, so you’re going to get more tickets to Budapest. It’s a scam.”
Technology, largely in the form of social media, feeds into the forces at play that are spreading a state of powerlessness and bewilderment around the world, according to Curtis.12 This is fueled by anger, which prompts more intense reactions online, hence, more clicks and more money being poured into social media.
It’s Curtis’ goal to create an emotional history of the world, which he plans to create using decades’ worth of BBC footage from around the world. His next project is to explore Russia, then China, Egypt, Vietnam and Africa, telling stories that people want to hear but probably won’t otherwise, due to the altered state of reality we’re living in.
To explore more, check out Curtis’ past works, which include “The Power of Nightmares,” which explores the use of fear for political gain, and “The Century of the Self,” which explores Edward Bernays’ — Sigmund Freud’s nephew — use of his uncle’s theories to create the public relations industry and gain political power.13
