No matter what position you take on lockdowns, masks, Hydroxychloroquine, or any other COVID-related issue, there's a doctor or expert out there whose opinion you can easily grab and use to bolster your case. Indeed, most people have formed their opinions on what should be done about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and consequently have decided which "experts" they want to listen to, follow on social media, and share material from.

For better or worse, to a large degree, we're firmly entrenched in our own echo chambers. So to a degree, appealing to authority is almost a moot point at this point in the game, whether your "authority" is the CDC and WHO, who have consistently been wrong more than they have been right, or that group of doctors who were censored and even dismissed from jobs last week for daring to express an unpopular yet sincerely held medical opinion.

What isn't a moot point, however, is observable patterns, which exist independently of what any of the "experts" have to say. Now I'm no doctor, and neither are most of you, but I am a functioning, thinking adult with at least half a brain (some of you may dispute this, and you're certainly entitled to your opinion!).

I'm also capable of analyzing statistics, reading charts, and noticing patterns. And the patterns I'm noticing have me scratching my head. As someone who doesn't sit well with cognitive dissonance, media gaslighting, and especially governmental overreach, if I'm being told I shouldn't or can't go out and that I'm not allowed to breathe free air when I do, the evidence on the ground should damn-well comport with the "logic" they are giving us to justify their extreme measures. But they aren't, not in any observable, logical way.

This article was first published on 11 June, when advice on wearing masks was restricted to Government Guidance and had no legal force. On 15 June the article was updated in response to The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings on Public Transport) (England) Regulations 2020, which are analysed in Addendum 1. Today, 24 July, it has been updated again in response to The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020, the analysis of which can be found in Addendum 2. This is unlikely to be the last update on Government legislation on the mandatory wearing of masks. The science remains the same.

'The only truly political action is that which severs the nexus between violence and law.'

— Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception

Table of Contents

1. Government Guidance and the Law
2. Benefits and Dangers of Wearing Masks
3. Asymptomatic Transmission of Coronavirus
4. Surveillance and Compliance
5. Civil Disobedience

Appendix: Medical Advice against Wearing Masks
Addendum 1: New Regulations on Wearing Masks on Public Transport
Addendum 2. Further Regulations on Wearing Masks in Shops and Other Places

1. Government Guidance and the Law

On 30 March, former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption, QC, in a widely-reported condemnation of the abuse of legal regulations by UK police forces in enforcing Government guidance on social distancing, reminded the British people that:

'Policemen are citizens in uniform. They are not members of a disciplined hierarchy operating just at the Government's command. The police have no power to enforce Ministers' preferences, but only legal regulations, which don't go anything like as far as the Government's guidance. This is what a police state is like. It's a state in which the Government can issue orders or express preferences with no legal authority and the police will enforce Ministers' wishes.'

Here's a question for you: When a young man dressed entirely in black, uses a racial justice protest to conceal himself so he can break windows, incinerate retail shops and cafes, pelt cops with bottles, rocks and fireworks, and spread mayhem across the city, what is the political message he is trying to send?

1. He is honoring the death of George Floyd
2. He is expressing his support for racial justice
3. He is attacking the system that protects ordinary people from criminal violence
4. He is a paid agitator funded by liberal organizations that seek to intensify social unrest for their own political objectives

If you chose 3 or 4, you're probably right, there are undoubtedly paid agitators operating on behalf of wealthy outsiders, just as there are many "true believers" who see the riots as a springboard for a broader revolt that will topple the existing system. In other words, there are competing agendas at play in these violent outbursts. The least likely answer is Number 1, that "He is honoring the death of George Floyd." The riots have nothing to do with George Floyd, he's merely the fig leaf that hides the true motives of the perpetrators.

Isn't it odd that - after 60 days of protests and riot - the media has never once asked what these activists want, what their actions mean or who they are?

International best-selling author, Dr Vernon Coleman, MB ChB DSc FRSA, explains how people around the world are being oppressed and lied to, and discusses yet more evidence about face masks. He accuses the professions of betrayal, and calls for citizens to stand up to tyrannical governments.

There is an ancient principle of the common law, whereby it is held that the people may do everything except that which they have expressly forbidden, and the state may do nothing except that which the people have expressly permitted. How did this principle come to be unstitched and reversed in the past three months? How did the people come to agree to its reversal?

In a search of answers, I have been reflecting a lot on a phrase I transcribed into a notebook years ago from Martin Amis's Koba the Dread: " . . . a contagion of selective incuriosity, a mindgame begun in self-hypnosis and maintained by mass hysteria."

While not discounting the impact of short-term welfare payments (buying the people's freedom with their own money) I have gotten to thinking that the answer maybe includes, as a primary factor, something along the lines of mass hypnosis — the viral entrancement of entire populations.

Incendiary documentary evidence has emerged in a British court in which allegations are made about a "rogue" SAS unit accused of executing civilians in Afghanistan.

The evidence had been withheld from earlier proceedings of the legal case, prompting a judge to demand a full explanation from Ben Wallace, the defence secretary.

The cache of emails, notes and reports from inside the SAS — the like of which has never been seen before — reveal that special forces commanders were highly concerned about the killing of more than 33 people in the space of three months during night raids on their homes.

There was a particular pattern in which men were captured and then killed when the SAS sent them back into their houses at gunpoint. The Sunday Times has pieced together the disturbing evidence, which raises serious questions about whether war crimes have been covered up.

It is a trail that begins in the dead of night.

As Global Research reported, America's Frontline Doctors held a press conference on Capitol Hill on Monday. Over 17 million people watched the video (below) before YouTube, Twitter and Facebook gave it the "misinformation" stamp of disapproval and deleted it.

Yet another censored video exposing the COVID charade. No big surprise... But then I tried to visit the organization's website and was met with the following message: "Website expired."

Their site is (was) hosted by SquareSpace. I have not yet found any explanation for the take-down. The hosting companies Acceptable Use Policy seems pretty reasonable. Nonetheless, point 3.1 is wide open for any sort of censorship, forbidding:

anything that's false, fraudulent, inaccurate or deceiving."

If you're hoping the COVID-19 pandemic will go on forever, this post may disappoint you. And, I get it. We have gone frothing-at-the-mouth nuts over a slightly above-normal virulence virus, with a unique and obvious age-distribution pattern that should have made containment easy and panic completely unnecessary. And, if you're living in the United States, like I am, you probably think my declaration that this pandemic is "over" to be somewhere between wishful thinking and incredibly premature, and I hear you, too, although forgive me if I'm not sure you're the one thinking clearly, given some of the things I've recently read. I promise to support my assertion with data, and the wisdom of people far more expert than me who are having a harder time being heard in the present climate of...bats#@t crazy.

Have we lost our collective minds? Yes.

You may not be one of them. In fact, I'm guessing the people who actually take the time to read my blog posts are the few remaining who haven't been subsumed by the panic, but can we agree that most have? Jeffrey A. Tucker of the American Institute for Economic Research put it best in his excellent essay on July 10 titled, When will the Madness End?:

"I'm a practicing psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety disorders, paranoid delusions, and irrational fear. I've been treating this in individuals as a specialist. It's hard enough to contain these problems in normal times. What's happening now is a spread of this serious medical condition to the whole population. It can happen with anything but here we see a primal fear of disease turning into mass panic. It seems almost deliberate. It is tragic. Once this starts, it could take years to repair the psychological damage."

A group of doctors stood in Washington DC and recorded a video countering the coronavirus narrative. The video received instant attention and garnered many millions of views overnight. Overnight on Facebook it rose up to the #2 most engaged post site wide. The video was live-streamed with 185,000 viewers. It had over 17 million views before it was removed from Facebook. It's also been highly targeted for censorship and been deleted from Twitter, YouTube, and Google.

Facebook's Communication Director, Andy Stone, openly admitted to deleting the video. He says "we removed it for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19." However Andy Stone does not appear to have any medical credentials and he does not indicate what contrary information he has that proves the video is false information. In this case social media 'experts' outweigh the medical advice of actual doctors.

Tensions between the United States and China are rising as the U.S. election nears, with tit-for-tat consulate closures, new U.S. sanctions and no less than three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups prowling the seas around China. But it is the United States that has initiated each new escalation in U.S.-China relations. China's responses have been careful and proportionate, with Chinese officials such as Foreign Minister Wang Yi publicly asking the U.S. to step back from its brinkmanship to find common ground for diplomacy.

Most of the U.S. complaints about China are long-standing, from the treatment of the Uighur minority and disputes over islands and maritime borders in the South China Sea to accusations of unfair trade practices and support for protests in Hong Kong. But the answer to the "Why now?" question seems obvious: the approaching U.S. election.

Danny Russel, who was Obama's top East Asia expert in the National Security Council and then at the State Department, told the BBC that the new tensions with China are partly an effort to divert attention from Trump's bungled response to the Covid-19 pandemic and his tanking poll numbers, and that this "has a wag the dog feel to it."

Meanwhile, Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden has been going toe-to-toe with Trump and Secretary Pompeo in a potentially dangerous "tough on China" contest, which could prove difficult for the winner to walk back after the election.