The Foegen Effect: Study Shows Mask Mandates Increased Covid Death Rates

[XLFD]

Despite the fear of Covid-19 being mostly behind us, in the last three weeks around Michigan many people are being asked again to mask up to 'protect' themselves.  Whether it is MI schools reinstating mask mandates, the CDC strongly urging residents of 22 MI counties to mask up, or auto companies demanding mask wearing, medical professionals are trying to cover up everyone's face once again, because it worked so well the last couple of years in keeping us from dying from Covid-19.

Or did it?  Research published recently looking at statistics in Kansas seem to show that Covid-19 fatality rates in counties that adopted mask mandates were significantly higher than it was in mask-optional counties.  Results from this study strongly suggest that mask mandates actually caused about 1.5 times the number of deaths or ∼50% more deaths compared to no mask mandates.  The study offers ten other studies that show similar results that describe the "Foegen Effect", named immodestly after the German doctor Zacharias Foegen who authored this study.

The Foegen Effect happens to masked folks when virions that enter or those coughed out in droplets are retained in the facemask tissue, and after quick evaporation of the droplets, hyper-condensed droplets or pure virions (virions not inside a droplet) are re-inhaled from a very short distance during inspiration.  Further proving or disproving the “Foegen effect” should be a priority to public health scientists in future studies.

The following acknowledgment by Dr. Foegen has been most recently shared here and has not come close to being disproved since the study's publication in February.  

"It took a long time, but my study on masks has finally appeared in the prestigious journal Medicine. What is my study about?

It is about whether masks decrease case fatality from COVID-19 (because less viral material is transmitted) or increase it. Increase sounds illogical? Ask yourself if you would wear the mask of a Covid patient. You probably wouldn’t, otherwise you could become infected by inhaling the viruses he or she breathed into the mask.

My study, based on the U.S. state of Kansas, provides the answer: case mortality was significantly lower in counties without mandatory masks. Mandatory masking increased case mortality there by 85%. Even after factoring in the reduced number of cases due to masks, the numbers still remain 52% higher. Over 95% of this effect can only be attributed to COVID-19, so it is not CO₂, bacteria or fungi under the mask.

The reason for this is what I call the Foegen effect: deep re-inhalation of condensed droplets or pure virions which were trapped in the mask as droplets can worsen the prognosis. Each of these steps has been documented in the literature.

This effect has now even been demonstrated in animal models. Further studies in humans comparing mask versus helmet or nasal tube show the same result.

Two other, even larger evaluations show the same effect on the case fatality rate. A peer-reviewed study in the journal Cureus shows that there is no association between mask compliance and case numbers in Europe, but there is a statistically significant positive association between mask compliance and deaths. This means: more mask use, same number of cases, but more deaths.

A peer-reviewed study by Adjodah et. al. analyses the effect of mask mandates on cases and mortality (but not case fatality rate) in the USA on a pre-post-basis, and finds that after the lifting of a mask mandate, cases rise but mortality does not, which effectively means that lifting a mask mandate lowers the case fatality rate. Conversely, the implementation of a mask mandate increases case fatality rate.

My study is open access and you can find it here – the PDF version (available via the download button in the left bar) is particularly recommended for its helpful layout."

Now that it appears that mask usage increases fatality rates for viruses like Covid-19 through the Foegen Effect, maybe our school boards, health departments, and the CDC should all rethink the wisdom of mandating masks when it is likely to do more harm than good. 

[Willy]

Thanks for the research X. Of all the brain dead mandates and lock downs forced on people the uselessness of wearing a  mask should have been the first thing that most people should have figured out by just using them for a day.  All it took was common sense and a little bit of research. However people went along like sheep and obediently obeyed their masters. I don't know how many times we debated the uselessness of masking here on this forum. We even cited experts saying early on how benign mask wearing was on the spread of Covid and how harmful their affects on the wearers could be.  We even knew at the early stages of Covid that children were barely affected by the virus and that masks for them were totally unnecessary. So what is to be done with a Country and World full of ignorant people who blindly do as they are told. This is why, no matter how much freedom loving people want to stay free, they will always succumb to bad and false information due to their refusal to crawl out of their comfortable ignorant bliss. 

[XLFD]

Recognizing that putting masks healthy people was not healthy was not too difficult, about as difficult of noting that allowing mail-in voting and drop boxes was not healthy for election integrity in Michigan.

The four Ludington School Board members who forced masks on our schoolchildren for six months this school year will not soon forget how they endangered our children, for I will never let them forget until their political career is over.