Release the Kraken

[MAL]

Thank God!

Can you elaborate on that?

[HuffHall]

Look what I underlined in your post, I think it's self explanatory

[MAL]

He absolutely is partially responsible and this is where I think MAL is completely wrong, he says he ignores what Trump says and it doesn't matter just his policies well his words do matter and they have incited violence on multiple occasions now but yeah he's such a great Patriot.

Good, we do agree on something. Let me know what you think about these words and how they incited a summer of riots that killed dozens of people and did billions in damages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj1Rwlztapg

[HuffHall]

It's all ugly, 2 wrongs don't make a right, these are supposed to be our leaders and both sides are so filled with hate towards the other that's why this 2 party system is junk. Yes we may disagree on policy but we should always remember we are Americans 1st. That being said Trump is still the biggest POS of my lifetime and nothing will ever change my mind on that

[dadudaman4]

So you voted for a man and a party that are intent on destroying the basic principles of what made our country great. Here's the thing, Trump is still a billionaire POS and the country will bear the brunt of the tax and spend policies that your senile a-hole of a president and Democrats are enacting. It's a shame that our kids and grand kids are going to inherit a debt filled mess. But that's okay as long as Trump lost. Good for you.

[HuffHall]

That debt filled mess you were referring to was there long before Biden (and Obama). Don't be that guy you clown

[dadudaman4]

We're barely 2 months into Biden's presidency and already Trillions in new spending and handouts (not including the recent non covid handout) are being proposed. The Senile One and his liberal idiots in Congress are going to destroy our economy with their unrestrained spending. What part of that don't you understand?

[HuffHall]

I understand you're an idiot and a Republican shill, anything else I need to know?

[MAL]

Judge rules that Democrats cheated in Michigan, but still won't allow an audit.

Judge Rules Michigan Ballot Signature-Matching Guidance Invalid


BY LI HAI

March 17, 2021 Updated: March 17, 2021


A Michigan judge has ruled that the state’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s guidance last October relating to ballot signature verification wasn’t in compliance with the law and is invalid.

“The standards issued by defendant Benson on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching requirements amounted to a ‘rule’ that should have been promulgated in accordance with the APA,” Christopher Murray, the chief judge from the Michigan Court of Claims, ruled last week in the court order. APA refers to the state’s Administrative Procedures Act.

“And absent compliance with the APA, the ‘rule’ is invalid.”

Michigan Republican Party and Allegan County clerk Robert Genetski had filed the lawsuit on Nov. 2, 2020, against Benson and Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections.

The plaintiffs claimed that the guidance Benson issued last October had violated the APA and should be nullified. They also asked the court to declare that they have the right to request an audit of their choosing, saying the state-wide audit in November didn’t review whether signatures were properly evaluated.

On Oct. 6, 2020, Benson issued guidance titled “Absent Voter Ballot Processing: Signature Verification and Voter Notification Standards.”

The guidance stated that clerks “must perform their signature verification duties with the presumption that the voter’s application or envelope signature is his or her genuine signature.”

The guidance also said signatures “should be considered questionable” only if they differ “in multiple, significant and obvious respects from the signature on file,” according to the court order (pdf). “Whenever possible,” election officials were to resolve “slight dissimilarities” in favor of finding that the signature was valid.

According to the Michigan APA (pdf), to develop a rule, the state agencies need to go through procedures such as filing requests, public notices, impact analyses, public hearings, approval by the legislative service bureau and office, and finally, approval by a joint committee on administrative rules. The whole process might take months.

“Nowhere in this state’s election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid, nor did the Legislature require that signatures are to be accepted so long as there are any redeeming qualities in the application or return envelope signature as compared with the signature on file,” Murray pointed out.

“Policy determinations like the one at issue—which places a thumb on the scale in favor of a signature’s validity—should be made pursuant to properly promulgated rules under the APA or by the Legislature.”

However, Murray didn’t support the plaintiffs’ claim that they have the right to request an audit.

“For at least two reasons this claim is not supported,” Murray wrote in the order. “First, the constitution speaks of an audit of election results, not signature-matching procedures.”

Secondly, the statute leaves it to the Secretary of State to “prescribe the procedures for election audits” and conduct audits according to the prescribed procedures, Murray said.

“I’m glad the court sees Secretary of State Benson’s attempts at lawmaking for what they are—clear violations of her authority,” State Representative Matt Hall said in a statement.

Hall is a Republican and was chair of the state House Oversight Committee during the 2019–20 legislative term.

“This is not the role of the Secretary of State, and there is a clear process that must be respected,” Hall said.

State officials and courts, not state legislatures as required by the Constitution, illegally changing election rules and relaxing ballot-integrity protections have been among the main allegations in former President Donald Trump and his campaign’s lawsuit.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 28, 2021.
“The democrats use the China virus as an excuse to change all of the election rules without the approval of their state legislatures, making it therefore illegal,” Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 28. “It had a massive impact on the election.”

Democrats have been saying that Trump’s election fraud claims are false and his legal challenges have all been rejected by the courts. Now Murray’s ruling made an exception.

Benson’s press secretary responded to a question by The Epoch Times saying, “No comment at this time.”

[MAL]

If an illegal casts an illegal vote, is that a double negative, therefore the vote is legal?

24 More Charged in Voter-Fraud Probe, Prosecutors Say


BY ZACHARY STIEBER

March 20, 2021 Updated: March 20, 2021


Federal prosecutors in North Carolina said Friday that 24 additional people have been charged in an ongoing probe into voter fraud, including two who are accused of illegally voting in the 2016 presidential election.

Gabriela Guzman-Miguel, 26, and Jose Abraham Navarro, 42, both of Mexico, are accused to have voted despite lacking the legal status to do so, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina said in a list of defendants obtained by The Epoch Times. The list described both as aliens or immigrants.

A slew of other defendants were charged with falsely claiming U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote. Some also engaged in naturalization fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents relating to voter registration, officials said.

Defendants hailed from 15 countries, including Honduras, Iraq, and Canada. The charges date back to the fall of 2019, though the cases were just unsealed.

Those charged face jail time and fines of up to $350,000 if convicted.

Each defendant was charged separately and there are no charges of conspiracy, the prosecutor’s office said.

Robert Higdon, who headed the office until recently, had aggressively pursued illegal voting cases, subpoenaing records from the state board of elections, and 44 county boards in 2018.

The state board called the subpoena “overly broad, unreasonable, vague.” It advised North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, to quash the subpoenas.

Stein eventually directed the board to acquire records associated with approximately 789 people who had registered to vote—far less than Higdon, a Trump appointee, had sought.

Higdon in 2018 announced charges against 19 foreign nationals for voting in the 2016 election and last year another U.S. attorney in the state unveiled voter fraud charges against 19 others.

“The right to vote is a precious privilege available only to citizens of the United States. When a non-citizen votes in a federal election it serves to dilute and devalue the vote of American citizens and places the decision making authority of the American electorate in the hands of those who have no right to make those choices,” Higdon said in a previous statement.

An audit by the state board of elections after the 2016 election found 41 individuals had acknowledged voting despite not being U.S. citizens. Sixty-one others who may have voted illegally did not respond while another 34, identified in the audit, provided proof of citizenship.

“Information obtained from those who are not citizens illustrates the complexity of this work. A number of non-citizens said they were not aware that they were prohibited from voting. Interviews and evidence show that some non-citizens were misinformed about the law by individuals conducting voter registration drives or, in at least one documented case, by a local precinct official,” the audit stated.

“One registrant in her 70s has lived in the United States for more than 50 years and believed that she was a citizen because she had been married to a U.S. citizen.”

[MAL]

Does Trump get credit for almost completely eradicating the flue in 2020 world wide? After week 17 of 2020, cases of the flue world wide were reported to be statistically zero and stayed at zero for the remainder of the year...all the way through December 31st...zero cases of the flue in the fall and winter of 2020. Do you really believe that?

https://twitter.com/covid_clarity/st...46343296098306

[dadudaman4]

I understand you're an idiot and a Republican shill, anything else I need to know?

I'm a Republican and proud of it. Your comments indicate that you need to pay more attention to what is going on. Oh, I forgot, it's all okay so long as it's not Trump.

[MAL]

HCQ is effective for COVID-19 when used early: real-time meta analysis of 219 studies


•HCQ is effective for COVID-19. The probability that an ineffective treatment generated results as positive as the 219 studies to date is estimated to be 1 in 327 quadrillion (p = 0.0000000000000000031).
•Early treatment is most successful, with 100% of 28 studies reporting a positive effect (12 statistically significant in isolation) and an estimated reduction of 64% in the effect measured (death, hospitalization, etc.) using a random effects meta-analysis, RR 0.36 [0.25-0.50].
•92% of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) for early, PrEP, or PEP treatment report positive effects, the probability of this happening for an ineffective treatment is 0.0032.
•There is evidence of bias towards publishing negative results. 90% of prospective studies report positive effects, and only 75% of retrospective studies do.
•Studies from North America are 3.4 times more likely to report negative results than studies from the rest of the world combined, p = 0.00000046.
•All data to reproduce this paper and the sources are in the appendix.

The percentage of studies showing positive results was drastically different when comparing North America to the rest of the world. In North America 52.9%of the studies showed a positive results from HCQ. In the rest of the world, 86.3% of the studies showed a positive result using HCQ to fight COVID

Total	219 studies	3,381 authors	187,579 patients
Positive effects	172 studies	2,665 authors	143,098 patients

Early treatment	64% improvement	RR 0.36 [0.25-0.50]
Late treatment	26% improvement	RR 0.74 [0.69-0.80]

[MAL]

Make sure that you click on the link near the bottom. It is a chart about HCQ results world wide. It shows how all countries that used it did better than all countries that didn't. The US did better than all other countries that didn't use HCQ, but worse than all countries that did use HCQ. The link is just below the red print.

CDC DATA: 200,000 “COVID DEATHS” MAY ACTUALLY BE FLU, HEART ATTACKS, POISON, OR GUNSHOT

DECEMBER 28, 2020 Part One of Three-Part Series


Coronavirus statistics may be being inflated in a way that boggles the mind. In April Dr. Deboroah Birx of the White House Coronavirus Task Force made clear that primary-cause COVID deaths, and deaths in which COVID was merely present, would be taken as one and the same. Birx said:

“to mark it as COVID-19 infection the intent is right now that those if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19.”

The key words were “with COVID” and “COVID death.” The very fact that Birx was erasing the distinction showed that she was aware that there was one.

The government was true to its word. In making “with COVID” the same as “of COVID,” COVID totals could differ sharply from reality. At present, the COVID totals being announced by mass media, taken from the CDC, are defined as any death “involving” COVID, whether it was the primary cause of death or not.

This includes 124,000 deaths “involving” COVID who also had flu, 53,000 who had heart attacks of the kind which are mostly caused by long-term narrowing and hardening of the arteries, around 10,000 cancers, and 26,000 kidney (renal) failures.

Below: CDC page showing deaths need only “involve” COVID to be listed as a COVID death. Source: “Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19),” Table 2



Below: CDC page showing deaths in which influenza (flu) is on the death certificate. Source: “CDC: Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics”, Table 3

Source: CDC: Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics


In every case, COVID only needed to be “presumed” present, i.e. not confirmed by a positive lab test, to be counted in the total. All present COVID tests, most of which use “PCR” technology, are criticized for delivering large numbers of false positives, as high as 50% to 90%. These are the “cases” which lockdowns are now based upon.

A careful reading of the CDC table shows that the heading is labeled “All deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) U07.1” in “Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19),” Table 2. “UO7.1” is both the diagnosis and the death code used for COVID-19. Table 3 of the page “Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics”, shows “conditions contributing” to death, even though these conditions could include, as we shall see, a gunshot wound to the head.

Subtracting the “conditions” which are often the primary cause of death; flu, cardiac arrest, heart failure, and kidney failure (renal failure) from 330,000, commonly used as the figure for coronavirus deaths by the end of December, the possible COVID primary-cause-of-death figure goes down to about 130,000. The CDC notes that only 6% of the total deaths died of COVID alone, with no other co-morbid conditions. It then reveals that each patient listed had an average of 2.6 other co-morbid conditions.
COVID Deaths or Flu Deaths? Flu More Deadly Than COVID After 84


According to CDC statistics, to elderly over 84, flu is more deadly than COVID. Therefore if a patient over 84 had both COVID and flu, he or she was actually more likely to die of the flu.

Below source: Bloomberg News


COVID is a 99.4% – 99.8% survival rate disease, similar to common flu. This is a much higher survival rate than either SARS or MERS, which are two other coronaviruses, as well as Spanish Flu, Asian Flu (H2N2), or Hong Kong Flu (see below.) The Infection Mortality Rates (IFR) shown below are the number of people expected to die of a disease, per infection. The lower it is, the higher the survival rate. The survival rate is 100 minus the IFR.

Click for larger image



Source: KUSI News@KUSINews







It is true that severe cases of COVID can have serious after-effects, but this is true of any serious case of a respiratory disease, including flu.


As for ease of transmission, which some point out is a key difference between COVID and other viruses warranting extraordinary measures, it must never be forgotten that it was a handful of governors from densely populated states, starting with Andrew Cuomo, who got the sharp death spikes underway which then spread across the country, by transferring COVID patients into nursing homes.

Those transfers, whether the patients were carrying COVID or normal flu, were like deliberately setting fire to barns full of hay. Other governors were Tom Wolf of PA, Gretchen Whitmer in MI (Detroit), and NJ Governor Phil Murphy, all states were COVID deaths per capita are still in the top ten.

The timing and choice of states could not have been better to light a match and start a national panic.

About 3 million people die in the US every year, around 650,000 by heart attacks, and a similar number from cancers. To put some of the thousands of alleged COVID deaths announced each day into some sort of perspective, normally an average of about 8,000 people die each day in the US.

Medicare pays a 20% add-on for patients whose diagnosis includes COVID. Starting last Sept. 1, a lab test was required, whereas before, a clinical “presumed” COVID diagnosis sufficed.

At the same time, flu deaths seem to have all but disappeared. In 2017 – 2018, the flu season accounted for 80,000 US deaths. CDC reports under 7,000 this year.


Of great interest is the category for “Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning, and other adverse events” (10,000 of them.) This tantalizing category does not disappoint (see below.)
Source: CDC: Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics

On December 15th, it was reported that a Colorado county coroner complained to state health authorities that two of her death certificates had been added to the state’s COVID totals. The decedents had actually died of gunshot wounds.


Sky Hi News reported:

“The Grand County coroner is disputing the number of COVID-19 deaths the state is reporting for the county. Brenda Bock told county commissioners on Tuesday that the state is reporting two additional COVID-19 deaths in Grand, which she believes should not be included. Bock explained that a couple who died of gunshot wounds late last month have been included in the state’s numbers.”

However, the couple had tested positive for COVID-19 within 30 days before their deaths.

Ski Hi News reported:

“Grand County Public Health Director Brene Belew-Ladue explained that state and Centers for Disease Control reporting protocol requires that anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 within 30 days of their death be included in these numbers.” (emphasis added.)

In July, a young man in Florida was killed in a motorcycle accident, but was marked down as COVID because he had a positive test recently. The county health officer Dr. Raul Pino said that one “could actually argue that it could have been the COVID-19 that caused him to crash.”

The Colorado County coroner said:


“That might be the process, but it’s not right,”
COVID is Not 1918 Spanish Flu, But 1957 Asian Flu


It takes only a few minutes of web searching to see that present COVID numbers, even if accepted as true, do not remotely approach frequent media comparisons to the Spanish Flu of 1918, but to two other entirely overlooked pandemics in the US, the 1957 Asian Flu and the 1968 Hong Kong Flu, the latter of which, in that same summer, the country enjoyed the largest “spreader” event in US history, Woodstock.

The event might be called the greatest experiment in herd immunity ever, as 1/2 million young people jammed cheek-to-jowl sharing joints, whiskey bottles, kisses and hugs with no disastrous effects on society afterwards.

Because the US population was so much smaller, about half of today’s, only a per capita comparison of deaths with previous pandemics is illuminating. In the below chart, the orange bar represents the number of “COVID Deaths” which may have had another primary cause, such as flu, certain heart events, and kidney failure. Possibly terminal cancers would add another 10,000, but are not included.

Click for larger image

Sources: Spanish Flu deaths, Asian Flu deaths, Hong Kong Flu deaths, US population
COVID-19 is Novel But Not New


The media message hammers home the words “the novel coronavirus” without ever explaining that although this virus is novel, coronaviruses are anything but new. A former Chief Science Officer and Vice President for Pfizer and his colleagues write:

“There are at least four well characterised family members (229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1) which are endemic and cause some of the common colds we experience, especially in winter. They all have striking sequence similarity to the new coronavirus.”

The scientists say that much of the population already has some level of “T-cell” immunity from exposure to other coronaviruses.

They go on to say that, because of this prior resistance, only 15-25% of a population being infected may be sufficient to reach herd immunity. (See: “Former Chief Science Officer for Pfizer Says “Second Wave” Faked on False-Positive COVID Tests, “Pandemic is Over”)
What About Excess Deaths? Death by Lockdown


To determine if COVID deaths are just a shell game, of pushing into the COVID column other causes of death, the other question to ask is, what would be a normal number of deaths for the year? Are there many more or less than would be expected?

About 40,000 deaths are added per year as the natural result of the aging Baby Boomer demographic bulge.

A study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, the “Woolf study,” found a startling number. The doctors and scientists estimated that 20% of excess deaths over and above previous years were due not to COVID, but to the effects of the lockdowns.

As covered in Medical News Today:

“Some people who never had the virus may have died because of disruptions caused by the pandemic,” says Dr. Steven H. Woolf, the director emeritus of the Virginia university’s Center on Society and Health and first author of the study. “These include people with acute emergencies, chronic diseases like diabetes that were not properly cared for, or emotional crises that led to overdoses or suicides.”

Another widely-cited study by the Well Being Trust has estimated that 150,000 more people will have died of “deaths of despair,” suicides, drug overdoses, over the next ten years due to the “mitigation measures” enacted over the virus.

If the 20% of excess deaths figure is extrapolated, then non-COVID deaths due to despair, deferred or canceled treatment of serious conditions, and conditions made worse by worsening health due to social and physical isolation, could account for 40,000 of the 200,000 unexpected deaths, or up to 40,000 people who died who would not have otherwise.

This month the New York Times reported “40,000 extra deaths from diabetes, Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure and pneumonia” alone.

The Washington Post reported in December:

“…in a separate excess deaths analysis, the CDC estimated that since Feb. 1, between about 20,000 and 49,000 more people have died of all non-covid-19 causes than would be expected in a typical year.”

Subtracting these from 2020 excess deaths, this would make perhaps 160,000 deaths due to COVID, which is far less, in per capita terms, than the number who died in the US in the 1957 Asian Flu pandemic, which no one outside nursing home workers even knew was going on. Although up to 4 million died worldwide, 20,000 in UK, the Brussels World Fair was held in 1958 from April through October, and Chuck Berry played to a packed Apollo Theater in New York on March 7.

As now, the Asian Flu was largely an end-of-normal-lifespan disease. As now, there were age-wise statistical outliers, but the media never sought them out and magnified them to fan the flames of panic.

US Yearly Deaths
2015 2.71M
2016 2,74M
2017 2.81M
2018 2.84 M
2019 2.86M
2020 3.10M

A disturbing pattern found in the excess deaths not-due-to-COVID was that, while the median age of the COVID death worldwide is 80, the “deaths of despair” and deferred medical procedures overwhelmingly hit people in their prime. While COVID kills overwhelmingly elderly, lockdowns are killing our young people.

Even in the higher ages ranges, over 80, where COVID is hardly a death sentence depending on health, with a 90% chance of survival, isolation and loneliness among the elderly is thought to be taking a toll.

The American Association of Retired Persons reports on a daughter’s experience with her 99-year-old mother:

“Helen was confined to the second floor of her complex — where her room was located — for months. Her outdoor walks ceased, and so did her mobility. She became bedbound. Her mind, already battling dementia, deteriorated, too….

“She would have made it to well over 100 but that’s not going to happen now. … She’s collateral damage of this COVID-19 seclusion, passing away because of a broken heart.””
But Why?


Even if the official COVID death count were 100% accurate, and somehow COVID critters had developed the power to shoot guns, the per capita impact on today’s US population would be no more than one-third higher than the toll was when Chuck Berry took the stage at the Apollo in 1958. Per capita US deaths for the Spanish Flu were six times what we see for COVID.

It is easy to see that there is a drive on that does not seem proportional to a 99.8% survival rate virus, the death count of which is highly questionable, which is in the league of two previous pandemics in which absolutely nothing was closed, concerts and bars remained packed, and the world did not end. Nor even slow down.

When three US presidents rolled up their sleeves to show “See, the vaccine is okay!” – Hamlet might have come to mind: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Former Vice President and Chief Scientist of Pfizer Dr. Micheal Yeadon writes:

“There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic. I’ve never heard such nonsense talked about vaccines. You do not vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease. You also don’t set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn’t been extensively tested on human subjects.”

Why has the mainstream media and the mainstream medical establishment sold their souls to participate in the ghoulish, 24/7 psychological assault which is depriving children of their childhoods, and fostering a culture of mistrust and fear of every other human being?

Why the campaign to squash or misrepresent the potential of remedies such as hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), when even now doctors and scientists stick to their guns and say that the toll of true COVID deaths could have been lower, one fifth of the fatalities we are seeing now, according to Yale’s Dr. Harvey Risch, which would bring the pandemic, as it is, to a virtual end?

Below: Countries which use HCQ versus countries which do not. Source

((((((((Make sure that you click on this link!!!)))))))

Click for larger image

Why spend great amounts of money, as Bill Gates does through the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, to design and conduct flawed studies which ask the wrong questions and therefore get the wrong answers on HCQ?

The same Bill Gates who funded the research of the discredited professor, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, whose paper was the blueprint for the lockdowns?

Why do Youtube and Facebook aggressively censor speech which would allow citizens to themselves weigh all evidence and arguments on the broad issue of COVID? And decide for themselves, as intended in a free speech society, what is true and what is not?

Distinguished scientists have said that coronaviruses do not behave in multiple waves, and that what we are seeing in “second wave” COVID deaths may be the flu season rolled into other mis-categorized deaths to create a second wave of COVID.

As for vaccines, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of the slain president, Bobby’s son, and safe-vaccination activist and founder of Children’s Health Defense, writes:
“Scientists first attempted to develop coronavirus vaccines after China’s 2002 SARS-CoV outbreak. Teams of US & foreign scientists vaccinated animals with the four most promising vaccines. At first, the experiment seemed successful as all the animals developed a robust antibody response to coronavirus. However, when the scientists exposed the vaccinated animals to the wild virus, the results were horrifying. Vaccinated animals suffered hyper-immune responses including inflammation throughout their bodies, especially in their lungs. Researchers had seen this same “enhanced immune response” during human testing of the failed RSV vaccine tests in the 1960s. Two children died.”

[oldpioneer]

Does Trump get credit for almost completely eradicating the flue in 2020 world wide? After week 17 of 2020, cases of the flue world wide were reported to be statistically zero and stayed at zero for the remainder of the year...all the way through December 31st...zero cases of the flue in the fall and winter of 2020. Do you really believe that?

https://twitter.com/covid_clarity/st...46343296098306

I do not mean to interrupt with your cut and paste fest. You have spoken the truth in your own words. Has the transmission of the common flu gone down since the pandemic? Oh, Absolutely positively! Why? Because some people have been heeding the warning...They are two different things but why would wearing a mask in public places, in someway increase the incidence of the common flu?