Topic: WorldNetDaily
If there is a study that touches on COVID vaccines or face masks, it's pretty much a certainty that any reporting WorldNetDaily does on it will be highly misleading or false in a way that falsely demonizes them and ignore flaws in the study that have been identified by others. For one recent study, WND started off with an April 23 article it stole from the Daily Mail, with the provocative claim that "Face masks may raise the risk of stillbirths, testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline in children." This was so alarming -- and so clickbait-y -- that Bob Unruh cranked out his own article on the study on May 10:
A new study suggests that those COVID masks, pushed on the American public by the likes of Biden medical adviser Anthony Fauci and multiple state and local officials, actually caused problems with high blood pressure.
And they "reduced thinking ability."
And "increased respiratory problems."
And more.
Essentially, they were having people "effectively poisoning oneself by breathing in too much carbon dioxide."
"What can breathing too much carbon dioxide do to you? The authors write that 'at levels between 0.05% and 0.5% CO2,' one might experience an 'increased heart rate, increased blood pressure and overall increased circulation with the symptoms of headache, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, dizziness, rhinitis, and dry cough.” Rates above 0.5 percent can lead to 'reduced cognitive performance, impaired decision-making and reduced speed of cognitive solutions.' Beyond 1 percent, 'the harmful effects include respiratory acidosis, metabolic stress, increased blood flow and decreased exercise tolerance,'" explained a City Journal report.
It was based on a study from Germany that quantifies "the harms" from wearing masks.
You will not be surprised to learn that the study's results are being overstated and may not actually hold up. As a fact-checker found:
Experts told us the article is flawed.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the review article relied partly on studies of animals that are chronically exposed to carbon dioxide.
Those studies are not applicable to humans intermittently wearing face masks, he said.
Jeremy Howard, a scientist at the University of San Francisco, said the review article overestimates by 60 times the amount of carbon dioxide people breathe when wearing masks.
[...]
Scientists have found little evidence that the kind of masks worn by schoolchildren negatively affect oxygen or carbon dioxide levels. Scientists also say contamination levels on masks are no worse than contamination levels on other common objects.
Studies have not found significant health problems even from prolonged mask wearing.
But Unruh cares about fearmongering, not facts, so he uncritically repeated partisan claims from the right-wing City Journal that "Evidence continues to mount that mask mandates were perhaps the worst public-health intervention in modern American history" and that wearing masks "ignored centuries of Western norms, the best medical evidence, and common sense."
