She couldn't be more wrong that in a nation mired in rape culture, it doesn't matter who is president. There are thousands of people… Probably millions… Across the nation who are reliving their formative traumas knowing that he is coming back into office. Those of us who grew up in repressive authoritarian households with a delusional figurehead are triggered almost beyond the point of being able to function. This is no exaggeration. And I say this as a highly privileged white woman. It must be almost unendurably terrifying for the many people who don't have my level of privilege.
One of the many things I appreciate about you is that you never gloss over or dismiss how hard things are for people. I mean, for anyone to say that a week is long enough to recover from the news that the country is going to be destroyed… Objectively batshit crazy and cruel, but this particularly egregious example aside, you are always evenhanded and alert to the ways in which people are hurting. I feel like you're clear that bearing witness is an act of service even if you are unable to personally relieve that suffering. And I think dismissal of suffering is the inability to stand in the discomfort of bearing witness. So. Thanks for standing there… On your ice floe.
As far as I can tell Substack doesn't let a person edit comments… I meant above that her cruelty is egregious and you're calling it out is also an act of witness-bearing for the people she is insulting. I don't think I was very clear about that
I understood you and agree substack should have an edit button. I have dyslexia late in life and have found myself forgetting the word 'not' in the most vital part of my sentences at times. I have to be very vigilant on substack to reread. I can be lazy, but I also know sometimes when I do reread what I wrote, I have still missed the obvious.
Elissa, I commented to you on Facebook last week before the election that having you in my corner has been instrumental to my survival and I can tell you that since last Tuesday, that feeling has only grown.
I have watched people say things like "it's going to be fine" "it was fine the first time" and make light of the impending doom. And with my big, deep mother heart I scream back at them "it wasn't fine. It isn't fine.".
I am a heart broken mother of 4 biracial Jewish kids, who now has to make good on my promise to my husband that we will move to Canada - his homeland - because Trump won and we cannot raise our children here. My soul is being crushed. It's as if someone has died and that someone is the last bit of fucking safety our democracy has.
My husband, a Canadian, has lots of friends commentating "what's the big deal" and he is dumbfounded. He finally understands what privileged people sound like. Our lives are ones of sheer terror at the moment as we try to plan next steps, how to fight, how to stay, how to protect our family. And others sit around joking that it's tantamount to a mental health episode (which is problematic in its own awful ways).
So again, thank you for being in my corners. As a Jew, a woman, a mom, a human living on planet earth. Thank you for not collapsing into a spineless wretch as so many others seem to be doing this past week.
The work is now. We will work and fight and we will keep fucking pushing.
Ditto re: Eve Barlow. I just killed my subscription. I found her substack to be HIGHLY offensive and OFF. And Eve don’t be so arrogant as to tell us upfront that its ok to feel offended, Bitch, I don’t need your permission to be offended or negatively shocked.
Your analysis and commentary Elissa is spot on.
But for myself, I feel so enraged and deeply disappointed that I cannot gag her down any more - so to speak.
I’ve appreciated her enormously, her knowledge and views, her brilliance, her rugged bravery, writing etc. I’ve learned a lot from her.
But I’m done.
Thank you for calling her out this round with clear cut examples and reasons.
I hought I already replied to you here, sorry I’m a tech zero.
I am very unwell now- see my FB page, top post. But I am interested but would need to have a phone call first. I don’t have any material or even in my head…that is Jewish themed… I’m not active in that respect so I would need your help / input and to discuss possible ideas….
I do have a strong voice (female ferocity and growing a female warrior’s heart is my calling so to speak) but its not specific to being Jewish… or at least it hasn’t been… ?!
I also have stories galore.
If you’re amenable let’s have a phone conversation but I must first get past next 2 weeks m.
So true. I felt a similar way months ago when another Substacker I follow (and pay for) called Future of Jewish basically called Jewish Democrat stupid.
I agree with the ice floe imagery. It was hard enough to find a tiny group of Zionists who are also progressive in US politics. But now everyone is turning on one another about whose "fault" it was that the election turned out how it did, or whether it's time to flee or not. It's a time we could feel really alone, so thank you for what you do!
Ok, I’m a left of center democrat who would never vote for trump. I worked in an abortion clinic where the doctor was murdered. But over half of this is way off. The people who sell this are the same ones yelling that Jews are genocidal. I think we all need to do our own fact checking. Eve is right because most of what you wrote is not. It makes me annoyed to have to defend trump but the truth is important. I’m not trolling, would love to figure out how to discuss these issues with evidence.
If you would like to have a serious discussion where we both present real evidence, we can go through this together. I am a public school librarian and think it’s important we don’t just throw accusations at each other. I can spend all day gathering evidence and I will also read what you send because I want to be informed and if I am wrong about something, I want to change my stance. And at 50, my memory is not quite what it used to be. That said, without rereading and off the top of my head:
1. Liz Cheney-You can google and watch what he said on this one but he was clearly making an anti-Cheney war mongering statement by saying she wouldn’t be so quick to send young people to war if she was the one with the guns pointed at her. This is something I probably said myself about her father.
2. Abortion-I wish it weren’t, but it’s in the state’s hands now and Kamala could not have changed that.
3. Masks-there is no good evidence that masks even slow the spread of respiratory viruses in communities and no acknowledgment of the extensive harms it caused.
4. RFK-For reference, myself, husband, and children are fully vaxxed including for Covid. I do not know much about RFK but I do know he is pointing out egregious conflicts of interest in our food and healthcare that most politicians support. He’s right that we need to get the money out of the people writing the guidelines for healthcare. It’s not a conspiracy theory, this is what is actually happening and why people want RFK: 50% of the FDA budget comes from pharmaceutical companies. 40% of the ADA’s (American Diabetes Association) comes from pharmaceutical companies that create diabetes treatments and the ADA received millions from coke and cadbury chocolates.
50% of the people who write the endocrine guidelines have severe conflicts of interest with industry. Nearly 80% of medical school budgets are underwritten by the pharmaceutical industry. USDA dietary guidelines, 95% have significant conflicts of interest with food and pharma. Scientists should not be able to go back and forth from pharmaceutical companies and the CDC. The food chemical industry is largely unregulated and our food is covered in chemicals that are harmful to human health. These chemicals are illegal in Europe and widely used in the United States.
I don’t want to reread and write more without footnoting, but I can also say that I read Project 2025 and was horrified by the difference between what it said and what journalists reported it said. Journalistic integrity is essential to democracy. Project 2025 is a conservative document and I don’t agree with most of it, but I want us to fight it with a free and honest press. If I am remembering what you wrote, a lot of it was from what the press reported on project 2025 (I could be wrong about that I read a lot of substacks).
Anyway, I would not have answered if I did not respect you and I think it would benefit every one (including myself) if we went through our claims, backed them up with evidence, and considered the counter evidence.
1. Liz Cheney aside, are you seriously arguing that he doesn't stoke violence against all kinds of people? He literally refers to those convicted of violence on January 6 as political prisoners. He wouldn't interfere when the crowd tried to hang his VP. He told the Proud Boys to stand by from the national stage. You think electing him is rejecting hate? This is patently delusional.
2. See point #4.
3. You are DEAD WRONG about masks. But don't take my word for it. An internationally renowned infectious disease expert will be by later to disabuse you of this very dangerous idea.
4. RFK Jr has said there are no safe or effective vaccines, that there’s a case to be made for the idea that Covid was engineered to spare Jews and the Chinese. He also said he would sign a FEDERAL abortion ban at 12 weeks. This is who you want in charge of public and women's health? If you fear conflicts of interest, can you find someone else who agrees with that who isn't a batshit power-mongering sellout?
I'm glad you respect me, truly. But if you want to spend extensive time making alternate points, you might consider writing a substack of your own.
So you're not interested in fact checking yourself at all? Trump gained a significant amount of voters in pretty much every group but white people making over one hundred thousand a year and people with postgraduate degrees. That doesn't make you curious to look deeper into the issues? That maybe they are experiencing it differently than elite white people are telling us they are experiencing it? I am not going to assume that the large numbers of latinos, native americans, and even Black men that switched party allegiance to vote for him are either stupid or bigots. That goes against every value I hold as a democrat. So I started researching my assumptions and realized they aren't all true. Would I go back and vote for Trump if I could? No, I still wouldn't vote for him. But with the absolute lack of empathy or desire for truth I'm seeing after this election by my "team," I'll be staying loyal to the values that made me a democrat but will only support Democrats again when they do the same. I obviously can't stop you from sticking with your accusations that you don't want to back up. And I would love to substack with a group of Democrats and Republicans where we actually research our claims, but I'm not sure I could find more democrats who are interested. They prefer to demonize 73 million human beings. I honestly don't get it.
That's not true at all. He didn't gain Black women. He didn't gain Jewish women. The overwhelming majority of Black Americans and Jews reject him. And believing the gains he got are due to some redeeming qualities instead of a thousand other factors is a theory I will never entertain. I know evil when I see it.
But for the sake of everyone else reading this, an infectious disease specialist has addressed your misinformation about masks and medical conflicts of interest below.
Both geographic analysis and exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN, as well as the VoteCast study done by NORC in partnership with the Associated Press says he did make gains with Black women and Jews.
I am Dr. Ellen Wald, a pediatrician with specialty training in Infectious diseases, which I have practiced for 50 years. I was very involved with the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on children and the community.
There is ample documentation of the effectiveness of masking (see Word document below) with regard to the circulation of respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV2. I have attached two articles and three titles to the Word document that represent some of that evidence. A compelling piece of information though is the graph (2nd page of doc). On the horizontal axis of this graph is time and on the vertical axis is the prevalence of community respiratory viruses. The many different colors seen on the left side of the graph before March 2020 represent the usual respiratory viruses that circulate each year. We then see an abrupt decrease in the circulation of all viruses except rhinovirus, which is shown in the yellow. Rhinoviruses are spread more effectively by hand transmission rather than respiratory spread. The dark green represents SARS-CoV2. The near complete disappearance of these many respiratory viruses (after March 2020) was attributable to both masking and distancing. As masking and other non-pharmaceutical measures were abandoned in the latter part of 2021 we see that the respiratory viruses start to make a comeback.
Just one more word about masks. The medical community has used them for about a hundred years – to protect the patients in the operating room from bacteria that might be shed by their physicians, and to protect physicians from infections that patients have (like tuberculosis, SARS, influenza) that might be spread to them. Masks work if they are of good quality and are used properly. They must cover both the nose and the mouth.
I have been associated with 4 medical schools during the last 50 years. None of them have been underwritten in any way by the pharmaceutical industry. The health systems associated with medical schools frequently participate in research funded by the pharmaceutical industry which is absolutely necessary to gather data regarding the effectiveness of various therapeutic agents. But even then, pharma is a smaller component of the research funding than federal agencies such as NIH. Their money underwrites the performance of those studies. Sometimes there are other very beneficial research collaborations between industry and medical schools which helps advance technology – this is not underwriting.
I have also attached (from National Geographic) a comprehensive article on all the alleged harms of masking which provides evidence that there are no substantial harms to breathing (from build up of CO2), language development or mental health. The real conclusion is that if masks keep kids in school rather than at home, the potential handicaps/deficits associated with wearing masks can be overcome.
Here are the attachments as links for your review: I hope they come through. If not I can try to post an alternate way.
cash-goldwassermasks.pdf
butlermasks.pdfEffectiveness of Masks
effectiveness of masks.docx
Do masks really harm kids_ Here's what the science says..html
Thank you Dr. Ellen!!!! I am an RN who worked all aspects of critical care, emergency medicine, open heart and all kinds of infections as you can imagine from a 40 yr career. Masks imo are the number one line of defense in my profession. Can someone move their mask accidentally and a pt cough of them at the same time? Yes. Anything is possible, but I am 100% sure that wearing a mask was what kept me healthy and well in a very long career that I hardly ever missed work for colds, flu, or infections of any kind. Maybe I was lucky or maybe I did what we have always done. Follow the guidelines we were taught in school and in the hospital settings.
Your studies didn’t come through and honestly that’s what I’m interested in because I have been following the studies and have seen no good quality evidence that they work. And that’s after I read the analysis of many scientists. And my lived experience as a public school teacher during masking and the hundreds of conversations I had with students about it during that time makes me distrust any “expert” that dismisses the harms. Maybe the fact that students spent a year “feeling unknown” because their teachers couldn’t recognize them isn’t considered a harm by doctors but I can assure you it is a harm. And I’m sorry, but I started this conversation because I respected Elise. She is not willing to engage so I will be unsubscribing but thank you for your time.
I agree with you about Eve Barlow. I unsubscribed last week. She was bringing me down when I wanted support. I feel supported by you and appreciate you so much. I’m glad I’m able to comment again to let you know.
I find Eve Barlow problematic and stopped reading her shortly after I began following her content. It’s also rustrating to see Jewish content providers on instagram equivocating about trump because maybe at one point in the past his cabinet pick said something supportive about Israel, as if they forgot they support Israel for the evangelical vote or they hate Muslims and don’t care about Jewish people.
Jewish people need to stand firm against Trump. We must be unwavering in this regard, but of course we all won’t. I think when the anti Jewish violence we witnessed in Amsterdam comes to America, one of two things will happen, Trump violates the Constitution to punish the attackers and he will gain even more Jewish support, or he will do nothing as punishment for the lack of votes he received from us. Either way it will divide us further.
I’m in a grim state of mind this morning, it’s difficult to see any good outcomes right now.
I also think it's suicidal to rely on the likes of a man as fickle, impulse-driven, and so obviously out for no one but himself as Trump is. They ignore all the evil and Nazism he courts and cling to moves he's made to woo Evangelicals. That shiny golden calf is going to trample them.
She couldn't be more wrong that in a nation mired in rape culture, it doesn't matter who is president. There are thousands of people… Probably millions… Across the nation who are reliving their formative traumas knowing that he is coming back into office. Those of us who grew up in repressive authoritarian households with a delusional figurehead are triggered almost beyond the point of being able to function. This is no exaggeration. And I say this as a highly privileged white woman. It must be almost unendurably terrifying for the many people who don't have my level of privilege.
One of the many things I appreciate about you is that you never gloss over or dismiss how hard things are for people. I mean, for anyone to say that a week is long enough to recover from the news that the country is going to be destroyed… Objectively batshit crazy and cruel, but this particularly egregious example aside, you are always evenhanded and alert to the ways in which people are hurting. I feel like you're clear that bearing witness is an act of service even if you are unable to personally relieve that suffering. And I think dismissal of suffering is the inability to stand in the discomfort of bearing witness. So. Thanks for standing there… On your ice floe.
As far as I can tell Substack doesn't let a person edit comments… I meant above that her cruelty is egregious and you're calling it out is also an act of witness-bearing for the people she is insulting. I don't think I was very clear about that
I understood you and agree substack should have an edit button. I have dyslexia late in life and have found myself forgetting the word 'not' in the most vital part of my sentences at times. I have to be very vigilant on substack to reread. I can be lazy, but I also know sometimes when I do reread what I wrote, I have still missed the obvious.
You’re spot on
Elissa, I commented to you on Facebook last week before the election that having you in my corner has been instrumental to my survival and I can tell you that since last Tuesday, that feeling has only grown.
I have watched people say things like "it's going to be fine" "it was fine the first time" and make light of the impending doom. And with my big, deep mother heart I scream back at them "it wasn't fine. It isn't fine.".
I am a heart broken mother of 4 biracial Jewish kids, who now has to make good on my promise to my husband that we will move to Canada - his homeland - because Trump won and we cannot raise our children here. My soul is being crushed. It's as if someone has died and that someone is the last bit of fucking safety our democracy has.
My husband, a Canadian, has lots of friends commentating "what's the big deal" and he is dumbfounded. He finally understands what privileged people sound like. Our lives are ones of sheer terror at the moment as we try to plan next steps, how to fight, how to stay, how to protect our family. And others sit around joking that it's tantamount to a mental health episode (which is problematic in its own awful ways).
So again, thank you for being in my corners. As a Jew, a woman, a mom, a human living on planet earth. Thank you for not collapsing into a spineless wretch as so many others seem to be doing this past week.
The work is now. We will work and fight and we will keep fucking pushing.
Thank you so much for this. My whole heart is with your family.
Ditto re: Eve Barlow. I just killed my subscription. I found her substack to be HIGHLY offensive and OFF. And Eve don’t be so arrogant as to tell us upfront that its ok to feel offended, Bitch, I don’t need your permission to be offended or negatively shocked.
Your analysis and commentary Elissa is spot on.
But for myself, I feel so enraged and deeply disappointed that I cannot gag her down any more - so to speak.
I’ve appreciated her enormously, her knowledge and views, her brilliance, her rugged bravery, writing etc. I’ve learned a lot from her.
But I’m done.
Thank you for calling her out this round with clear cut examples and reasons.
Xo
I'm trying my best this year to call other Jews in instead of out.
Meanwhile, please send me any writing of your own you might want to publish. We need YOUR voice.
I hought I already replied to you here, sorry I’m a tech zero.
I am very unwell now- see my FB page, top post. But I am interested but would need to have a phone call first. I don’t have any material or even in my head…that is Jewish themed… I’m not active in that respect so I would need your help / input and to discuss possible ideas….
I do have a strong voice (female ferocity and growing a female warrior’s heart is my calling so to speak) but its not specific to being Jewish… or at least it hasn’t been… ?!
I also have stories galore.
If you’re amenable let’s have a phone conversation but I must first get past next 2 weeks m.
I’m exhausted and lost a bit more weight….
Thank you again for this issue and your insights!
Xo
So true. I felt a similar way months ago when another Substacker I follow (and pay for) called Future of Jewish basically called Jewish Democrat stupid.
I stopped following them a while ago for similar reasons.
I feel the same way.
I agree with the ice floe imagery. It was hard enough to find a tiny group of Zionists who are also progressive in US politics. But now everyone is turning on one another about whose "fault" it was that the election turned out how it did, or whether it's time to flee or not. It's a time we could feel really alone, so thank you for what you do!
Ok, I’m a left of center democrat who would never vote for trump. I worked in an abortion clinic where the doctor was murdered. But over half of this is way off. The people who sell this are the same ones yelling that Jews are genocidal. I think we all need to do our own fact checking. Eve is right because most of what you wrote is not. It makes me annoyed to have to defend trump but the truth is important. I’m not trolling, would love to figure out how to discuss these issues with evidence.
Which part of what I wrote is false?
If you would like to have a serious discussion where we both present real evidence, we can go through this together. I am a public school librarian and think it’s important we don’t just throw accusations at each other. I can spend all day gathering evidence and I will also read what you send because I want to be informed and if I am wrong about something, I want to change my stance. And at 50, my memory is not quite what it used to be. That said, without rereading and off the top of my head:
1. Liz Cheney-You can google and watch what he said on this one but he was clearly making an anti-Cheney war mongering statement by saying she wouldn’t be so quick to send young people to war if she was the one with the guns pointed at her. This is something I probably said myself about her father.
2. Abortion-I wish it weren’t, but it’s in the state’s hands now and Kamala could not have changed that.
3. Masks-there is no good evidence that masks even slow the spread of respiratory viruses in communities and no acknowledgment of the extensive harms it caused.
4. RFK-For reference, myself, husband, and children are fully vaxxed including for Covid. I do not know much about RFK but I do know he is pointing out egregious conflicts of interest in our food and healthcare that most politicians support. He’s right that we need to get the money out of the people writing the guidelines for healthcare. It’s not a conspiracy theory, this is what is actually happening and why people want RFK: 50% of the FDA budget comes from pharmaceutical companies. 40% of the ADA’s (American Diabetes Association) comes from pharmaceutical companies that create diabetes treatments and the ADA received millions from coke and cadbury chocolates.
50% of the people who write the endocrine guidelines have severe conflicts of interest with industry. Nearly 80% of medical school budgets are underwritten by the pharmaceutical industry. USDA dietary guidelines, 95% have significant conflicts of interest with food and pharma. Scientists should not be able to go back and forth from pharmaceutical companies and the CDC. The food chemical industry is largely unregulated and our food is covered in chemicals that are harmful to human health. These chemicals are illegal in Europe and widely used in the United States.
I don’t want to reread and write more without footnoting, but I can also say that I read Project 2025 and was horrified by the difference between what it said and what journalists reported it said. Journalistic integrity is essential to democracy. Project 2025 is a conservative document and I don’t agree with most of it, but I want us to fight it with a free and honest press. If I am remembering what you wrote, a lot of it was from what the press reported on project 2025 (I could be wrong about that I read a lot of substacks).
Anyway, I would not have answered if I did not respect you and I think it would benefit every one (including myself) if we went through our claims, backed them up with evidence, and considered the counter evidence.
1. Liz Cheney aside, are you seriously arguing that he doesn't stoke violence against all kinds of people? He literally refers to those convicted of violence on January 6 as political prisoners. He wouldn't interfere when the crowd tried to hang his VP. He told the Proud Boys to stand by from the national stage. You think electing him is rejecting hate? This is patently delusional.
2. See point #4.
3. You are DEAD WRONG about masks. But don't take my word for it. An internationally renowned infectious disease expert will be by later to disabuse you of this very dangerous idea.
4. RFK Jr has said there are no safe or effective vaccines, that there’s a case to be made for the idea that Covid was engineered to spare Jews and the Chinese. He also said he would sign a FEDERAL abortion ban at 12 weeks. This is who you want in charge of public and women's health? If you fear conflicts of interest, can you find someone else who agrees with that who isn't a batshit power-mongering sellout?
I'm glad you respect me, truly. But if you want to spend extensive time making alternate points, you might consider writing a substack of your own.
So you're not interested in fact checking yourself at all? Trump gained a significant amount of voters in pretty much every group but white people making over one hundred thousand a year and people with postgraduate degrees. That doesn't make you curious to look deeper into the issues? That maybe they are experiencing it differently than elite white people are telling us they are experiencing it? I am not going to assume that the large numbers of latinos, native americans, and even Black men that switched party allegiance to vote for him are either stupid or bigots. That goes against every value I hold as a democrat. So I started researching my assumptions and realized they aren't all true. Would I go back and vote for Trump if I could? No, I still wouldn't vote for him. But with the absolute lack of empathy or desire for truth I'm seeing after this election by my "team," I'll be staying loyal to the values that made me a democrat but will only support Democrats again when they do the same. I obviously can't stop you from sticking with your accusations that you don't want to back up. And I would love to substack with a group of Democrats and Republicans where we actually research our claims, but I'm not sure I could find more democrats who are interested. They prefer to demonize 73 million human beings. I honestly don't get it.
That's not true at all. He didn't gain Black women. He didn't gain Jewish women. The overwhelming majority of Black Americans and Jews reject him. And believing the gains he got are due to some redeeming qualities instead of a thousand other factors is a theory I will never entertain. I know evil when I see it.
But for the sake of everyone else reading this, an infectious disease specialist has addressed your misinformation about masks and medical conflicts of interest below.
Both geographic analysis and exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN, as well as the VoteCast study done by NORC in partnership with the Associated Press says he did make gains with Black women and Jews.
I am Dr. Ellen Wald, a pediatrician with specialty training in Infectious diseases, which I have practiced for 50 years. I was very involved with the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on children and the community.
There is ample documentation of the effectiveness of masking (see Word document below) with regard to the circulation of respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV2. I have attached two articles and three titles to the Word document that represent some of that evidence. A compelling piece of information though is the graph (2nd page of doc). On the horizontal axis of this graph is time and on the vertical axis is the prevalence of community respiratory viruses. The many different colors seen on the left side of the graph before March 2020 represent the usual respiratory viruses that circulate each year. We then see an abrupt decrease in the circulation of all viruses except rhinovirus, which is shown in the yellow. Rhinoviruses are spread more effectively by hand transmission rather than respiratory spread. The dark green represents SARS-CoV2. The near complete disappearance of these many respiratory viruses (after March 2020) was attributable to both masking and distancing. As masking and other non-pharmaceutical measures were abandoned in the latter part of 2021 we see that the respiratory viruses start to make a comeback.
Just one more word about masks. The medical community has used them for about a hundred years – to protect the patients in the operating room from bacteria that might be shed by their physicians, and to protect physicians from infections that patients have (like tuberculosis, SARS, influenza) that might be spread to them. Masks work if they are of good quality and are used properly. They must cover both the nose and the mouth.
I have been associated with 4 medical schools during the last 50 years. None of them have been underwritten in any way by the pharmaceutical industry. The health systems associated with medical schools frequently participate in research funded by the pharmaceutical industry which is absolutely necessary to gather data regarding the effectiveness of various therapeutic agents. But even then, pharma is a smaller component of the research funding than federal agencies such as NIH. Their money underwrites the performance of those studies. Sometimes there are other very beneficial research collaborations between industry and medical schools which helps advance technology – this is not underwriting.
I have also attached (from National Geographic) a comprehensive article on all the alleged harms of masking which provides evidence that there are no substantial harms to breathing (from build up of CO2), language development or mental health. The real conclusion is that if masks keep kids in school rather than at home, the potential handicaps/deficits associated with wearing masks can be overcome.
Here are the attachments as links for your review: I hope they come through. If not I can try to post an alternate way.
cash-goldwassermasks.pdf
butlermasks.pdfEffectiveness of Masks
effectiveness of masks.docx
Do masks really harm kids_ Here's what the science says..html
Thank you Dr. Ellen!!!! I am an RN who worked all aspects of critical care, emergency medicine, open heart and all kinds of infections as you can imagine from a 40 yr career. Masks imo are the number one line of defense in my profession. Can someone move their mask accidentally and a pt cough of them at the same time? Yes. Anything is possible, but I am 100% sure that wearing a mask was what kept me healthy and well in a very long career that I hardly ever missed work for colds, flu, or infections of any kind. Maybe I was lucky or maybe I did what we have always done. Follow the guidelines we were taught in school and in the hospital settings.
Your studies didn’t come through and honestly that’s what I’m interested in because I have been following the studies and have seen no good quality evidence that they work. And that’s after I read the analysis of many scientists. And my lived experience as a public school teacher during masking and the hundreds of conversations I had with students about it during that time makes me distrust any “expert” that dismisses the harms. Maybe the fact that students spent a year “feeling unknown” because their teachers couldn’t recognize them isn’t considered a harm by doctors but I can assure you it is a harm. And I’m sorry, but I started this conversation because I respected Elise. She is not willing to engage so I will be unsubscribing but thank you for your time.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8892938/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37906187/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/do-masks-really-harm-kids-heres-what-the-science-says
How much respect could you have if you don't even know my name? Take good care.
Here are her articles:
I stopped reading Eve many months ago, precisely because she seemed to have lost her moral compass when it came to anyone but our own tribe.
I really hope it won't come to that. But I can imagine how it could
As an aside, I am so glad I found your Substack very soon thereafter!
I agree with you about Eve Barlow. I unsubscribed last week. She was bringing me down when I wanted support. I feel supported by you and appreciate you so much. I’m glad I’m able to comment again to let you know.
I'm so glad too!
I find Eve Barlow problematic and stopped reading her shortly after I began following her content. It’s also rustrating to see Jewish content providers on instagram equivocating about trump because maybe at one point in the past his cabinet pick said something supportive about Israel, as if they forgot they support Israel for the evangelical vote or they hate Muslims and don’t care about Jewish people.
Jewish people need to stand firm against Trump. We must be unwavering in this regard, but of course we all won’t. I think when the anti Jewish violence we witnessed in Amsterdam comes to America, one of two things will happen, Trump violates the Constitution to punish the attackers and he will gain even more Jewish support, or he will do nothing as punishment for the lack of votes he received from us. Either way it will divide us further.
I’m in a grim state of mind this morning, it’s difficult to see any good outcomes right now.
I also think it's suicidal to rely on the likes of a man as fickle, impulse-driven, and so obviously out for no one but himself as Trump is. They ignore all the evil and Nazism he courts and cling to moves he's made to woo Evangelicals. That shiny golden calf is going to trample them.
Thanks Alesia. I have great personal experiences with masking as well. If you use them, they work.