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@Pat No saying 100% of those cases were preventable is a lie. Wearing a mask doesnt make you immune. Even if all those people wore masks some portion, likely a large portion, would have still been infected.
At best you can claim it **might** have reduced the number. Even that is debatable, but at least reasonable.
@Pat In fact I just checked, and the data would suggest that mask wearing had virtually no impact on the frequency of new cases.
One would expect, that if enforced mask policies reduced new infections, then 2 days after the mask policy was relaxed the number of cases (which were decreasing) would reduce decreasing, and potentially being to increase, which would worsen up to the 14 day mark at which point we would see a new upward trend, or at least, a change in the trend occuring inside that period.
Yet what we see is the number of cases continued to decrease with absolutely no change in the downward trend for at least 30 days, well beyond the incubation period for the virus.
Therefore, satisfying granger causality, it would seem to be strongly suggestive that masks are not effective at preventing new COVID cases.
I'm not saying the recent relaxation of mask guidelines caused all of those. I'm saying all all COVID-19 deaths in the US from the beginning of the pandemic were preventable.
If DT (dumbass) would have quarantined people arriving from Europe (which is where our outbreaks directly originated), if he would have had enough N-100 respirators in the National Strategic Stockpile for everyone and tell everyone to wear them, if he would have told people to stay home and go out when absolutely necessary, if he would have accelerated testing instead of blocking testing, if people would have kept enough food on hand to last a couple of months, and everyone would have actually taken this seriously, then yes all of those deaths could have been prevented.
A lot of people were able to prevent themselves from getting the virus by using common sense. If everyone would have done that, then yes all of those deaths would have been prevented.
@Pat That doesnt line up with your OP.. Your op stated the number of deaths specifically since the mask mandate was relaxed. That would seem to imply ther eis causation there (otherwise why did you pick that date?).
Moreover the date you picked as the reference point was well after DT was out of office anyway. So not sure that was really your intent with the OP.
That said I do believe you feel that way about DT **as well**, no doubt. but seems to be conflating issues and not really what this post reads as.
