Skeptiko – Science at the Tipping Point

Dr. Dan Wilson, Covid-19 Mask Science |490|

03.02.2021 - By Alex TsakirisPlay

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Dr. Dan Wilson has a doctorate in biology, but misfires on the science to public health policy link.

Click here for Dr. Dan Wilson’s YouTube channel

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Audio Clip: [00:00:00] Hold. For what? Explain your sneeze. I’m sorry. Do you have allergies? No. Is there too much pepper on your salad? I don’t put pepper on salads. I’ve heard enough sit over there. I don’t want to sit by myself. That’s what typhoid Mary said and clearly her friends buckled.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:19] I have a really interesting interview coming up with Dr. Dan Wilson. Interesting to me because going into this, I thought it was going to be a hardcore discussion about COVID-19 mask science. And what it really turned into maybe is just a discussion of how far the science cow has left the barn.

Dr. Dan Wilson: [00:00:46] I would say that when it comes to mask use you know, there are general principles that we can pull from the literature. And we know from a laboratory setting that face masks reduce the number of infectious viral particles that escaped from the nose and mouth into the environment. That is perfectly logical.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:04] I have to interject. I know you’re making that remark but I kind of nailed that. I mean, who cares? That doesn’t, just that we get, and the fact that it gets repeated over and over again, like you just did with some kind of mantra mesmerizing thing. It’s science bullshit. It doesn’t have anything to do with answering the question am I safer wearing a mask? It doesn’t answer that because it doesn’t relate to how it works with other humans. It’s just, it’s science bullshit.

Dr. Dan Wilson: [00:01:34] Well I would disagree, I think it’s a really important part of the puzzle. You know, like you said at the beginning, it’s important to see whether or not something works in a lab setting. And that’s usually the first thing that scientists do before going and testing it further with more research…

Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:48] But no one had any doubt whether it would work. Its home ice, no one had any doubt that if I put, if I do that, it does the same thing. If I cover my mouth when I cough, stuff doesn’t come out. To elevate it to this level of advanced refined science to say that if you cover somebody’s mouth, they stuff doesn’t come out of it when they sneeze is a total head fake bullshit way of kind of wrapping all this nonsense in science, the conclusion is it was inconclusive. The conclusion is at last year’s Super Bowl when the Chiefs won, no one had to wear a mask because no one was told to wear a mask, because that’s what the best science said, and there hasn’t been a wave of science that would change that. Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. Boy oh boy, I have a good one today. Really been looking forward to this. Dr. Dan Wilson, Debunk the Funk with Dr. Wilson is his YouTube channel. He is joining us today to have a COVID-19 mask science, throw down, knock down, drag out. Dan is a PhD in molecular biology from Carnegie Mellon translate as he’s really, really smart.

Dr. Dan Wilson: [00:01:48] I don’t know about that…

Alex Tsakiris: [00:03:19] You will find that he is really…

Dr. Dan Wilson: [00:03:23] I took a particular path a...

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