*Dr. Palmer's piece has garnered this response from **my friend Mitchel Cohen.*
*MCM* *MITCHEL COHEN'S LETTER TO ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.'S CHILDREN'S HEALTH DEFENSE* Hi, I am opposed to mandatory vaccinations, and support CHD for that reason and for RFK's great environmental work. That said, I found Dr. Alan Palmer's utterly one-sided review against wearing facemasks during Covid-19 to be appalling, and I'm greatly saddened that CHD published it without rebuttal or quotes from people who hold opposite views. I don't doubt that wearing a mask for extended periods and doing heavy workouts while wearing one may cause health issues. So how about presenting other solutions, if that is a real concern? How about going inside away from other people and taking your mask off every 15 minutes or so? Why isn't that even being considered here? Or other alternatives to being sickened by wearing a mask -- and there are many work-arounds. When you don't even broach that possibility, then the writer is using so-called objective "facts" to sell us a bill of goods. I wear a mask when I am around others in narrow spaces, not because it will protect me from getting sick as Dr. Palmer argues for dispensing with wearing a mask.* I don't want my germs poisoning another person* who may be at higher risk than even I am (and I am in the high risk category). We live in a culture where people are currently thinking only of themselves, demanding what they misperceive to be their "freedom" (as per your disgusting picture of the young white female whipping off her mask, when in some areas like Washington D.C. Black people who are dying from Covid-19 at two and three times the rate of whites, and even more. The Guardian writes that "across the country, African Americans have died at a rate of 50.3 per 100,000 people, compared with 20.7 for whites, 22.9 for Latinos and 22.7 for Asian Americans. "More than 20,000 African Americans – about one in 2,000 of the entire black population in the US – have died from the disease. "At the level of individual states, the statistics are all the more shocking. Bottom of the league table in terms of racial disparities is Kansas, where black residents are dying at seven times the rate of whites." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/black-americans-death-rate-covid-19-coronavirus But, of course, the white people you feature ripping off their masks as though that represents "freedom" exhibit not a care in the world for anyone else. Better, continue catering to and egging on people who are just following their president in not thinking or caring about how their actions may affect others. That lack of empathy is truly sickening. Another "reason" Dr. Palmer provides for not wearing masks is that quality masks are in short supply, so better to save them for health professionals who really need them. And yet, all over the internet are advertisements for businesses selling masks. If they have a single mask left in stock that they have not DONATED to the heroic nurses and doctors, frankly they should be dragged to the guillotine, as far as I'm concerned. I watch my friends dying; I watch medical personnel risking their lives with improper equipment, and these greedy corporate bastards are trying to profit from others' misery by simply hoarding masks to sell --- how can you stand it? Really? So why hasn't the government, at all levels, prepared properly for this? Why are Trump and Pence directing FEMA to hoard equipment, instead of dispensing it? Why did Cuomo shut down hospitals in the lead-up to this pandemic, and why has he now submitted a NY State budget that CUTS Medicaid to seniors and others? What is wrong with these people, Democrats and Republicans alike? I am not saying that Palmer's medical observations are as bad as his political views and are equally invalid. But over and over again he gives the argument that "there is no evidence to suggest that face masks worn by healthy individuals are effective in preventing people from becoming ill". Yea, so? There is no evidence to suggest that my pointing a gun at you will necessarily mean I will pull the trigger. Do you want to find out, the hard way? I can go through some of the other medical rationalizations one by one -- some are valid, but need to be weighed for the possible devastating effects they would cause if the doctor happens to be wrong -- as has been known from time to time to happen. But CHD doesn't present those alternative arguments for readers to weigh. It presents a propaganda piece, and it makes me distrust everything else CHD has written -- not because I disagree with them as well but because it becomes apparent that it is just propaganda, sophisticated propaganda, for a particular agenda. And I, who has defended CHD in many arguments with others, now find my intelligence (and health) insulted by the one-sidedness of your presentation, while claiming it is an objective account. Look, RFK was great against Monsanto. He's very good in fighting against mandatory vaccines for children. That's why I find this article so shockingly dangerous, as it comes with RFK's imprimatur. I always hate it when medical doctors are so cocksure of themselves and their position and leave no consideration that they might be wrong, and that so-called "healthy" people should not wear masks. If they had been exposed to the virus, even if they themselves are asymptomatic they can be carrying the virus and passing it along to others who are not as healthy, to Black people, to Latinos, to heart patients, to immune compromised people, to people with high blood pressure, to obese people, to those who are pregnant -- all of whom are at risk. Yes indeed, wearing a mask helps protect OTHERS -- a foreign concept, I know, in this era of me me me me -- and presents a very small risk to healthy carriers of the illness themselves but who are at much greater risk to many others. Please publicly retract this story now, and rethink who it is that is on the firing line of your advice. Mitchel Cohen, Coordinator No Spray Coalition against pesticides https://www.NoSpray.org <https://www.nospray.org/> -- If you appreciate News From Underground, please consider making a donation — either a one-time gift or a monthly subscription: http://markcrispinmiller.com/support/ Thank you for your support. 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