Dear Ms Urback, please stop amplifying baseless accusations against the Chief Medical Officer of Health.

Clearly you have a limited understanding of what the concerns about promoting use of masks is. So I shall explain in simple language to ensure you understand. https://twitter.com/robynurback/status/1247197342006226949

Dr. Tam is an expert Public Health doctor using her training and best practices to protect Canadians. Have some respect and stop behaving like an insolent brat. Rebel Media generally hires this level of disrespect and ignorance. Be better than the Rebel.

Ezra Levant and Keean Bexte seem to be all about click bait reporting & tough talk image. But you are supposedly a journalist at a once respected news organization. While G&M reputation has suffered as of late, it’s because of lazy journalism and the eternal effort to smear Govt.

Which is precisely what this amateurish, junior high school, catty, teenage girl talk out of the side of your mouth is intended to do. Grow up. The globe is in a crisis and Canada needs journalists to take COVid-19 issues seriously, not revert to 13 year old’s bullying behaviour.

To address your concerns:

1. COVid-19 is a novel virus. No one has the inside information about the characteristics this virus displays. Because it’s never existed before. So, in a manner of speaking, every global doctor is flying by the seat of their pants in the dark.

2. Scientific knowledge is not one and done. It requires peer review and retesting to eliminate errors. Because you have seen 1 published study doesn’t take into consideration that 5 others exist stating the opposite.

Upon publication of scientific studies, which challenge agreed upon facts, a literature review is required to check for confirmation. The search for scientific fact requires repetition to ensure the results are repeated, and thus, more likely to be true.

A week is an eternity for the virus, but a very short time to repeat and publish the findings of additional studies and articles. The scientific community is working as quickly as it can. So cut them some slack. Accuracy is the important factor not the publication’s timelines.

3. Doctors from around the globe are publishing studies daily revealing the nature and characteristics of this virus. Many of them are in different languages and Google translate isn’t sufficient to translate medical text.

4. Once the global medical community has enough verification to make recommendations, they do. The information is communicated to national leaders and those leaders work in consultation with a team of national medical professionals to decide a unified response.

5. Then that information is communicated to the public. Speed is paramount, but inaccuracy can be deadly in the current circumstances, so ensuring the data supports a decision is carefully monitored by WHO and experienced public health officials in Canada.

6. The problem with masks is two fold: There is a shortage of masks for medical professionals and essential workers. And. Improper use of the mask can lead to infection, cross contamination & a false sense of security that may motivate some to break self distancing protocol.

7. It’s no secret that there is a global shortage of the protective masks medical professionals are required to use. Encouraging the public to use masks means exacerbating that problem. Medical professionals require those masks to provide care and not get infected.

So do hospital workers who clean the facility and equipment or perform other duties required to keep a hospital running.

The average person does not require a mask. And that has been communicated since the beginning of the pandemic.

8. More importantly, most citizens do not understand how to use a surgical mask appropriately without cross contaminating themselves, during the process of placing it on their face and upon removal. Hands must be washed before touching the mask and putting it on.

Once on, you can’t touch your face or the mask. Any adjusting of the mask is forbidden. Stated repeatedly by the CMOH, Dr. Tam, & several others, that until it’s ready to be removed & disposed, it should not be touched or adjusted. Do not do what these people are doing.

So you must wash your hands and remove the mask by the ties and dispose of it. Then wash your hands again so as not to cross contaminate anything else your hands touch after removing the mask. Otherwise the pathogen can be transferred to surfaces, other people or you.

But the biggest concern is that many, who do not understand the severity of this pathogen, nor do they understand the purpose of a mask (to protect others from you, not protect you from others), may believe that wearing a mask gives them extra protection from the pathogen.

Marginally it does. But it isn’t so much protection that self distancing should be abandoned. Yet many will interpret their safety increases exponentially and change their behaviour and put themselves and their loved ones at risk. In fact the probability of this is quite high.

The reason is because there is a plethora of disinformation being propagated about the seriousness of this pathogen. Many are recommending people resume work with a mask and that should be safe enough.

That is a lie and dangerous propaganda. Criminally negligent.

So now there is information that aerosol particles of COVid-19 can be infectious. People are scared and want to protect themselves with a mask.

But there is no real protection that is 100%. So venturing out of your home is a risk. Wearing a mask protects others, not the wearer.

N-95 masks MUST be reserved for medical personnel. Even surgical masks are in short supply.

The best protection from infection is to stay home.

If you have to venture out for work, groceries or medication, a mask protects others from your coughs and sneezes.

It has limited worth to protect you from others’ coughs and sneezes. And zero protection if you continue to touch your face or the mask. Using a mask improperly actually increases your risk of contamination, because you must touch your face to put it on.

So miss smarty pants, it isn’t a simple yes or no whether to promote the use of facial masks during this pandemic.

I’ve been listening to news broadcasts and that is the information I’ve gleaned. Why haven’t you?

Or are you just part of the disinformation machine?

It is also no secret that G&M has a hate on for PMJT and the Liberal Party. Shame on you if you are confusing people intentionally. You don’t need to like Trudeau or the party, but intentionally misleading the public is criminal negligence.

Be a journalist, not a troublemaker.