- Reading Masks Are Bullshit: The Introductions, Part 1
- Seriously? Part 2 for the Introduction to Masks are Bullshit?
- Kevin J. Johnston Warns Us: “Masks Are Bullshit” Is Full of Shit
- In “Masks are Bullshit”, Kevin J. Johnston is Obsessed With Justin Trudeau
In chapter 2, Kevin J. Johnston purports to describe what a coronavirus is. Honestly, I think if you really want to understand viruses, I’m going to recommend a course at Khan Academy. Specifically, intro to viruses. This will help me keep this post shorter and skip past most of his chapter and focus on the wrong or slightly interesting bits. But before we start, we have to get into a bit of admin work. Because he’s now aware that I’m debunking his nonsense.
Apparently, he’s not willing to learn a lesson from his previous defamation lawsuits. Considering the fucked up, untrue things he’s said about Mr. Fakih of Paramount Fine Foods, AHS workers, and journalists who have covered him in a way he doesn’t like, this is just the status quo for him. In fact, I remember seeing him call a journalist a paedophile just because he covered Kevin in an accurate light.
30 pages though? I was a bit interested in whether or not this had any basis in reality, so I decided to test it out. Looking at the print version of the first part, it came out to 20 pages but I don’t consider that to be apt. I mean, look at these margins! They look like they take up nearly half a page horizontally! So, needless to say, I want to test it using a more reasonable metric.
Using the Print Friendly plugin on Brave, I removed all the extraneous stuff (like the series navigation) and still wound up getting twenty pages just for the first part. Part 2 came out to be twelve pages and part 3 came out to be nine pages. So, printed out, I wrote 42 pages covering 30 pages of a shitty e-book.
Honestly, I’m trying to use the same approach Aron Ra used in dealing with Kent Hovind1. Trying to address points once so that hopefully, we deal with shorter posts as we go. However, like Kent, Kevin loves to Gish Gallop. However, this tactic doesn’t work as well as when it is spoken. The thing about Gish Gallops is that they help to prove Brandolini’s Law.
To paraphrase Aron Ra in his discussion with Kent Hovind, there’s no great skill in refusing to be reasoned with. I know full well Kevin will never actually take my refutations of his bullshit seriously. His grift relies on pretending that he knows what he’s talking about when he rarely actually does. At the end of this review and refutation, the winner will be clear, even if I don’t declare it and Kevin refuses to admit it.
Kevin, Justin Trudeau is just not that into you
So, the chapter starts out in a relatively banal way. Sure, there are little jabs at liberals and making weird claims about “CONSERVATIVE universities, virologists and scientists”2 without citing or naming any. But, so far, so good. He does claim that there are “left wing idiots who been paid to lie”3, but fails to name any names or explain what lies they’ve told, exactly. Then, it gets weird. Like, divorced dad energy weird.
Take the number 1 billion. It’s a huge number that in itself is difficult to comprehend. Personally I think that 1 billion very accurately represents the number of cocks that Justin Trudeau has sucked in the last 8 years but I shall not digress during this point.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 38
So, let me see if I understand this correctly. You find it easier to comprehend the number 1 billion if you think about it as “the number of cocks that Justin Trudeau has sucked”.
Kevin, he’s just not that into you. Look, I know it’s been lonely for you since you got divorced. You got that big divorced dad energy and it’s clear that you have some of the shittiest advice for dating women. But, Justin is the Prime Minister of Canada. You’re a failed mayoral candidate who only spreads hatred, vitriol, and misinformation. He’s accomplished things in his life. You haven’t.
It’s just like when you tried to proposition Dylan Mulvaney4. Stop going for 9s and 10s when you’re an unemployable 2.
Take the number of penises that have been in Justin Trudeau’s mouth which is 1 billion and multiply that number by 1 billion.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 38
Again, that is a weird thing to obsess about for someone who purports to hate Justin Trudeau. Also, if he’s performing oral sex, doesn’t that kind of contradict your claim in the first introduction that he’s a “radical muslim”?
that number is 1 quadrillion.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 38
And that should have been capitalized if you were going to make that into a sentence all its own. On page 39, though, he goes further in describing his fantasies.
The number of viruses predicted are predicted by virologists as prolific at virology as Justin Trudeau is at retracting foreskins before he puts an ISIS member’s cock in his mouth. How good is that? PRETTY DAMN GOOD!
Jeeez, where does Justin find the time? Oh wait, he has nothing but time because he does nothing with his time… except for being on his knees like the good little girl that he is.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 39
You know what this reminds me of? The Motion to Fuck This Court and Everything It Stands For.
Also, ISIS is pretty homophobic like Kevin.
Kevin has a hard time with metrification… and math
If we were using kilometres as a way to get you to understand the size of one quadrillion please note that the planetoid Pluto is 5.03 to 8 billion kilometres away. In the large numbers game, in order it is million, billion, trillion and then quadrillion, making Pluto less than 10% the distance from Earth as 1 quadrillion.
Pluto is nowhere near a QUADRILLION kilometers from your nearest Starbucks, but I am not done telling you about the quantities yet.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 38
Well, sure. But the interesting thing about metric is that subunits are divisible by ten. So, while Pluto is nowhere near a QUADRILLION kilometres from my nearest Starbucks, it is more than 5 QUADRILLION millimetres from the nearest Starbucks. Which would indicate that millimetres would be the unit that we should use to demonstrate the amount of a quadrillion.
But Kevin has a hard time with math. For example, last year, he was hawking this scammy crypto platform named Pinnacle Ventures. And he made this graphic.
Now, here’s the thing. Pinnacle Ventures is dead. If you followed Kevin’s advice and put 0.007 BTC into Pinnacle Ventures, you would have lost $266.40 (per the value of BTC as I write this). However, look at the chart above. Despite the fact that this is an annual interest rate, he is calculating it as if you’d be earning this monthly. That’s, of course, absurd. If the interest is paid out monthly, it would be the interest rate divided by 12 months. So, it would be 0.41% per month that would be compounding.
| Amount in starter package | Your balance | What you’d actually have after interest5 | What Kevin thought you’d have | How much was Kevin off by? |
| Month 1 | $500.00 | $502.05 | $525.00 | $22.95 |
| Month 2 | $502.05 | $504.11 | $567.00 | $62.89 |
| Month 3 | $504.11 | $506.18 | $612.36 | $106.18 |
| Month 4 | $506.18 | $508.26 | $661.35 | $153.09 |
| Month 5 | $508.26 | $510.34 | $714.26 | $203.92 |
| Month 6 | $510.34 | $512.43 | $771.40 | $258.97 |
| Month 7 | $512.43 | $514.53 | $833.11 | $318.58 |
| Month 8 | $514.53 | $516.64 | $899.76 | $383.12 |
| Month 9 | $516.64 | $518.76 | $971.74 | $452.98 |
| Month 10 | $518.76 | $520.89 | $1,049.48 | $528.59 |
| Month 11 | $520.89 | $523.03 | $1,133.44 | $610.41 |
| Month 12 | $523.03 | $525.17 | $1,224.11 | $698.94 |
So, Kevin can’t math. What’s the point?
Now, this alone doesn’t prove that Kevin doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to COVID. But, it does prove a couple of very important, related things. First, it helps to demonstrate that he has a willingness to spout off about things he clearly doesn’t understand. And this is if we assume good faith on Kevin’s part and just assume he’s ignorant rather than deceptive.
Secondly, it shows that his target audience is illiterate and innumerate idiots. The illiteracy I’ve already touched on in pointing out his numerous spelling errors. But innumeracy in his audience is a critical problem. Innumeracy is linked to making worse financial and health decisions6 7 8.
Thirdly, we could take the alternative assumption that he knows full well that he’s on a grift. In addressing the second introduction of this book, I did point to a video where Kevin himself acknowledges the seriousness of this virus. In fact, it was only after Kevin saw that he could ride the grift bandwagon that he pivoted his message to being anti-mask, anti-vax, and anti-lockdown. Taking the second point into account, Kevin just needs to sound like he knows what he’s talking about to idiots already predisposed to believe right-wing bullshit.
Kevin doesn’t understand his fellow parasites
On its own a virus cannot reproduce itself nor produce anything at all. That makes it a parasite. Parasites by definition are alive, but nowhere near sentient.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 39
Oh Kevin, don’t sell yourself short. Just because you’re a parasite doesn’t mean you’re less sentient. A parasite is defined as “an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other’s expense”. It is also defined as “a person who habitually relies on or exploits others and gives nothing in return”. You know, like Kevin selling himself as a “crypto expert” and hyping unrealistic earnings.
The fact of the matter is that many species of parasites are sentient. In fact, there is a legal debate about what sentient is and whether non-human animals can be sentient. A legal debate that has come to Canada. But the fact that Kevin J. Johnston, a man that contributes nothing to his community but hate is sentient himself proves that parasites can be sentient. Kevin is capable of feeling pain and has a slight degree of self-awareness. So, if parasites like Kevin can be sentient, why not non-human parasites?
Kevin forgets we sequenced the COVID genome
Scientists sequenced the COVID genome just months after it appeared. Which, apparently, Kevin didn’t encounter in his “research”.
COVID-19 HAS NO GENOME ON FILE AND IT HAS NOT BEEN ISOLATED AS AN INDEPENDENT VIRUS!
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 40
In fact, researchers at MIT studied the genome to learn more about how the virus evolves. But I guess they failed to mention that in the neo-Nazi newsletter Kevin got his info from.
Kevin wants to be fucked by Justin Trudeau
In creating one of the more disgusting analogies I’ve seen, Kevin talks about his obsession with Trudeau once again.
The Binding of the viral CAPSID with that cell surface protein serves as an admission ticket easing the viruses invasion into the cell. That is something very similar to all of you dudes out there who are angry that you’ve chosen to date or marry a woman who doesn’t take it in the ass and you spend the next 20 years trying to convince her to take it in the ass.
When she finally relents and says she’ll try it but you have to start with one finger first for a month, then two for a month and then just the tip for a month until you finally achieve full anal penetration like Justin Trudeau does to farm animals and voila! You relationship just got better for YOU, but not necessarily her.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, pages 42-43
He continues on with idioms like this for the next few pages, but I do want to say. that he has an unhealthy obsession with Trudeau. Dude, just get some therapy, find a man who likes you for you, and get over yourself. I would also say that other than engaging in some racist, sexist, and Islamophobic dog whistles9,
Thinking about it, if I was the one teaching lessons at the high school level, every kid would have straight A’s because these analogies I put together are just the best on Earth, aren’t they?
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 45
Kevin, if you were teaching these “lessons”, you’d be the “groomer” that right-wingers falsely accuse LGBTQ people of being.
Intermission
Okay, so I’ve learned that this chapter continues on to page 59 and I’m currently on page 46, so I’m calling for an intermission.
Now wasn’t that much more happy than the bullshit Kevin is trying to espouse? I think so.
Kevin admits to leaving out important, reliable evidence.
In page 46 of his diatribe, Kevin decided to write this gem:
For this exercise I will not be telling you what the Canadian government calls it nor will I bother telling you what the World Health Organization calls it, both parties are useless entities.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 46
Why not? Hell, I’m citing Kevin’s idiotic book even though I believe he’s a useless entity. In fact, the reason I’m citing Kevin’s book heavily is to demonstrate why anyone with a brain should accept that Kevin is talking out of his ass.
Kevin is a racist asshole who doesn’t understand the difference between transmission by contaminated food and by droplets.
On page 47, Kevin decides to leave us with this racist bullshit delightful bon mot.
Now we have to fast forward to the year 2019 and we find out there is another version of swine flu that was called the WUHAN VIRUS because unanimously and including China, all countries around the world decided that WUHAN was its birthplace. I would tend to believe that to be the absolute truth considering how gross that particular part of the world is.
Let’s be frank, there are culinary choices in Central China that undoubtedly would make everybody in North America vomit including wild goats. Shortly after the virus came out or at least knowledge of it came out, a video went viral itself showing a young Chinese girl eating a bat that was sitting in a soup broth. The bat had not been gutted nor cleaned just killed and put in the broth. The broth was apparently boiled bat urine. Another video surfaced of a woman eating a turtle that was still in its shell and had merely been cooked in a tomato paste for a very few minutes. The slurping sounds were absolutely vile.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 47
Then, on page 48, he gets into a list of diseases that he tries to insinuate COVID could be. None of which happen to be airborne diseases nor as infectious as COVID was. He claims that it could be salmonella, e-coli, campylobacter, Clostridium perfringens, and Yersinia enterocolitica. I won’t subject you to his descriptions of these conditions but with phrases like “Hershey squirts”, you can see why a more scientific explanation would be preferable.
Now, here’s the thing. If it were any one of these things, he would be right in that masks would be ineffective in stopping the spread of COVID. However, all of the above listed diseases can be spread via contaminated food or drink. COVID is airborne, spread via the droplets that come out of your mouth. The mask helps to keep the droplets close to you, thus keeping you from infecting others.
As a result, that’s why masks aren’t bullshit. But Kevin left us with one parting bit that I think we could all agree on:
I brought the diseases up that I did to illustrate the point about gross being gross. Gross eating habits and gross living habits will make you ill, and it’s not racist to say so, it’s FACTUAL!
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 50.
The thing is, Kevin’s gross racism helps to blind him and others like him to the reality of COVID. As a result, Kevin and people like him refused to wear masks and get vaccinated. That’s why plenty of them died.
Kevin claims “healthy” people have nothing to fear from COVID.
I won’t quote his words on this one, because he ties his assertion to his false equivocation between COVID and the diseases he previously mentioned. But I will share this little bit to give you a flavour for what Kevin said:
The key phrase being healthy. I suspect that a 3 pack a day smoker who drinks half a case of beer a day is going to require hospitalization if he catches any of the inflictions listed, but if you don’t smoke and don’t drink excessively and you exercise at least three times a week, you’ll pull through just fine.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 50. Emphasis his.
Clearly, he was wrong. Kevin clearly couldn’t have known what Long COVID was going to be. But there are still people suffering and dying with COVID. And Long COVID has ruined people’s lives.
This is the damage that the belief that “masks are bullshit” can do. By refusing to wear a mask, you are spreading the virus. There are people who are no longer “healthy” because assholes like Kevin refused to wear masks and infected countless numbers of innocent people.
But there were plenty of “healthy” people who died of COVID too. On page 58, Kevin claims that “What is the Coronavirus? Something that if you catch you most likely will beat and be stronger for it.” However, people with long COVID demonstrate how he couldn’t be more wrong.
Kevin doesn’t know what BMI is
Kevin demonstrates his scientific illiteracy and innumeracy yet again when he equates body mass index to body composition. In listing the “official list of people who are at higher risk of developing flu complications”, he includes this charming bit at the end:
Big fat slobs with a body mass index of 40% fat or higher
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 52
To quote an article comparing BMI to body composition:
The problem with BMI is it doesn’t accurately show your body composition. Many athletic people with high muscle mass and low body fat percentage may fall into the overweight or obese categories. But that doesn’t mean they have the same health risk factors as someone with the same BMI and a high body fat percentage.
In short, a high BMI is not necessarily an indicator of having high body fat. But leave it to the champion of not knowing things to get this wrong too.
Kevin appears to not be able or willing to read scientific papers
Page 54 and we finally get back on topic to COVID. And one thing he does is bitches about the words scientists use. To let him tell it:
Remember, COVID-19 has numerous definitions and it has not yet been isolated, nor has a GENOME been recorded, so doctors HAVE to say that it APPEARS to be more contagious so as not to get sued!
The media is the same way. The common statements about COVID-19 are below and pay attention to the language and the individual words.
COVID-19
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 55.
APPEARS TO BE very contagious.
COULD BE more contagious that the flu.
EXPERTS SAY that it’s highly contagious.
SOURCES SAY that it’s highly contagious.
IS SAID TO BE more contagious that the flu.
DOCTORS IN NEW ZEALAND have made clear they BELIEVE it to be more contagious than previously known strains of a similar virus.
When I read this in his book, it reminded me of the (thankfully) late creationist grifter John Morris Pendleton. Specifically, in the video Logicked did where he whines about the language scientists use.
Like Pendleton, Kevin doesn’t understand why scientists use this language. And like Pendleton, Kevin never bothered to look it up. Part of it is scientific objectivity, the idea that science should be faithful to facts, absent of normative commitments and value-freedom, and absence of personal bias. Therefore, even if these are things you observe directly in a lab, you write “appears to be” because you want to make damn sure your writing is objective as possible.
This also enables the whole damn reason why science should be objective in the first place: falsification. There are questions that can be asked such as, why does it appear to be this way? We can recreate the experiment, try different variables and see if the results vary. If they do, we can report our findings including any changes we made to the experiment.
Kevin may claim that scientific objectivity is “BULLSHIT folks, it’s BULLSHIT and IT’S BAD FOR YA!”10, but it’s not.
Kevin J. Johnston equates public speaking with intelligence
Taking his ignorance about scientific objectivity and running with it, Kevin decides to continue with this bit:
It’s pathetic that politicians in Canada and the Western world will use the phraseology that COVID-19 will kill you faster than the flu and that none of them are doctors, whereas North America’s best doctors will only say that COVID-19 may be stronger than the flu. In Canada politicians have intelligence quotients of less than 90 and yet they try their very best to speak like they have IQs over 120. They do this by reading from carefully prepared binders written and assembled by professional speech-writers, not doctors.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 56
This ignores the difference between scientists speaking to peers and trying to communicate findings and politicians speaking to people about information they need to know. While scientists were studying COVID, we needed to take action immediately in order to protect people from being infected.
For the record a high-functioning [ableist slur] has an IQ of 65 so our politicians are not much cleverer than the Down Syndrome kid down the street who accidentally pees on his own shoes while playing in his favourite tree house. What the fuck do they know about any virus what so ever?
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, pages 56-57
Apparently, more than you, as they actually listen to the scientists instead of resorting to punching down at people with Down Syndrome while spreading pseudoscience.
Kevin can’t tell the difference between a warning and a threat.
Kevin writes this lovely bit about politicians communicating the dangers of COVID-19.
I’ll leave you with this thought. In order to get you to do what you’re told a person can pay you which you will like, or they will threaten you which you will hate and most likely defy.
But if you are afraid of something that you have been told by your local politician will kill you, not only will you do what you’re told but you will view them if some type of Messiah. You’ll view them as the only one that can save you from a microscopic creature that neither you nor they know anything about.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 57
I wonder if Kevin would regard being told that if he doesn’t wear adequate clothes for Canadian winters, he might get frostbite as a “threat”. I wonder, if I told Kevin that if he walked out into traffic that he might get hit by a car, would he interpret that as a threat? Pointing out the consequences of actions isn’t a threat. Actions have consequences.
In short, Kevin knows fuck all about COVID and didn’t bother to learn.
Kevin spends the next two pages whining about politicians, Black Lives Matter (he still asserts it’s a terrorist organization with no evidence cited what-so-ever) and other irrelevant shit. I already discussed and debunked it. We don’t need to re-review it. But, he ends the chapter with this whopper and I feel a need to address it.
If you ever need advice how to live your life in a better way listen to me and ignore everything that every politician has to say because I actually give a shit about human beings and they do not.
Kevin J. Johnston, Masks are Bullshit, page 59
Kevin, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the healthiest gal out there. But if there’s anything a person can learn from reading “Masks are Bullshit”, it’s that you don’t “actually give a shit about human beings”. Apart from your transphobia, homophobia, racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, ableism, and all-around assholery, your advice infected a fuckton more people with COVID. Including yourself. And you can call me a left-wing psycho all you want but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrong. You were wrong when you wrote this steaming pile of bullshit and you’re wrong now. This is why you have yet to cite a single source to support your claims.
In other words, I can admit when I’m wrong. You can’t.
Chapter 3 next Saturday. There’s only so much of Kevin’s bullshit I can take at one time. For today’s cleanse after having to deal with so much shit, I’ve decided to go with a video about fitness, since Kevin wanted to use fitness as a justification to emulate Typhoid Mary. Enjoy.
Footnotes
- If you want to see it in action, here’s the playlist of the video response debate Aron Ra did with Kent Hovind. ↩︎
- Page 35 ↩︎
- Page 36 ↩︎
- Yes, he really did that. ↩︎
- Rounded to the nearest cent. ↩︎
- Peters, Ellen (2020). Innumeracy in the wild: Misunderstanding and misusing numbers. Oxford University Press. ↩︎
- Gerardi, K., Goette, L., & Meier, S. (2013). Numerical ability predicts mortgage default. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(28), 11267–11271. ↩︎
- Banks, J., O’Dea, C., & Oldfield, Z. (2011). Cognitive function, numeracy and retirement saving trajectories. Economic journal (London, England), 120(548), F381–F410. ↩︎
- Pages 44 & 45 ↩︎
- Page 56 ↩︎