"Would you take off your mask for $100,000?"

My tweet on this topic went viral with 32M views in 6 days. It was covered by the UK Daily Mail, NY Post, Inside Edition, etc. It was even covered in an article in Croatia! Here's the backstory.

Executive summary

This is a record for me: 32M views of the tweet shown below in just 6 days:

The backstory is I was simply inquiring if, after hearing compelling evidence that masks don’t work (including the Cochrane review showing they don’t work, the fact that you can be infected with one breath, the fact that you remove the mask to eat or drink, and the fact that you can get COVID easily via your eyes which aren’t covered), if people could be incentivized to remove their masks.

All the conversations were cordial. I even shared the tweet with her. The question was simply to assess how strongly people believed the false narrative that masks protect them. That’s it.

I was simply asking a hypothetical question: “If you were offered $x, would you do y for a few hours?”

If they accepted the offer, I simply would have noted the price.

I was not trying to compel them to do anything they didn’t want to do.

Now the bigger question is: “Are we no longer able to ask people hypothetical questions in America without being labeled a creep?”

The stories

Note: Only Inside Edition contacted me before they wrote their story.

None of the other news organizations reached out to me to get my side of the story before they wrote their story. Andrew Court from the NY Post called, I called him right back, but he never returned my call before writing his story.

Inside Edition: Tech Mogul Offered Woman $100k to Take Off Mask. They were the ONLY news organization to speak to me before running their story. Ironically, Jim and I went to high school together and every now and then we run into each other!

Gutfeld on March 16: Hero or Jerk?

The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox

Hero or Jerk? Gutfeld Crew Reacts to Steve Kirsch's (@stkirsch) "$100K to Take Off Your Mask" Offer SSGT Johnny Jones (Ret): "At the end of the day, she [the lady asked to take off her mask] works for Big Pharma. She's getting paid a lot more to wear that mask than she would… https://t.co/HGFirTd3IJ

Here are some of the responses on Twitter:

Wayne Root Top 10: I made it to #5 on his list. He got the story exactly right. Watch the video starting at 13:34

New American interview:

UK Daily Mail: Tech tycoon who offered woman $100,000 to take off her mask on board Delta flight is called a 'creep' and 'weirdo' - but some are on his side

UK Daily Record: Millionaire branded 'creepy' after offering $100,000 to woman on flight

Toronto Sun: Tycoon Steve Kirsch, who offered mask-wearing passenger $100Gs, called 'creep'

One Mile at a Time: Absurd: Delta Passenger Offers Seatmate $100K To Remove Mask

The Portugal News: €115,000 offer to remove mask: Businessman Steve Kirsch said he was shocked after the passenger next to him on a flight refused to remove their mask - despite him offering him around €115,000 to do so.

UK Mirror: Millionaire makes 'creepy' $100,000 offer to woman sitting next to him on plane

UK Daily Star: Millionaire branded a 'creep' for $100K offer to woman who sat next to him on plane

news.com.au: Tech millionaire slammed for ‘creepy’ $100,000 offer to woman on plane

NY Post: Tech tycoon called a ‘creep’ for $100K offer to female plane passenger and then the follow-up article Mega-rich tech ‘creep’ breaks silence on $100K request: ‘No regrets. Andrew Court still didn’t get the story right the second time, but his readers were nearly entirely supportive of what I did.

Here are a few of the comments from NY Post readers on the second article:

This was hysterical. Kirsch is spot on. My spouse is a highly cited medical research scientist who has followed the data as it came in throughout the pandemic. Early concern based on limited information was understandable, but government policies quickly deviated from scientifically supported recommendations. How many people have even heard of the suppressed Great Barrington Declaration, an attempt by credible scientists to respond to biased government information? Fauci is actually a smart, authentic scientist, but apparently he knows on what side his bread is buttered. (49 upvotes)

If he offered me $100K to take off my mask, I'd tell him start writing the check!!!! (27 upvotes)

You had me until saying Fauci is authentic. He's a fraud. Look up is handling of the AIDS epidemic and, just like COVID, follow the money (12 upvotes)

There was a time when a man taking a principled position wasn't seen as bizarre. Based on what I learned in a postgraduate seminar offered jointly by a preeminent University's Medical School and Law School in vaccines (which focused on flu vaccines as the core models) I applaud those willing to consider the verboten (according to the current Thought Tyrants) FACTS that such vaccines are INHERENTLY highly experimental, are statistically KNOWN to cause injury or death to some taking the vaccine and are pushed by political and commercial policy proponents who lack true objectivity given their chosen vantage points. (This seminar was conducted before the current era which makes actual academic inquiry impossible.) (27 upvotes)

It is pretty bizarre that he would be labeled a creep for merely engaging in such a way. It is like demanding “let the person alone in their mis-informed belief,” when the mask wearers were very adamant that all must wear a mask, at all times, in all places. (49 upvotes)

So you call him a creep even though everything he says is true? Masks don't work in stopping an airborne virus, that's correct, even Fauci admitted that. The vaccines are very ineffective and have lots of adverse effects…. (71 upvotes)

Forget about the mask! Talk about 100K she just blew because of her blind faith and stupidity. (24 upvotes)

Croatia Insider: 'DA SAM BAREM JA SJEDIO PORED NJEGA': Milijunaš ponudio ženi u avionu 100 tisuća dolara ako napravi ovo

La Nación: El empresario estadounidense Steve Kirsch le ofreció 100 mil dólares a una mujer para sacarse el barbijo y fue repudiado

Do you see a common pattern in those articles?

Is what I did unethical?

Wow. The NY Post article implies because the passenger sitting next to me was female that my offer was creepy. Wow. Seriously?!

Consider the following:

Selected reader comments

KD:

This is bound to have been already observed by others, but just in case...

What are the chances that supposedly "independent" journalists chose the word "creep" or "creepy" to describe Steve Kirsch and/or his offer? With a myriad of adjectives in the English language to choose from, why was creep/creepy used at such an unusually high frequency? And why were the chosen adjectives overwhelmingly slanted to cast a negative light? This is clear evidence that the story was being scripted behind the scenes and so-called "journalists" dutifully regurgitated the scripted narrative.

David Robson:

This is most interesting to me as I often offered taxi touts at the City Centre Mall in Doha $30 to remove their masks on the understanding that if I came back later in the day and saw them wearing the mask they would have to give me my $30 back. I didn't get many takers but a few agreed to my offer, but one was discovered wearing a mask when I returned and I forced him to give my money back.

HorizonD7:

This recent Substack article from Toby Rogers compliments Kirsch's article very well. It says that "The massive problem that we face today is that lots of people make their money, directly or indirectly, from the pharmaceutical industry." So, the culture, media, government, many people's thinking, are controlled by pharma. The woman's reaction to Steve's inquiry simply reflects the depth of the brainwashing.

Exactly.

What actually happened

I was finishing up a phone call where I talked about the COVID vaccine before they closed the door for the early morning flight from SFO to Detroit.

The woman sitting next to me said she overheard my conversation and asked if I was in the pharmaceutical industry. I said I was a journalist and described what I did.

She mentioned she was in pharma and provided the name of the company she worked for.

I asked her about her mask and said I wasn’t aware of any studies showing they worked. Did I miss something? Was she aware of a compelling study showing masks worked?

And so on. It was a cordial conversation. I never asked her for permission to record the conversation. She voluntarily told me the name of the pharmaceutical company she worked for (which I didn’t reveal since she requested I not do that) and we talked about one of the drugs they used to make.

I told her about my earlier tweet and said that a lot of people are trying to sit next to me on planes now.

I asked her if in light of all the evidence she would consider removing her mask now that she knows it is ineffective? What about if I offered you a $100 incentive? etc.

After she turned down my offer, I wrote it up as a second tweet and showed her my tweet (the one above) and said it had gone viral (200K views after an hour).

No complaints were filed with Delta or the flight attendant.

Quite the opposite: she seemed most amused by all the attention she was getting on Twitter! She couldn’t believe it went viral.

For more information

1. I offered people $10,000 to take off their face masks for 60 minutes. Here's what happened. This was the original offer. In the Twitter comments, people suggested I went about it wrong, that I should first offer $100 since that seems more believable. So that’s what I did this time around.

2. Masks fail their biggest test in Bangladesh which has links to a huge number of articles on masks including debunking the various studies on masks (including the famous Bangladesh study that fools most people), how you can get infected via your unprotected eyes (making masks completely useless), and how wearing a mask creates unsafe levels of CO2.

What do you think?

Now that you know the story, what do you think?

Summary

I was somewhat surprised in this case. The person I asked works at a drug company and she listened as I explained the evidence. She could have checked out everything I said (we both had an internet connection) but wasn’t interested in doing that, even for $100,000.

This was meant to prove just how firmly entrenched some people believe the narrative and to assess how hard it will be to change people’s minds.

Even with all the scientific references, the common sense explanations (e.g., your eyes aren’t protected, you take it off to eat, one breath and you’re infected when you eat), and a huge monetary incentive, the combination is NOT sufficient to get some people to even question their beliefs might be wrong. That was the point of this experiment.

It opens the question: what will it take? If the CDC admits that masks are worthless, would that have made a difference to her thinking? Will people who wear masks ever be convinced that all the science says they are worthless?

The point of my tweet is to bring attention to some important issues:

1. What this showed is that some people very strongly believe that masks offer protection from getting COVID. Short of the CDC admitting that masks are completely ineffective, what will it take to get people to recognize that the CDC has been lying to them?

2. Will we ever be allowed to have an open debate on the topic between experts such as Stephen Petty, Tyson Gabriel, and Meghan Mansell vs. the health authorities who are recommending masks for COVID?