“Those who can make
you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire
Face masks, face masks, face masks.
We're
playing politics with medicine, these days. That's a catastrophe, as
we'll be finding out, and soon. This is obscenely frustrating. First, we
were told, logically, not to use them: https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-dont-need-masks-pence-says-as-demand-increases-2020-2
back on March 2 the U.S. Surgeon General said not to use them, that
they could increase one's acquiring COVID -- but of course they're
dangerous in general.
Basically,
if you wear a face mask, it has to be air-tight (expensive ones are)
and have the right micro filters (expensive ones have 'em). You should
also wear goggles!
But
more than that, you can only wear it once, and must throw it away after
one use, or six hours of continuous use. (And use plastic gloves to
take it off, and have a bio-hazard disposable unit!) Nor can you adjust
it as you go about your business. I need to adjust mine all the time, I
find. That's a huge no-no, but I have to. It just moves round
about. (I usually have to take my hearing aids out, too, and walk about
deaf as a post.) And I have to wear face masks to ride the bus or do the
shopping, and even with a basic, cheap, hopelessly inadequate mask, I
can't afford to buy these basic masks in that quantity. So I have to
re-use, which is dangerous because of course they're perfect for
collecting nasty items you breathe out of yourself, which then, as in a
Petri dish, boil, coil, and double -- and treble, etc. (I try to
disinfect mine in the strong sunlight, which we've been having a good
bit of lately. FWIW. I need to find an ultraviolet light fixture.)
However, my wife refuses to wear a mask except in the most dire circumstances, so out I go.
What
follows are three articles on the subject. First, a fascinating article
here that my wife found, though some might find it a bit "tin-foil hat"
territory, but after the 20th century, and the first two decades of the
next one, I'm about ready to believe anything: https://medium.com/@kevinashereyanu/face-masks-for-all-is-not-scientific-but-whats-the-harm-in-wearing-one-anyway-40f2d0fa02b4
An excerpt:
This conditioning leads people to be more willing to
follow irrational orders and do things without questioning authority, or logic,
in the future. This is an incredibly powerful form of social
conditioning, leading to a vast mob
mentality, and the tendency for polarization fallacies to cause vast dehumanization of
innocent people, and justify horrendous violence. This has happened nearly a dozen times in the last century or so, leading to the
deaths of over 500 million people, at the low estimate.
So in summary, besides being proven ineffective to
stop the spread of viruses, and actually fairly effective at helping to spread
them, by providing a surface for viruses to collect on, like carrying a petri
dish in front of your face; besides being unconstitutional, non-consensual and
dangerously divisive between different people with different beliefs and value
systems; why are mandates and the media-derived social
pressure for all people to wear face masks so incredibly dangerous?
Here's the second article:
(The author is a practicing pharmaceutical microbiologist.)
Excerpt:
Face masks
should either be removed wearing new gloves, or hands should be immediately
washed with hot soap and water (avoid touching any door handles and ideally use
automatic soap and water dispenser sinks). It is also important that face masks
must immediately be disposed of in an infectious waste container.
Further,
never re-use a face mask. There’s no way of effectively disinfecting a face
mask without damaging the integrity of the mask material.
My final
opinion is that unless you are a key worker who needs to work in close proximity
with someone else or a healthcare professional who needs to wear a mask to
minimize infection to a patient, if you don’t have coronavirus, then every time
you put on a face mask you’re not only increasing the risk to others, it also
means that’s one less mask for a healthcare professional.
Finally, what's the real story on medical face masks? The answer: We don't actually know.
They’re right, of course, that the research literature
on mask usage doesn’t provide definitive answers. There are no large-scale
clinical trials proving that personal use of masks can prevent pandemic spread;
and the ones that look at masks and influenza have produced equivocal results.
But this smattering of evidence doesn’t tell us much, either way: The trials
neither prove that masks are useful, nor that they’re dangerous or a waste of
time. That’s because the studies have been both few in number and beset with
methodological problems.
So, round and round we go, and it is becoming something of Poe's "Masque of the Red Death", actually:
An Préachan
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