It is a bit of an emotional hassle, but I continue to go into stores without a mask. I refuse to submit to the IDEA either that they make sense–reality testing dies slowly of a thousand unnoticed cuts–or that my Governor has the power to compel this level of submission for more than a month without Legislative approval. We are not at war. There is no reason we could not get these ideas ratified by people who in aggregate are supposed in all American governments at all levels to be the most powerful ones, because they make the rules the Executive then enforces.
What I am finding is that the largest stores are usually the easiest. My grocery store, most Target’s, Walmart, Home Depot: all fine. I noticed at all of them but Target that people went a bit out of their way to engage me in conversation.
This is smart. If you have a thousand people come through the door, and 2 are not wearing masks, what real threat is there? And those two people–especially if you go out of your way to be friendly–will become loyal customers. That is certainly my intention.
The alternative is permanently alienating people who come into the store for one thing, get yelled at, then vow never to come back. I have a personal shit list of local businesses I will not go back to even once this mask nonsense is done.
Despite my own background, that of own continual fear that stems from factors not yet under my control–or really perhaps because of it–I cannot help myself from feeling a profound contempt for people who look at my unmasked face in terror, especially if they are young, 20-ish people. It is absurd, it is risible, and it is profoundly awful. How will our civilization survive with such high degrees of cowardice?
But here is the point I started to make: we need to add the terms “mask realism”, and “climate realism” to our public lexicon. The latter would be intended to point out that NO ACTUAL SCIENTISTS are saying there is an emergency, or any large scale catastrophe around the corner. This is a fact. It is the politicians, who know NOTHING, or close to nothing, of the science who are trying to use panic for political purposes.
And here is the obvious thing with masks: we have been wearing them everywhere in public–in stores, in the office, in restaurants–for SIX MONTHS–and the virus is still gaining. I won’t get into the minutia, because this is a FACT.
Yes, you can say that it would be worse without them, but I will again trot out the salt throwing analogy: if Fauci had told us that we needed to throw salt over our left shoulder every time we went through a doorway, and to sacrifice a chicken every Sunday, and that this was what was needed to “slow the virus”, would the results be any different? No one knows, but my view is that no, they would not have been different. The nations and States who most closely followed the recommendations of Fauci and people like him had the worst results. At best, they were no better than those places that did a fraction of that destruction, which means none of that bullshit was necessary.
I keep ranting. I keep talking about this. I cannot wrap my brain around how fucking stupid so many people are being. None of this requires an advanced degree, so much as a modicum of common sense, oriented around 2 basic question: 1) What is the end game?; and 2) If the recommended policies were in fact doing nothing, how would we know?.
There is no end game outside of Sweden and perhaps some other nations we are not reading about like them. Sweden said at the outset: this is our plan, and this is how we will do it. They did it, and continue to do it. They are protecting the freedom and quality of life of their people in a genuinely Liberal way.
And effectiveness? We have been shut down to varying degrees for SIX FUCKING MONTHS, with no end in sight. Nobody is making predictions, at least in the Blue States. In most Blue States, they move the goalposts every time some marker is reached. They seem to want the cessation of all human disease whatever as the criterion by which they decide to reopen.
Again, I am ranting. I need to stop.
But mask realism is a good phrase.
And here is an excerpt from a good link on Sweden: The country’s senior epidemiologist Anders Tengell has also criticized the wearing of face masks as “very dangerous” because it gives a false sense of security but does not effectively stem the spread of the virus.