This whole mask thing reminds me of the low fat fad which, despite a lack of evidence, was pushed from the top down. They got to Reagan’s Surgeon General, money was to be made with low fat shit, and America promptly got much fatter.
Just wear masks. It is so simple. Just eat less fat. It is so simple.
As I do from time to time, I will quote Mencken: “For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, clear and wrong.”
And people, not unnaturally I think, tend to suppose that even if a given simple answer is not fully right, that it is at least TRENDING in the right direction. There is no real basis for this belief.
Ponder that one of the most popular diet fads of our time is the ketogenic diet, where MOST of your calories come from fat. It is literally the polar opposite of what they were pushing in the 80’s and 90’s, because what they found was that when you eliminate fat and fatty foods, what you have left are carbs that spike blood sugar, and make it vastly harder to resist impulse eating. If you eat carbs with fat, you stay full longer, and when you eat enough protein, you also feel full longer. If you snack on low fat potato chips, you want more and more and more and more. Then you are fat, and your “experts” have failed you, even though you tried to listen to them.
Likewise with masks: there are many reasons to think they might make things WORSE. It is quite possible that they are not only useless in preventing viral transmission, but that on the whole, they make it WORSE.
As one obvious example, the Swedes and Dutch have pointed out that masks create a false sense of security. Viruses are about the size of the water droplets in the vapor you fog up a mirror with. If you can breathe, they are coming in and out. Yes, if you cough up sputum it will stop that, but that is not the main mechanism of transmission: it is a little invisible cloud around you, that goes out strongly perhaps 3′, and in attenuated form perhaps 5′. This means physical distancing works, due to physics, basic physics. It also means that if you are in that cloud, feeling safe because you are wearing a mask, that you are MORE likely to be infected, since you have effectively done NOTHING to protect yourself.
And I really think many diseases are made more likely with masks. Many children are having problems with various forms of rashes. If you reuse your mask, you risk picking up other viruses and bacteria everywhere, when you leave it on a table, or your car seat, or your gym bag.
And I think masks are stressful. Like the dutiful drones so many of them are, the citizens of the world have vaguely accustomed themselves to this new imposition, which is made softer and easier by the terror of this not-very-dangerous-to-most-of-us disease which has been conditioned in them.
But none of this is normal, even if we are being conditioned to treat it as the “new normal”. Having a mask on will NEVER be as comfortable as not having one on, and that leads to stress, and stress makes your immune system weaker.
And many gyms are closed down around the country, and where they are open, if masks are mandated ,many people are not going. Physical exercise is CLEARLY an important factor in immune health, so anything that diminishes exercise increases the risk of disease.
I could go on, but unless all of our experts fail us both intellectually and in terms of moral courage (did you read about this Danish mask study that the fucking cowards at 3 major medical journals refuse to publish, despite its methodological rigor and very current relevance?) we will have a good approximation of the truth eventually.
In the meantime, I wonder if some sort of Stockholm Syndrome is not setting in, where the sheer SCALE of the sacrifices we are being asked to make by people not citing science, but using maximum social and political pressure, might not cause many people to conclude that the sacrifices must be worth it, since otherwise they would have been asked to make them. Most people, in my view, are nowhere near cynical enough to understand how the world really works.