The Return of Mask Mandates in Fall of 2023?

Some worrying chatter on Twitter, Google Trends, etc. We need to strangle the re-masking of the world now.

So, this has been happening.

Along with this - I’ve been noticing a lot more chatter on Twitter (or “X,” sorry) about masks of late. News stories like this (citing the some familiar names as “experts” - but we won’t go into that):

Or this:

Also been hearing about colleges re-instating mask mandates, even a public school system in (I believe it was) New Jersey accouncing on Twitter that they had re-imposed a mask mandate for their students… yes, picking on children again.

I’m not exactly sure why this absurdity is starting again.

GeroDoc, Why Do You Care if People Mask?

photorealistic middle aged woman with feathers in her ears and nose looking sedate and calm

All other things being equal - if you want to wear feathers stuck in your face and ears around town in the mistaken belief it wards off colds, or evil spirits, or whatever - hey, just do it. Whatever makes you happy.

My problem is this idea about masking isn’t just a “live and let live” fringe attitude about alternative healing, or spiritualism, or whatnot, that just makes you a bit quirky but otherwise doesn’t harm your neighbors.

No. For a time, this became a violent cult belief system, imposed by brute force - for example, this woman was tased and arrested for refusing to mask at a high school football game (yes, outdoors):

This man was arrested at a ski slope (Canada) for not masking (click this link to view the video):

Then there’s the violence. One of the more egregious is this woman in Australia, being violently choked by a police officer for refusing to mask:

This one is burned into my brain. I believe this young man got concussed. For not wearing a mask (Australia).

In the United States, we specialized in forcibly masking toddlers and children:

And here:

By the way, there’s tons of videos like this. There’s a video of a 7 year old being dragged around and held down by school officials (almost all of them heavyset, masked, white middle aged women) that I found. People arrested and masks forced on their faces as they’re pitifully held down. And so on.

So Now that You’re Good and Mad

Why am I bringing this up?

Well, there’s the troubling Google Trends stuff, which I mentioned above.

There’s the internet chatter, the news stories. And then there’s this “Royal Society” review article which supposedly found (by reviewing primarily uncontrolled, unrandomized observational studies) that masks were “unequivocally” helpful in the pandemic - which runs counter to the Cochrane Collaborative’s approach of studying only randomized controlled trials on masking… which, as we all remember, yielded a big fat goose egg for community masking - no effect.

In the common parlance, masks don’t work. So, all that violence, all of the isolation, the masses of plastic waste - it was for nothing.

We Still Have Masks at my Nursing Home

Truth be told, shockingly, they haven’t left. Now, to be fair - 90% of our residents don’t wear them. Staff have taken to wearing them as chin straps. But they are still wearing them - still mandated.

Let’s go back to late 2020:

I want to be clear. In retrospect, yes - logically, logically, perhaps community masking in the hospital context, or in the general population, from a “what could it hurt” standpoint was maybe justified for maybe a brief period of time until vaccines became available.

Given how it turned into a prolonged measure forced onto groups the most vulnerable to its harms (small children, the elderly in nursing homes) - I think society would have been immensely better off if community masking had never been introduced anywhere.

The science supporting it is shit - and any honest person with half a brain is already aware of this.

Why is the Masking Religion So Persistent?

Far be it for me to analyze the motives of anyone still pushing masks, the more staidly institutional grade Jonathan Reiners, or the Bob Wachters of the world… or the lesser known, more obsessive niche Covidians like Lucky Tran or the decidedly freakishly odd Denise Dewalt.

Some of these are people who have enjoyed a significant degree of notoriety & influence since the pandemic that they had never experienced before - & pushing masking in a way wholly unjustified by any rational cost-benefit via fear-based narratives is just part of that game.

It’s heady, it’s addictive. I get it.

Others are just innumerate midwits who have shoehorned themselves into careers as physicians or clinicians in a way that’s improbable and inappropriate & no one has noticed. They are convinced, somehow, that science has discovered since 2020 that routine community masking is an effective measure to use aerosolized viral respiratory illness.

Yet others are simply hypochondriacs who seize on masks (and the practice of forcing them on others) as security blankets - sick individuals either who have always had a touch of contamination phobia / OCD that’s only now become mainstreamed with the pandemic, or people who have been successfully traumatized by the wall-to-wall panic porn that’s been the media diet since 2020.

There are even some who incessantly push masks who I believe may be sociopaths - or at least betray cynically Machiavellian or political motives for aggressively pushing masks. This is evident in Tufekci & Howard’s disproportionately influential review article on masking they published in PNAS in 2020 (relevant quote pictured):

Between hypochondria, innumeracy, midwittery, narcissism and hunger for fame and “influencer” cred, amorality, or some mix of the above - I don’t know.

I just know that “bringing back masks” is bring back a world of maximum irrationality, fear, and dehumanization.

No masks. My call to you all? Find big ways, find little ways - resist.