First, pandemic policymakers averred masks weren’t useful in stopping the spread of COVID-19. Now, these authoritarians in government, health care, and the media are demanding citizens wear masks. What gives?
Throughout this COVID-19 pandemic, by their own admissions and actions, the pandemic policymakers have been wrong. Egregious and injuriously errant models regarding mortality and hospitalizations; the unprecedented societal and economic damage these models caused by instigating the lockdown of entire states; the lethal nursing home policies placing COVID-19-positive seniors in with non-infected seniors; the now-discredited warnings the virus was easily transmissible on surfaces—their flip-flops, revisions, and disasters go on and compound daily.
Unabashed by their abysmal track record, the pandemic policymakers now demand everyone wear a mask under the pain of prosecution, starvation, isolation, societal shaming, or all of the above. The irony of pandemic policymakers—who should be ashamed of their failures—arguing you be shamed for disregarding them is as ironic as it is tyrannical.
But never let it be said the experts allow failure to diminish their self-esteem.
Symbols Over Substance
Dr. Anthony Fauci weighed in that he wears a mask because he believes it is “effective.” While conceding the mask is “not 100 percent effective,” he doesn’t say how effective it actually is in stopping transmission of the COVID-19 virus.
Instead, despite not being a doctor of sociology, he asserts wearing a mask is very effective in evincing a “sort of respect for another person, and [having] that other person respect you . . . I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that’s the kind of thing you should be doing.”
Charitably, a mask is the kind of thing one should be wearing when leaving the scene of a crime. But when walking your dog?
Fortunately, other medical professionals have weighed in on the efficacy of wearing masks to protect the public health—though, admittedly, they did not study mandatory masks’ impact upon promoting respect or becoming a symbol.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine:
We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic. The calculus may be different, however, in health care settings.
In a respite from echoing Communist Chinese propaganda, the World Health Organization echoed the New England Journal of Medicine’s findings: “If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19 . . . Masks are effective only when used in combination with frequent hand-cleaning with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.”
The bulk of the pandemic policymakers and their cohorts, Team Lockdown and Quaranteam, either haughtily dismiss these findings and recommendations or respond with outraged pandemic illogic.
For example, some argue the mask is worn not to prevent you from catching COVID-19, but to prevent you from spreading it. How a mask cannot stop another person’s exhaled virus coming at it with less force, but can manage to stop the wearer’s virus-riddled breath being exhaled from a greater proximity and with more force is left unexplained. Regardless, the fact of the dispute proves the point: while there is much speculation and virtue-signaling, there is scant science to support the mandatory masking of the American people.
That is, there is scant science if one is more concerned about medical science than about political science. For there is plenty of science to explain this from a political point of view.
A Test of Wills
Within the pandemic policymakers’ ranks, the Left knows your disobedience to their mask diktat is an existential threat to their aims. After all, rejecting the demands of the pandemic policymakers is rejecting the administrative state.
If citizens tune out the arguments from authority by elitists and “experts” on how “to save lives” during a health emergency, citizens won’t obey them to “save lives” during a climate emergency. If citizens refuse to sport masks during this pandemic, they won’t submit to the Green New Deal. If citizens go back to normal, what will happen to the Left’s coveted “new normal” (or, more aptly, their “no normal”)?
If the Left can’t even make you wear a mask, the Left will never transform America.
Thus, this test of wills between the Left’s pandemic policymakers and citizens is being waged to protect the pandemic policymakers and, thereby, the administrative state’s credibility and authority to coerce you into serfdom.
And, as a public service announcement for the faint-of-heart Right, more concerned with their status inside the elitist “Karen” coffee claques than in protecting individual liberty, and cowed by the spurious smear that questioning oppressive orders constitutes “killing grandma”: the Left makes everything political. It is leftist governors who are killing grandma and grandpa with their heinous COVID-19 nursing home policies. But you regress…
Daily, it is becoming apparent the pandemic policymakers were ineffective and injurious throughout this crisis. The Left is well aware. Consequently, they have implemented mandatory masks to drive the narrative that their invaluable expertise and sagacity saved lives and saved the day. Hence, Fauci’s “symbol” remark. After all, who demanded you wear the mask?
Yet, can pandemic policymakers masquerading as saviors save themselves? Once an unmasked America realizes the COVID-19 pandemic ran its course largely regardless of the steps the pandemic policymakers prescribed; and, far more devastating, was actually exacerbated by their unconscionable decisions, such as New York and Michigan’s nursing home policies and the multi-state lockdowns with their ensuing depression and social costs, there is a chance something else might survive the pandemic—liberty.
All that is required is for some critical thinking by the citizenry; and a recognition that the pandemic policymakers are forcing you to cover your face so they can cover their ass.