Fighting Tyranny…. Really???!!??
I’ve got a couple of patients in the hospital now with Covid.
No, they are not young, but they also are not Nursing Home patients.
They are pretty sick, but I anticipate they will survive and be discharged. It is easy to get a bit blasé about it all. Then, something happens to make you nervous.
One of my favorite groups is Devo, led by a brilliant music writer who is responsible for an amazing amount of music on television and major motion pictures. His name is Mark Mothersbaugh. You don’t know it, but you’ve heard his music more than you think. Earlier this year, he got Covid and spent weeks on a ventilator in the hospital, trying to die. He recently appeared, via video call, at a virtual Devo fan club event. Yes, I am a geek and I participated! We were pleased to see he was very much alive. At the end of his video visit, however, he mentioned that Covid had left him totally blind in his right eye.
This really brought me hard back to Earth. It reminded me that I currently have several patients who survived Covid but are left with multiple strokes or other permanent manifestations of blood clots. This is the kind of stuff that makes Covid “special” and more frightening.
Lately, my line has been: “Kill me with respiratory failure and… well… I know I’m not going to live forever… so…. whatever. On the other hand, don’t maim me with strokes or amputations. … And don’t blow up my eyeballs!”
I don’t want Covid. I don’t want to give anyone Covid. If a mask helps even a little bit, why are we fighting so much over it? I just don’t get it!
Mask mandates are wrong on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to start. First, they’re ineffective for the purposes that we’re being told to use them; there is virtually no credible evidence supporting reduced transmission of virus from the use of masks, including surgical/medical/random pieces of cloth.
Second, there is little to no credible evidence of asymptomatic spread as a significant factor in transmission; this is the main driver of mask mandates and the foundation upon which most or all of the restrictions, lockdowns, and other bits of idiocy are forced upon healthy people by inept “leaders.”
Third, it should be clear to everyone by now that the mask mandate agenda has no defined end game, and never did. We’re already being told that vaccine deployment will not end the need for masks, well into 2021 and possibly beyond.
Fourth, wearing a mask, just about everywhere, all day, is not a benign thing and bugs the hell out of me, especially knowing what I know about the science and the utter ridiculousness of requiring healthy people to wear them in places where the risk is essentially zero.
Finally, we now know that COVID is not the apocalyptic infection we were initially told; it’s essentially on the order of a bad flu, with an overall infection mortality rate around 0.3% (probably less but it’s difficult to get honest data) and much less for those under 70. To ask the global population to wear facial coverings pretty much all the time for a respiratory disease that is relatively benign for the vast majority, without any hint of appreciation for the global background death rate (it’s about 150,000 per day) or the variety of other serious infectious diseases that we’re ignoring while screaming about COVID, is absurd. I’m fine if you want to wear a mask, just don’t tell me to wear one.
Best, most cogent summary of this foolishness I’ve read yet. Bravo!
The issue of mask wearing to control Covid has been made difficult to understand because of politics over science. The politicians say they want to “ follow the science” Really? First Fauci said that masks didn’t help then later recommend masks. I suspect that his first statement was based on the fact that the virus is so tiny that they easily pass through a cloth mask. He probably changed his mind when he realized that this virus can travel on droplets that can be partially stopped by a cloth mask. Hey ! He’s got a science/MD background and still made a mistake. But wait- All those earlier studies were done in the lab. In real life, people don’t properly wear their masks and touch the front then their face which may increase their risks for Covid. I believe that the science is already showing that cloth masks have very little benefit except in crowded areas associated with symptomatic individuals. Maybe Dr Fauci will change his mind again. I’m ok with that as long as we are allowed input from all doctors and scientists but keep the politics out.
Social Darwinism? Maybe this is an algorithm for eliminating stupid people??
“If ________ helps even a little bit, why are we fighting so much over it?”
The invitation to abuse. To recall Mothersbaugh,
“Are We Not Men …?”
Agree100%
No one is arguing about doctors recommending masks. Go ahead and recommended to your heart’s content. What they’re arguing about is having the government threaten to put you in a cage like an animal if you don’t, or assume they now have the authority to tell you you can’t peaceably assemble or worship in whatever manner you please.
If you’re not going to apply the same logic to every other infectious disease on the planet you’re just virtue signaling. Why haven’t you been applying the same logic during every flu season or for plain old pneumonias? In 2017 California decriminalized infecting someone with HIV on purpose but now claims the right to tell completely healthy people they are confined to their homes and can’t open their businesses because it may possibly help spread a respiratory virus with a 99% survival rate.
Every illness has potential unfortunate sequela. Grow up. We don’t try to stop the world for those either.
Working for months with masks…seeing many, many patients definitely seems to work! Who are all of these people opposed to masks? Are they the same ones who don’t want vaccines?
Will you favor a vaccine mandate too?
Government has always placed limits on what behavior is allowed in public places – you can’t walk around with your dick hanging out, you can’t piss on the sidewalk, etc. Is requiring a mask in public places really that extreme a measure?
Funny how those urban governments requiring ostentatious masking virtue are allowing all of those other behaviors you listed.
Hilarious. Have you been to San Francisco? Nice self-own.
No self-own at all.
One either accepts the authority of the government to place some regulations on public behavior (masks, nudity, defecation and urination, sexual activity, and on and on), or one argues that all such regulations are unconstitutional restrictions on individual freedom.
Now, how a particular municipality chooses to enforce or ignore the regs . . . that’s a completely different issue and not really relevant.
So you have equated mask-refusal with dropping an upper-decker on the sidewalk. What other public behaviors would you like to regulate? Ya can’t be too safe.
“What other public behaviors would you like to regulate?”
None really.
I think most governments do a pretty good job of balancing individual freedom and public good. Look at some of the past abuses (for example, Alien and Seditions Acts) that we’ve corrected and recovered from. By comparison, choosing mask mandates as the hill you’re going to die on looks pretty silly to me.
It’s always a balancing act.
And nice restaurants require shoes and a shirt.
Those same restaurants that are being strangled by lockdowns and idiots that say wear a mask between bites.