The only way to judge if anything truly works is to see if it performs in the wild as it did in the laboratory and or in studies. Masks do not work against viruses. There is a body of work a century long predating Covid that again and again and again have found masks to have no positive effect against viruses with many finding perverse effects. Using respirators for commercial use, independent contractors may be exempted in certain cases, requires medical screening, certification and fitting. Respirators are far more capable at removing things from the air than masks, yet those under going certification for them learn that they are not to be used as protection against viruses. Reading the instructions and warnings on the provided insert or in same cases the packaging states the same.
If respirators with the higher standard of manufacture, fit and a seal are not effective against viruses, then masks made under less stringent regulations and wholly lacking any kind of a seal can not stop a virus.
However, these arguments are discounted by mad maskers who provide their studies as proof masks work. Thus we have the value of the Cockrain (sp?) report, a study to trump their studies. Meaningless.
We just need to look at how masks work in the wild. If masks work against Covid, why have they not in Japan? The Japanese government rescinded its recommendation for masks on May 8th 2023. While many love to point out that Japan never mandated masks and use this fact to ignore the increasing sizes of it waves of Covid, this “recommendation” was followed by 99% of the population nationwide for 3 and 1/2 years. In the greater Tokyo area, statistically 100% of those outside their homes wore masks this entire time. This is from my own observations, I being the sole unmasked person amount the multitudes of individuals I viewed as I commuted into Tokyo. This “recommendation” is strong enough to render me, one who refuses to wear one as “recommended” almost unemployed. To further drive home the effectiveness of a recommendation from the Japanese, this “recommendation” to wear masks included demands that I wear one for online classes taught from my own home, by medical professionals. My kids’ swim coaches wore clear plastic masks moulded in the shape of the lower face while swimming. The human performers at sea world in Japan wore face coverings even while in the water and all the visitors except myself wore masks despite the wind driven rain from the typhoon that hit that day. Thousands of people self water boarding themselves to stop the virus. Let no one get away with discounting Japan’s failed attempts to stop the virus with masking with, “Japan didn’t mandate masks.”
Yet, during the three and a half years of 99% of the population wearing masks, Japan experienced 8 waves of Covid. The 7th was bigger than any that preceded it and the 8th bigger still. It simply can not be said that the masks had any positive effect against the virus. It could be suggested that masks had the previously reported perverse effect. I can state with confidence that statistically 100% of all covid cases in Japan were of people who wore masks, and socially distanced and religiously sanitized their hands. My brother in law was in shock that he got covid despite taking all these precautions. In his case, he was also vaxxed, but that is another issue. The idea that these efforts were useless at best has yet to occur to him.
If masks worked against Covid, then the reality in Japan could not exist. Around half here, including foreign tourists and residents are still wearing masks.
Scientific studies are not a way to find out real-world performance. I may be repeating this post here, but no one uses a scientific study to find out if football plays work, nor could one, since all the other factors that influence outcomes cannot be accounted for in any scientifically valid format - this is what human discretion is for, not science. So it simply isn't relevant to the question, it isn't the right tool - and just because there was precedent doesn't change the fact that it was "precedent of useless info."
If masks reduce cases, don't work, or increase cases, then cases in Japan will look the same (i.e. "however they look, no more or less" - they cannot look like less or more than they look). So all that "Japan had some cases" demonstrates is that masks did not 100% prevent cases, not that masks did not reduce cases.
At all events masks make people avoid each other. Take masks off, people stop avoiding each other. If you want people to stop avoiding each other, but aren't prepared to acknowledge this will probably cause more cases, then you don't really want it.
I wish I had thought to include this in my last reply.
I am not at all sure that masks cause people to avoid one another. Safety gear has the effect on the capsule users as well as some professionals to creat a false sense of security. People tend to take risks they would not otherwise take because they have faith in their safety gear.
People in Japan avoid me going so far as to cross the street or change train cars because I am un masked but have no problem riding the crazy crowded trains with fellow mad maskers. The only avoidance I have seen the first 3 1/2 years of the panic is of we few unmasked.
Alright, but does that extrapolate out of Japan? It certainly doesn't here in SoCal / Baja. San Diego county was a ghost town from late summer 2020 (which is when masking came back after the Floyd distraction) to May, 2022. If I am making a behavioral argument, of course it won't be culturally universal - but neither is the behavioral counter-argument. So what to do with behavioral arguments, throw them into the trash? Sure, if the goal is to also throw, again, discretion/discernment itself into the bin, and not have an idea about anything.
If we are going to say something works, then we have to look at the group or groups of people who are using whatever that something is as they are directed and see what effects it has. We also need to compare it with those who are not using it or not using it as directed. However, as Japan eventually out paced the rest of the world in numbers of cases and deaths while masking at 99% of the population here, is a comparison really needed in this case? Masks slowed down the spread compared to what? The spread increased here and at a rate not seen anywhere else. If the argument is, “Well, it would have been worse if they hadn’t.”, what data is there to support that? If no data exists, and it can’t as we have nothing that can be compared to it, this is an unfalsifiable statement that has no place in any discussion.
Covid wave not only got bigger in Japan despite (because of?) masks recommendations being followed by 99% of the population, the got bigger than everyone else’s. How can any argument stating masks prevent some cases hold water?
It is not a situation of “Japan had some cases”, the number of cases in Japan increased and continued to do so. The situation in Japan is much like being told that the fact that your car continues to increase in speed the longer you press the brake pedal is not evidence that your brakes have failed.
Masks can no more prevent viral spread than a chain link fence can keep out cicadas and Japan demonstrates this. Japan very well may demonstrate that masks do indeed have perverse effects as well. Maybe, the fact that your car keeps gaining speed as you press the brake is because you are pressing the accelerator instead.
The brake pedal analogy - we define "work" for a brake pedal according to a certain standard. When someone says masks work, what does that mean, which is to say 1) is "stop all cases via physical barrier" they standard they are using (vs just prevent some cases, somehow, like keeping people scared), 2) does anyone think that is the standard they are using - this really depends on intelligence of speaker/listener, so there's some semantic ambiguity built in here. When someone says masks don't work, typically they mean both are false. (It isn't coherent to say 'masks don't work' if you agree they prevent some cases, sometimes.) So I don't agree that 'masks work' is pinned to meaning 1 and 'masks don't work' = true if 1 is false.
There is no way a mask can prevent some cases any more than a screen can keep some water from entering a submarine. Yes, a screen will slow the ingress of sea water into the doomed sub but not to any meaningful degree.
Universal masking has been known to have perverse effects, meaning they make the problem they are used to solve or mitigate, worse.
There is a great video out there of a man trying on first on N95 respirator then two in the frigid outside, winter air. While his words support the use of respirator, the viewer can easily see the jets of exhaled breath shooting out from the edges while an effusion of slower velocity is observable through the filter. The N95 is a respirator with a seal. It does not top exhaled breath, zero source control. The instructions and warnings sheet provided with it state clearly that is to be used for particles much larger than viruses. Does not protect the wearer.
I watch little TV, still, I have never seen a commercial for the N95 for use against SarsCov 2. Friends in the States tell me that they have not seen any either. However, I have seen TV commercials for Pfizer’s Covid vaccine and three different commercials for two different medications against mask induced illnesses on TV and on the trains in Japan.
If 3M could make the claim that their products could help prevent some cases of Covid, why are they not doing so? Could be that they need not because fear spread by others is as good of advertising as they could hope for. But I do not buy this as most are not wearing N95s, they are using various surgical and other masks. 3M has tons of competition and would benefit from being able to state that their N95 stops or at least slows the virus. Yet, they do not. What do they know? They know, as evidenced in the safety info inserted in the packaging, that it doesn’t.
My med school just concluded the two day English language speech contest for our first year students. The winners gave an encore speech. While 41 of the 54 med students in my group wore masks while delivering their speeches, only 2 of the 5 winners were wearing one as they waited to give their encores. The two masked med students grabbed the filters of the filthy masks and removed them as they approached the podium for their speeches. They then grabbed the micro phone shared by all speakers with the hand they just used to remove their dirty masks and thereby demonstrating another reason universal masking has perverse effects. And this is a medical school.
Masks make things worse. Japan’s increasingly large waves of the disease masks are to stop or slow down support this.
Huh? As far as I know, no one has EVER suggested that people would not be allowed to wear masks; the ONLY question has been whether or not masks should be req'd; thus, the ONLY question was whether or not mandates worked - this study proved they don't. Mandate or no mandate, it didn't matter, which was the ONLY question in this debate. Look, if you want to hide in a hole & never see another person ever, you'd probably avoid COVID - and you should be free to hide in a hole. The question is whether or not we as a society should FORCE people into holes - and that study has answered that question. I think you're debating a straw man here - it was always about mandates, not masks.
There was no "force" except majority will. If everyone had just not worn masks governments would have revoked or stopped mentioning mandates immediately to avoid looking powerless. This literally happened in front of everyone's faces in summer 2020 protests. What "force".
As for your overall point, it completely affirms my premise. You concede that if they work, they can be forced. You concede the premise. So feel free to complain about what it was "always about" however many times the mainstream experts move the football on whether they work.
You never saw any reports about GOVERNMENT mandates requiring masks? When the government orders you to do something, that's force (or the threat thereof). I suppose one could argue that most people gave in BEFORE the government made good on its threats, but that's a rather unusual definition of force (if I rob you at gunpoint, did I use force or merely the threat thereof?)
Likewise, how many private firms mandated masks because they feared what the government would do to them if they didn't. Again, that's force.
Granted, the majority can make the government abandon its policies, but that doesn't change the point: these policies were imposed upon us.
Finally, how do I concede that they can be imposed if they work? What? I would oppose force even if they work. I think condoms work; I don't think the government can mandate them. It's perfectly reasonable to oppose government mandates even if the government is mandating good/effective things because medical freedom and/or my right to be free of your force is not dependent upon the merits of your ideas. I think people have the right to decline effective treatments too - it's about WHO decides, not WHAT they decide.
Indeed, let's make this simple. Suppose the government is mandating a perfectly effective, perfectly safe vaccine, so what? How many people would be helped by the mandate (ie get the vaccine who otherwise would not have received it or not have received it as quickly) vs. how many people would be hurt by the mandate (ie abused unnecessarily or accidentally forced into multiple jabs or any other such harms)? The question, then, is the mandate, not the vaccine.
Honestly, I don't see why this is so hard for you. Opposing force & supporting freedom is a pretty easy concept. I don't oppose the government's use of violence because I disagree w/ the government's objectives, but rather because I disagree with its tactics - I don't think they've met the requirements for using violence even assuming for the sake of argument that they're otherwise right. Why is that hard to see?
Look, I might think it would be nice to build a new McDs in your hometown, that doesn't mean I think it would be acceptable to murder you and your family in your sleep to do so, nor do I think that THREATENING to murder you & your family would be acceptable (or nonviolent) either. I can support a policy w/o supporting the use of violence to achieve that policy.
Assuming masks "work," so what? Why does that justify violence? That's the argument and that's what the study at issue proved: the violence got us nothing, so who cares about masks?
This is my complaint as well. As far as I know I have not caught it despite trying hard. I guess I need to try skiing. Unless you count that 24-hour virus and two weeks of coughing I had in January of 2022. Nice joke by the way.
Thanks for the link. Amazing;y or not, Moncef Mohamed Slaoui, the man mentioned in the article and accused of sexual harassment of male colleagues, has this anagram of his name.
"Reality is not adjudicated by randomized control trials nor “reviews” of the same; this is merely a conventionally accepted (and not particularly impressive) process for evaluating drugs and care protocols. " Love this!
If you want to wear masks because you imagine that they have talismanic powers to protect you against illness, please feel free.
But if you want to mandate that all others wear masks, please fuck off and keep your illness anxiety disorder to yourself.
And you can also replace "wear masks" with "get mRNA injections" and "show a vaccine passport to gain entrance" and "stay at least 6 feet away from others" and "imprison yourself in your home" and "constantly use hand disinfectant" and "live in a plastic bubble."
It the mask madness in the UK I considered wearing a black one on my arm in memory of all the people who died because of the COVID cultists who do what you list.
I also saw Eugyppius make the same analogy with bike helmets. I understand that bike helmets probably don't help with most accidents, but as I commented over there, I do think that helmets can help with very specific types of crashes, namely crashes where your head hits hard pavement after falling from a good height. This happened to me in the 80s, and I'm pretty sure that the helmet reduced the severity of my head injury. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether it really helped, so I could very well be wrong.
The mask is a muzzle. It was advanced on spurious grounds by a shady WEF-linked group led by an AI entrepreneur.
"All of these problems evaporate with A.I. One example of how powerful this can be is the global campaign to promote masking. This was accomplished, in a matter of weeks, by a WEF-linked group called “Masks4All”.
From their about page:
“#Masks4All is an all-volunteer org that started and powered the movement for people and Governments to follow the overwhelming scientific evidence that shows we need to wear homemade masks in public to slow COVID-19.
Now that this is widely accepted as a fact by Government, news, and health leaders, we’re focused on getting masks to be required across the U.S. and the world.”
The face of the organization was and is Jeremy Howard, Co-Founder & Leader
Distinguished Research Scientist at USF; Founding Researcher at fast.ai; Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Council."
It's not even a "political" issue. It's a psy-op tactic as part of the global technocracy coup.
Re "overwhelming scientific evidence that shows we need to wear homemade masks in public to slow COVID-19."
Sounds more like a joke to fool the gullible. Seemed to work on most but not me thankfully. I had a struggle with my wife who believed the lies despite my telling her it was pointless and anyway all guidance in the UK. Being equipped with a reasonable brain I managed to work it out.
The bad science is what gave it away for us. We wore them for a couple of weeks, when the media were saying not to, because if they didn't want us to wear them, it had to be a good idea, right? We didn't know much about the small sizes involved, or the air dynamics.
By the time they were making them mandatory, we'd caught on, and became resisters. It was an interesting inversion. We got to watch them make up science as they went along, with the Syrian Hamsters and hairdressers, and it gave us a valuable lesson in bullshit detection that would come in handy time and again.
The mask thing has been bizarre to me since the beginning. Can't we all see that immunological naivety is bad, like Iroquois with smallpox bad? Had this been an actual 'superbug', not saying that they exist in reality as they do in fiction but IF, then exposure to small amounts, such as you might get from incidental asymptomatic contact, triggering a less than normal infection would have been your best chance to survive and develop immunity. Asymptomatic infection is actually probably the best driver of mild outcomes and natural immunity that you can imagine in an ACTUAL pandemic, not a stagemanaged Plandemic.
These mask conversations always miss out on the importance of concentration or 'viral load'. A mild infection triggering a mild immune response logically is the best protection against a later more concentrated dose of the pathogen.(whatever it might be all mechanisms that I am aware of are concentration dependent)
So, although I agree with Brian that focusing on the human and political and social dimensions gets more to the root of the problem than focusing on the medical and pseudomedical dimensions I would say, Masks not working is preferable to masks working. Even if they do work, wearing them is a bad decision, I don't support centrally forbidding this particular bad decision, but knowing that it is a bad decision and why seems like a good measure.
The mask-ists submitted to the scam and let the mask makers make lots of money for nothing. The environment then gets littered with the wretched things. I saw them on the ground outside a hospital in Brighton UK, in June 2020!
There was a paper written a while ago that argued masks work because they still allow a small amount of virus through, basically mimicking a form of variolation. In other words, it basically took your stance of a small exposure being a good thing, but believed a small exposure was more likely with a mask, whereas a big exposure would be more likely without.
I have to say bluntly that the paper was a load of bollox.
COVID 19 is the 'flu and there is no alien bug. There is pollution etc. and sometimes masks help to reduce particulates. As to poison gases, you need a proper gas mask.
Now if masks were sold that way there would be an argument for them. Don't know that it would be true, but it might be. Still wouldn't be worth giving up freedom for but at least it would make sense in a biological way.
While it would make more intuitive sense, it would still be based on nothing but wishful thinking. I mean, a paper could recommend using others' urine as the "most effective" hand sanitizer using the exact same "logic."
I have always thought this is plausible in theory, though the question of evidence is made difficult by changes to the virus. So you have a pre-B.1 version of the virus moving through California in late 2019 and everyone is basically fine (I reckon I probably got immunity then despite never getting sick, though I never tested for antibodies). This could be because when you carry on life normally, you are getting constant micro-doses, expanding your cross-reactive T Cells, and finally when you get enough viral load for asymptomatic or symptomatic infection you are fine. And this kind of pre-exposure may have continued to keep deaths low in California even in the lockdown/reopen/lockdown-era. But would it have been such a smooth experience if B.1 was the first variant here, as in New York? We can only speculate.
Evidence from the non-locking down countries is mixed. Brazil in particular doesn't support a "virus is more afraid of you than you are of it" approach. Regardless, I do think that if we didn't have the fear then we wouldn't have really noticed anything dramatic. Because after all we just went through statistically gigantic flu and RSV spikes, pediatric hospitals crammed, but daily life was just normal. What happens in hospitals does not make a "pandemic."
It is like you say, difficult to prove this in a particular case but certainly the early severity and speed of onset is concentration dependent, even though there are obviously many other variables which become dominant as time increases from onset.
I think that without the 'interventions' COVID would have been significant to primary care doctors, virologists, epidemiologists and the rest of us wouldn't have noticed anything beyond cases in our own family and friends.
The idea that we have to 'all be in it together' as a community makes all of our problems worse without contributing anything. Families and small groups, especially churches, come together and multiply their happiness especially and divide their troubles, but larger groups seem to have the opposite psychological effect, the larger the worse.
I know a few people who, despite working in medicine or pharmacy during the pandemic, never got sick because they invested in expensive, name-brand, made-in-western country N95's, and did not take those things off in places where colleagues were sharing air.
We frequently have the scenario where Covid sweeps through the department, passing between nurses and patients. Went from 25+ nurses to 3 who did not have Covid within a week. The nurses wear cheap masks in the hallways, but sit around the coffee table together having breakfast, lunch, cake, coffee the rest of the day. Studies done of "hospital employees who wore masks" include these behavioral patterns, because honestly, who can work 8 hours without taking off the mask to eat and drink? Most of the nurses have young school children at home and active social lives, so that table is a high-risk environment.
Meanwhile doctors with their own offices are able to eat alone. The ones with high quality masks and disciplined habits don't get sick. They make it through these waves that pass through the department.
We can all agree that tyranny is undesirable and eminent.
However: you have one set of lungs, one brain with neurons that need to last forever, one set of reproductive organs. There is a lab-engineered something floating around with the ability to target those cells, and it likes to sneak in through your nose.
OK, but I know many people who have have to work in retail store in rural areas throughout the pandemic who were not allowed to wear any masks at all who never got COVID, at least not that they ever noticed.
Does that also translate into a scientific recommendation?
It translates to some interesting research questions if we could take their blood and see what happens when exposed to Covid. We need more scientific inquiry looking at exceptional cases. Most studies are set up to do just the opposite: calculate what's normal, look for any extreme examples and exclude them from results rather than delve into those mysteries and harvest that potential.
We need common sense. Germ/viral theory is fundamentally flawed and needs to be ditched. COVID 19 is the 'flu and the 'flu is toxic poisoning as I explain here.
Hmmmm. Did all those nurses who got covid have the freedom to proceed without getting vaccinated? Did the N95 docs stick up for them? I would really like to know.
Having kids and an active social lives is high risk?
I find it ironic that your N95 docs go to all that trouble to keep something lab engineered out of their nose, only to have something lab engineered stuck in their arm, multiple times, something that is known to reach their reproductive organs. Assuming they vaxxed up.
Totally agree with you there. And it is since everyone is many-times jabbed that the sick absences are soaring: whether from Covid or any other virus that comes around, everyone is getting sick more often and for a longer time. And No: Doctors did NOT stick up for people's right to choose the shot. They did Not apply their knowledge to reading the ingredients of the vaccine and looking at previous publications showing that it damages lab animals and never works. And they do not discuss openly in meetings or with patients that the issues we are seeing today likely stem from vaccine damage. They are passive and silent. Only the doctors doing actual research and publishing findings of the damages are doing something constructive to protect us.
One doesn't have to be a doctor to do actual research and publishing findings of the damage and are doing something constructive to protect us. I was a building surveyor and I know more that most doctors about disease and I never thought I would say that.
Most mainstream doctors are ignoramuses. They took the poison shots and suffered the consequences.
Not just people in general, they did not stick up for the people they know and work with everyday. So much for the dancing videos. It occurred to me that the wave of died suddenly doctors might have been the handiwork of angry nurses.
In movieland, that would be a good plot. In reality I couldn't imagine anything like that. We all keep a good relationship.
Edit to my comment above: I remembered some surgeons who stuck up for people. Before the stuff was even available, one of them warned all of us that it would be used as tyrannical control with passports and school admission - he refused to comply with all the hospital nonsense. Another of them (who has long catered to special patients from the Ukrn. covered in tattoos that greatly offend the staff) warned all of the women not to get the shot if they wanted to have children.
How did it turn out for those two? Did they get vaxxed, quit, get fired, or none of the above? And the nurses, did they all get vaxxed despite having had covid?
And my impression is that there are a lot of similar practical experiences of masks working. We highlight the deranged twitter rant here or there (even I have done so) but my impression is those are exceptions to the experienced rule. The "studies" are limited for exactly the reason you mention, you end up describing "not masking" as "masking" so there's nothing to actually measure. OTOH I don't have any personal anecdotes like yours so I didn't want to take such a strong stance.
Certainly keeps up with his recent "erudite misogyny" streak, haha. Naturally Tufekci likely didn't pick the headline, and her essay doesn't actually even contain the word science.
I was recently in a position that put my principles to the test. I live out in the middle of nowhere, and recently participated in a highway cleanup with a local nonprofit. Individuals drove to a remote location and then were shuttled to the actual cleanup site several miles away. I rode to the meeting point with friends. Getting on the shuttle bus, I was presented with an N95 mask because a mask was required in order to ride in the bus.
My choices were: to sit there alone several hours waiting for my friends to return; to walk to the cleanup site, though the activity would've been over by the time I got there; or to accept the mask with a muttered protest that I'd rather walk.
Rather than spending a ton of time stressing over the details, my pragmatic approach is: if masks worked, it would've been obvious to everybody, and we wouldn't still be arguing about it.
Wading a tiny bit farther into the weeds: you can't prove a negative*, i.e. you can't prove masks don't work. But nobody has proved that they do, see above.
A corollary: if it was possible to prove they worked, such a paper would exist. There was huge desire for such a result yet every attempt either failed outright or produced total garbage.
I went 3 years with no masks and never got sick. Then I got sick. I'm glad I didn't freak out and mask and worry for 3 years and then probably get sick anyway.
I have not worn a mask for the 'flu. I was going to hospital during the supposed height of the panic-medic. I refused to demean my intelligence and wear a mask for 1.5 hours whilst receiving immuno-therapy.
I did get my treatment until in September 2020 I realised that it was at best pointless and at worst like having 9 vaccines over 9 months.
Masks can be worn for sensible things but not the 'flu and no mask-ist is going to tell me otherwise!
What do you suggest when people (usually women but one stupid male also) chastise you for not wearing a mask or not wearing it properly?
Is it OK to say: "I'm an asshole. Deal with it."
However, you are correct. It was a political issue and the political response would be to enact laws to penalize people who do not comply.
I used to sort-of-comply. I have a mask that says "This mask is as useless as Joe Biden" and that got a few laughs and thumbs up from people in stores.
I just had this ridiculous and intentionally ever-grungy cloth thing that hung straight down, and this kind of noncompliance-by-compliance never became difficult - maybe because policy-makers never believed they could get buy-in on seal requirements, maybe because the "actually most of the flimsy masking you have been doing has been useless" admission was too costly to make. Still, it was extra unfair to me to wear a "only droplets stopping" mask at all because I have always had absolute control over my sneezes.
The only way to judge if anything truly works is to see if it performs in the wild as it did in the laboratory and or in studies. Masks do not work against viruses. There is a body of work a century long predating Covid that again and again and again have found masks to have no positive effect against viruses with many finding perverse effects. Using respirators for commercial use, independent contractors may be exempted in certain cases, requires medical screening, certification and fitting. Respirators are far more capable at removing things from the air than masks, yet those under going certification for them learn that they are not to be used as protection against viruses. Reading the instructions and warnings on the provided insert or in same cases the packaging states the same.
If respirators with the higher standard of manufacture, fit and a seal are not effective against viruses, then masks made under less stringent regulations and wholly lacking any kind of a seal can not stop a virus.
However, these arguments are discounted by mad maskers who provide their studies as proof masks work. Thus we have the value of the Cockrain (sp?) report, a study to trump their studies. Meaningless.
We just need to look at how masks work in the wild. If masks work against Covid, why have they not in Japan? The Japanese government rescinded its recommendation for masks on May 8th 2023. While many love to point out that Japan never mandated masks and use this fact to ignore the increasing sizes of it waves of Covid, this “recommendation” was followed by 99% of the population nationwide for 3 and 1/2 years. In the greater Tokyo area, statistically 100% of those outside their homes wore masks this entire time. This is from my own observations, I being the sole unmasked person amount the multitudes of individuals I viewed as I commuted into Tokyo. This “recommendation” is strong enough to render me, one who refuses to wear one as “recommended” almost unemployed. To further drive home the effectiveness of a recommendation from the Japanese, this “recommendation” to wear masks included demands that I wear one for online classes taught from my own home, by medical professionals. My kids’ swim coaches wore clear plastic masks moulded in the shape of the lower face while swimming. The human performers at sea world in Japan wore face coverings even while in the water and all the visitors except myself wore masks despite the wind driven rain from the typhoon that hit that day. Thousands of people self water boarding themselves to stop the virus. Let no one get away with discounting Japan’s failed attempts to stop the virus with masking with, “Japan didn’t mandate masks.”
Yet, during the three and a half years of 99% of the population wearing masks, Japan experienced 8 waves of Covid. The 7th was bigger than any that preceded it and the 8th bigger still. It simply can not be said that the masks had any positive effect against the virus. It could be suggested that masks had the previously reported perverse effect. I can state with confidence that statistically 100% of all covid cases in Japan were of people who wore masks, and socially distanced and religiously sanitized their hands. My brother in law was in shock that he got covid despite taking all these precautions. In his case, he was also vaxxed, but that is another issue. The idea that these efforts were useless at best has yet to occur to him.
If masks worked against Covid, then the reality in Japan could not exist. Around half here, including foreign tourists and residents are still wearing masks.
Scientific studies are not a way to find out real-world performance. I may be repeating this post here, but no one uses a scientific study to find out if football plays work, nor could one, since all the other factors that influence outcomes cannot be accounted for in any scientifically valid format - this is what human discretion is for, not science. So it simply isn't relevant to the question, it isn't the right tool - and just because there was precedent doesn't change the fact that it was "precedent of useless info."
If masks reduce cases, don't work, or increase cases, then cases in Japan will look the same (i.e. "however they look, no more or less" - they cannot look like less or more than they look). So all that "Japan had some cases" demonstrates is that masks did not 100% prevent cases, not that masks did not reduce cases.
At all events masks make people avoid each other. Take masks off, people stop avoiding each other. If you want people to stop avoiding each other, but aren't prepared to acknowledge this will probably cause more cases, then you don't really want it.
I wish I had thought to include this in my last reply.
I am not at all sure that masks cause people to avoid one another. Safety gear has the effect on the capsule users as well as some professionals to creat a false sense of security. People tend to take risks they would not otherwise take because they have faith in their safety gear.
People in Japan avoid me going so far as to cross the street or change train cars because I am un masked but have no problem riding the crazy crowded trains with fellow mad maskers. The only avoidance I have seen the first 3 1/2 years of the panic is of we few unmasked.
Alright, but does that extrapolate out of Japan? It certainly doesn't here in SoCal / Baja. San Diego county was a ghost town from late summer 2020 (which is when masking came back after the Floyd distraction) to May, 2022. If I am making a behavioral argument, of course it won't be culturally universal - but neither is the behavioral counter-argument. So what to do with behavioral arguments, throw them into the trash? Sure, if the goal is to also throw, again, discretion/discernment itself into the bin, and not have an idea about anything.
If we are going to say something works, then we have to look at the group or groups of people who are using whatever that something is as they are directed and see what effects it has. We also need to compare it with those who are not using it or not using it as directed. However, as Japan eventually out paced the rest of the world in numbers of cases and deaths while masking at 99% of the population here, is a comparison really needed in this case? Masks slowed down the spread compared to what? The spread increased here and at a rate not seen anywhere else. If the argument is, “Well, it would have been worse if they hadn’t.”, what data is there to support that? If no data exists, and it can’t as we have nothing that can be compared to it, this is an unfalsifiable statement that has no place in any discussion.
Covid wave not only got bigger in Japan despite (because of?) masks recommendations being followed by 99% of the population, the got bigger than everyone else’s. How can any argument stating masks prevent some cases hold water?
It is not a situation of “Japan had some cases”, the number of cases in Japan increased and continued to do so. The situation in Japan is much like being told that the fact that your car continues to increase in speed the longer you press the brake pedal is not evidence that your brakes have failed.
Masks can no more prevent viral spread than a chain link fence can keep out cicadas and Japan demonstrates this. Japan very well may demonstrate that masks do indeed have perverse effects as well. Maybe, the fact that your car keeps gaining speed as you press the brake is because you are pressing the accelerator instead.
The brake pedal analogy - we define "work" for a brake pedal according to a certain standard. When someone says masks work, what does that mean, which is to say 1) is "stop all cases via physical barrier" they standard they are using (vs just prevent some cases, somehow, like keeping people scared), 2) does anyone think that is the standard they are using - this really depends on intelligence of speaker/listener, so there's some semantic ambiguity built in here. When someone says masks don't work, typically they mean both are false. (It isn't coherent to say 'masks don't work' if you agree they prevent some cases, sometimes.) So I don't agree that 'masks work' is pinned to meaning 1 and 'masks don't work' = true if 1 is false.
There is no way a mask can prevent some cases any more than a screen can keep some water from entering a submarine. Yes, a screen will slow the ingress of sea water into the doomed sub but not to any meaningful degree.
Universal masking has been known to have perverse effects, meaning they make the problem they are used to solve or mitigate, worse.
There is a great video out there of a man trying on first on N95 respirator then two in the frigid outside, winter air. While his words support the use of respirator, the viewer can easily see the jets of exhaled breath shooting out from the edges while an effusion of slower velocity is observable through the filter. The N95 is a respirator with a seal. It does not top exhaled breath, zero source control. The instructions and warnings sheet provided with it state clearly that is to be used for particles much larger than viruses. Does not protect the wearer.
I watch little TV, still, I have never seen a commercial for the N95 for use against SarsCov 2. Friends in the States tell me that they have not seen any either. However, I have seen TV commercials for Pfizer’s Covid vaccine and three different commercials for two different medications against mask induced illnesses on TV and on the trains in Japan.
If 3M could make the claim that their products could help prevent some cases of Covid, why are they not doing so? Could be that they need not because fear spread by others is as good of advertising as they could hope for. But I do not buy this as most are not wearing N95s, they are using various surgical and other masks. 3M has tons of competition and would benefit from being able to state that their N95 stops or at least slows the virus. Yet, they do not. What do they know? They know, as evidenced in the safety info inserted in the packaging, that it doesn’t.
My med school just concluded the two day English language speech contest for our first year students. The winners gave an encore speech. While 41 of the 54 med students in my group wore masks while delivering their speeches, only 2 of the 5 winners were wearing one as they waited to give their encores. The two masked med students grabbed the filters of the filthy masks and removed them as they approached the podium for their speeches. They then grabbed the micro phone shared by all speakers with the hand they just used to remove their dirty masks and thereby demonstrating another reason universal masking has perverse effects. And this is a medical school.
Masks make things worse. Japan’s increasingly large waves of the disease masks are to stop or slow down support this.
Huh? As far as I know, no one has EVER suggested that people would not be allowed to wear masks; the ONLY question has been whether or not masks should be req'd; thus, the ONLY question was whether or not mandates worked - this study proved they don't. Mandate or no mandate, it didn't matter, which was the ONLY question in this debate. Look, if you want to hide in a hole & never see another person ever, you'd probably avoid COVID - and you should be free to hide in a hole. The question is whether or not we as a society should FORCE people into holes - and that study has answered that question. I think you're debating a straw man here - it was always about mandates, not masks.
There was no "force" except majority will. If everyone had just not worn masks governments would have revoked or stopped mentioning mandates immediately to avoid looking powerless. This literally happened in front of everyone's faces in summer 2020 protests. What "force".
As for your overall point, it completely affirms my premise. You concede that if they work, they can be forced. You concede the premise. So feel free to complain about what it was "always about" however many times the mainstream experts move the football on whether they work.
You never saw any reports about GOVERNMENT mandates requiring masks? When the government orders you to do something, that's force (or the threat thereof). I suppose one could argue that most people gave in BEFORE the government made good on its threats, but that's a rather unusual definition of force (if I rob you at gunpoint, did I use force or merely the threat thereof?)
Likewise, how many private firms mandated masks because they feared what the government would do to them if they didn't. Again, that's force.
Granted, the majority can make the government abandon its policies, but that doesn't change the point: these policies were imposed upon us.
Finally, how do I concede that they can be imposed if they work? What? I would oppose force even if they work. I think condoms work; I don't think the government can mandate them. It's perfectly reasonable to oppose government mandates even if the government is mandating good/effective things because medical freedom and/or my right to be free of your force is not dependent upon the merits of your ideas. I think people have the right to decline effective treatments too - it's about WHO decides, not WHAT they decide.
Indeed, let's make this simple. Suppose the government is mandating a perfectly effective, perfectly safe vaccine, so what? How many people would be helped by the mandate (ie get the vaccine who otherwise would not have received it or not have received it as quickly) vs. how many people would be hurt by the mandate (ie abused unnecessarily or accidentally forced into multiple jabs or any other such harms)? The question, then, is the mandate, not the vaccine.
Honestly, I don't see why this is so hard for you. Opposing force & supporting freedom is a pretty easy concept. I don't oppose the government's use of violence because I disagree w/ the government's objectives, but rather because I disagree with its tactics - I don't think they've met the requirements for using violence even assuming for the sake of argument that they're otherwise right. Why is that hard to see?
Look, I might think it would be nice to build a new McDs in your hometown, that doesn't mean I think it would be acceptable to murder you and your family in your sleep to do so, nor do I think that THREATENING to murder you & your family would be acceptable (or nonviolent) either. I can support a policy w/o supporting the use of violence to achieve that policy.
Assuming masks "work," so what? Why does that justify violence? That's the argument and that's what the study at issue proved: the violence got us nothing, so who cares about masks?
Many thanks Brian, masks are stupid things to wear for the 'flu.
This is my complaint as well. As far as I know I have not caught it despite trying hard. I guess I need to try skiing. Unless you count that 24-hour virus and two weeks of coughing I had in January of 2022. Nice joke by the way.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/covid-my-struggle
Such integrity: https://bestnewshere.com/operation-warp-speed-architect-arrested/
Thanks for the link. Amazing;y or not, Moncef Mohamed Slaoui, the man mentioned in the article and accused of sexual harassment of male colleagues, has this anagram of his name.
demoniacal fumes homo
This might explain matters.
"Reality is not adjudicated by randomized control trials nor “reviews” of the same; this is merely a conventionally accepted (and not particularly impressive) process for evaluating drugs and care protocols. " Love this!
If you want to wear masks because you imagine that they have talismanic powers to protect you against illness, please feel free.
But if you want to mandate that all others wear masks, please fuck off and keep your illness anxiety disorder to yourself.
And you can also replace "wear masks" with "get mRNA injections" and "show a vaccine passport to gain entrance" and "stay at least 6 feet away from others" and "imprison yourself in your home" and "constantly use hand disinfectant" and "live in a plastic bubble."
It the mask madness in the UK I considered wearing a black one on my arm in memory of all the people who died because of the COVID cultists who do what you list.
I also saw Eugyppius make the same analogy with bike helmets. I understand that bike helmets probably don't help with most accidents, but as I commented over there, I do think that helmets can help with very specific types of crashes, namely crashes where your head hits hard pavement after falling from a good height. This happened to me in the 80s, and I'm pretty sure that the helmet reduced the severity of my head injury. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether it really helped, so I could very well be wrong.
I love this!
Thank you Brian!
The mask is a muzzle. It was advanced on spurious grounds by a shady WEF-linked group led by an AI entrepreneur.
"All of these problems evaporate with A.I. One example of how powerful this can be is the global campaign to promote masking. This was accomplished, in a matter of weeks, by a WEF-linked group called “Masks4All”.
From their about page:
“#Masks4All is an all-volunteer org that started and powered the movement for people and Governments to follow the overwhelming scientific evidence that shows we need to wear homemade masks in public to slow COVID-19.
Now that this is widely accepted as a fact by Government, news, and health leaders, we’re focused on getting masks to be required across the U.S. and the world.”
The face of the organization was and is Jeremy Howard, Co-Founder & Leader
Distinguished Research Scientist at USF; Founding Researcher at fast.ai; Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Council."
It's not even a "political" issue. It's a psy-op tactic as part of the global technocracy coup.
https://icthruit.substack.com/p/synthetic-intelligence-pt-1
Very interesting, thank you.
Re "overwhelming scientific evidence that shows we need to wear homemade masks in public to slow COVID-19."
Sounds more like a joke to fool the gullible. Seemed to work on most but not me thankfully. I had a struggle with my wife who believed the lies despite my telling her it was pointless and anyway all guidance in the UK. Being equipped with a reasonable brain I managed to work it out.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/m-is-for-masks/
The bad science is what gave it away for us. We wore them for a couple of weeks, when the media were saying not to, because if they didn't want us to wear them, it had to be a good idea, right? We didn't know much about the small sizes involved, or the air dynamics.
By the time they were making them mandatory, we'd caught on, and became resisters. It was an interesting inversion. We got to watch them make up science as they went along, with the Syrian Hamsters and hairdressers, and it gave us a valuable lesson in bullshit detection that would come in handy time and again.
Thank you, that made me smile. :)
The mask thing has been bizarre to me since the beginning. Can't we all see that immunological naivety is bad, like Iroquois with smallpox bad? Had this been an actual 'superbug', not saying that they exist in reality as they do in fiction but IF, then exposure to small amounts, such as you might get from incidental asymptomatic contact, triggering a less than normal infection would have been your best chance to survive and develop immunity. Asymptomatic infection is actually probably the best driver of mild outcomes and natural immunity that you can imagine in an ACTUAL pandemic, not a stagemanaged Plandemic.
These mask conversations always miss out on the importance of concentration or 'viral load'. A mild infection triggering a mild immune response logically is the best protection against a later more concentrated dose of the pathogen.(whatever it might be all mechanisms that I am aware of are concentration dependent)
So, although I agree with Brian that focusing on the human and political and social dimensions gets more to the root of the problem than focusing on the medical and pseudomedical dimensions I would say, Masks not working is preferable to masks working. Even if they do work, wearing them is a bad decision, I don't support centrally forbidding this particular bad decision, but knowing that it is a bad decision and why seems like a good measure.
There are some instances where wearing a mask is helpful, but just never for the 'flu which was re-branded by big pharma etc. to make more money.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/m-is-for-masks/
The mask-ists submitted to the scam and let the mask makers make lots of money for nothing. The environment then gets littered with the wretched things. I saw them on the ground outside a hospital in Brighton UK, in June 2020!
There was a paper written a while ago that argued masks work because they still allow a small amount of virus through, basically mimicking a form of variolation. In other words, it basically took your stance of a small exposure being a good thing, but believed a small exposure was more likely with a mask, whereas a big exposure would be more likely without.
I have to say bluntly that the paper was a load of bollox.
COVID 19 is the 'flu and there is no alien bug. There is pollution etc. and sometimes masks help to reduce particulates. As to poison gases, you need a proper gas mask.
Now if masks were sold that way there would be an argument for them. Don't know that it would be true, but it might be. Still wouldn't be worth giving up freedom for but at least it would make sense in a biological way.
It makes no sense as people don't understand what the 'flu is and COVID 19 is the 'flu re-branded. I used to misunderstand the 'flu until 2020.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2022/08/17/what-is-the-flu-a-k-a-covid-19-and-why-vaccines-are-pointless-at-best/
While it would make more intuitive sense, it would still be based on nothing but wishful thinking. I mean, a paper could recommend using others' urine as the "most effective" hand sanitizer using the exact same "logic."
I have always thought this is plausible in theory, though the question of evidence is made difficult by changes to the virus. So you have a pre-B.1 version of the virus moving through California in late 2019 and everyone is basically fine (I reckon I probably got immunity then despite never getting sick, though I never tested for antibodies). This could be because when you carry on life normally, you are getting constant micro-doses, expanding your cross-reactive T Cells, and finally when you get enough viral load for asymptomatic or symptomatic infection you are fine. And this kind of pre-exposure may have continued to keep deaths low in California even in the lockdown/reopen/lockdown-era. But would it have been such a smooth experience if B.1 was the first variant here, as in New York? We can only speculate.
Evidence from the non-locking down countries is mixed. Brazil in particular doesn't support a "virus is more afraid of you than you are of it" approach. Regardless, I do think that if we didn't have the fear then we wouldn't have really noticed anything dramatic. Because after all we just went through statistically gigantic flu and RSV spikes, pediatric hospitals crammed, but daily life was just normal. What happens in hospitals does not make a "pandemic."
It is like you say, difficult to prove this in a particular case but certainly the early severity and speed of onset is concentration dependent, even though there are obviously many other variables which become dominant as time increases from onset.
I think that without the 'interventions' COVID would have been significant to primary care doctors, virologists, epidemiologists and the rest of us wouldn't have noticed anything beyond cases in our own family and friends.
The idea that we have to 'all be in it together' as a community makes all of our problems worse without contributing anything. Families and small groups, especially churches, come together and multiply their happiness especially and divide their troubles, but larger groups seem to have the opposite psychological effect, the larger the worse.
I know a few people who, despite working in medicine or pharmacy during the pandemic, never got sick because they invested in expensive, name-brand, made-in-western country N95's, and did not take those things off in places where colleagues were sharing air.
We frequently have the scenario where Covid sweeps through the department, passing between nurses and patients. Went from 25+ nurses to 3 who did not have Covid within a week. The nurses wear cheap masks in the hallways, but sit around the coffee table together having breakfast, lunch, cake, coffee the rest of the day. Studies done of "hospital employees who wore masks" include these behavioral patterns, because honestly, who can work 8 hours without taking off the mask to eat and drink? Most of the nurses have young school children at home and active social lives, so that table is a high-risk environment.
Meanwhile doctors with their own offices are able to eat alone. The ones with high quality masks and disciplined habits don't get sick. They make it through these waves that pass through the department.
We can all agree that tyranny is undesirable and eminent.
However: you have one set of lungs, one brain with neurons that need to last forever, one set of reproductive organs. There is a lab-engineered something floating around with the ability to target those cells, and it likes to sneak in through your nose.
You have the freedom to decide how to proceed.
OK, but I know many people who have have to work in retail store in rural areas throughout the pandemic who were not allowed to wear any masks at all who never got COVID, at least not that they ever noticed.
Does that also translate into a scientific recommendation?
It translates to some interesting research questions if we could take their blood and see what happens when exposed to Covid. We need more scientific inquiry looking at exceptional cases. Most studies are set up to do just the opposite: calculate what's normal, look for any extreme examples and exclude them from results rather than delve into those mysteries and harvest that potential.
We need common sense. Germ/viral theory is fundamentally flawed and needs to be ditched. COVID 19 is the 'flu and the 'flu is toxic poisoning as I explain here.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2022/08/17/what-is-the-flu-a-k-a-covid-19-and-why-vaccines-are-pointless-at-best/
I agree. Unfortunately, these are struggling, poor "essential workers" that nobody is clapping for anymore.
Hmmmm. Did all those nurses who got covid have the freedom to proceed without getting vaccinated? Did the N95 docs stick up for them? I would really like to know.
Having kids and an active social lives is high risk?
I find it ironic that your N95 docs go to all that trouble to keep something lab engineered out of their nose, only to have something lab engineered stuck in their arm, multiple times, something that is known to reach their reproductive organs. Assuming they vaxxed up.
Totally agree with you there. And it is since everyone is many-times jabbed that the sick absences are soaring: whether from Covid or any other virus that comes around, everyone is getting sick more often and for a longer time. And No: Doctors did NOT stick up for people's right to choose the shot. They did Not apply their knowledge to reading the ingredients of the vaccine and looking at previous publications showing that it damages lab animals and never works. And they do not discuss openly in meetings or with patients that the issues we are seeing today likely stem from vaccine damage. They are passive and silent. Only the doctors doing actual research and publishing findings of the damages are doing something constructive to protect us.
One doesn't have to be a doctor to do actual research and publishing findings of the damage and are doing something constructive to protect us. I was a building surveyor and I know more that most doctors about disease and I never thought I would say that.
Most mainstream doctors are ignoramuses. They took the poison shots and suffered the consequences.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2022/05/29/i-knew-an-old-doctor-who-swallowed-a-lie/
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2022/01/07/covid-19-light-bight/
Not just people in general, they did not stick up for the people they know and work with everyday. So much for the dancing videos. It occurred to me that the wave of died suddenly doctors might have been the handiwork of angry nurses.
In movieland, that would be a good plot. In reality I couldn't imagine anything like that. We all keep a good relationship.
Edit to my comment above: I remembered some surgeons who stuck up for people. Before the stuff was even available, one of them warned all of us that it would be used as tyrannical control with passports and school admission - he refused to comply with all the hospital nonsense. Another of them (who has long catered to special patients from the Ukrn. covered in tattoos that greatly offend the staff) warned all of the women not to get the shot if they wanted to have children.
How did it turn out for those two? Did they get vaxxed, quit, get fired, or none of the above? And the nurses, did they all get vaxxed despite having had covid?
I wonder that myself. I left to protect my cribiform plate from the saber-wielding nurses.
And my impression is that there are a lot of similar practical experiences of masks working. We highlight the deranged twitter rant here or there (even I have done so) but my impression is those are exceptions to the experienced rule. The "studies" are limited for exactly the reason you mention, you end up describing "not masking" as "masking" so there's nothing to actually measure. OTOH I don't have any personal anecdotes like yours so I didn't want to take such a strong stance.
You and eugyppius must be cross-pollinating. You both make analogies with bicycle helmets today.
Certainly keeps up with his recent "erudite misogyny" streak, haha. Naturally Tufekci likely didn't pick the headline, and her essay doesn't actually even contain the word science.
Good point — writers never get to write their own headlines.
I was recently in a position that put my principles to the test. I live out in the middle of nowhere, and recently participated in a highway cleanup with a local nonprofit. Individuals drove to a remote location and then were shuttled to the actual cleanup site several miles away. I rode to the meeting point with friends. Getting on the shuttle bus, I was presented with an N95 mask because a mask was required in order to ride in the bus.
My choices were: to sit there alone several hours waiting for my friends to return; to walk to the cleanup site, though the activity would've been over by the time I got there; or to accept the mask with a muttered protest that I'd rather walk.
I'm slightly embarrassed that I chose the third.
But then how are you supposed to smoke in the back with the other kids?
It was a really short bus.
Rather than spending a ton of time stressing over the details, my pragmatic approach is: if masks worked, it would've been obvious to everybody, and we wouldn't still be arguing about it.
Wading a tiny bit farther into the weeds: you can't prove a negative*, i.e. you can't prove masks don't work. But nobody has proved that they do, see above.
* An old aphorism. Is it true?
A corollary: if it was possible to prove they worked, such a paper would exist. There was huge desire for such a result yet every attempt either failed outright or produced total garbage.
I went 3 years with no masks and never got sick. Then I got sick. I'm glad I didn't freak out and mask and worry for 3 years and then probably get sick anyway.
I have not worn a mask for the 'flu. I was going to hospital during the supposed height of the panic-medic. I refused to demean my intelligence and wear a mask for 1.5 hours whilst receiving immuno-therapy.
I did get my treatment until in September 2020 I realised that it was at best pointless and at worst like having 9 vaccines over 9 months.
Masks can be worn for sensible things but not the 'flu and no mask-ist is going to tell me otherwise!
What do you suggest when people (usually women but one stupid male also) chastise you for not wearing a mask or not wearing it properly?
Is it OK to say: "I'm an asshole. Deal with it."
However, you are correct. It was a political issue and the political response would be to enact laws to penalize people who do not comply.
I used to sort-of-comply. I have a mask that says "This mask is as useless as Joe Biden" and that got a few laughs and thumbs up from people in stores.
Hmm...one could say I am not a mask-ist and I am not that stupid. Put them on the defensive.
But I like your approach. Joe Biden wears his masks on his face sometimes. Allegedly also on his bottom, though that's a larger version presumably.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2021/02/04/joe-biden-the-first-13-days/
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2021/03/18/various-twits-tweets-including-joe-biden/
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2022/04/12/more-memes/
I just had this ridiculous and intentionally ever-grungy cloth thing that hung straight down, and this kind of noncompliance-by-compliance never became difficult - maybe because policy-makers never believed they could get buy-in on seal requirements, maybe because the "actually most of the flimsy masking you have been doing has been useless" admission was too costly to make. Still, it was extra unfair to me to wear a "only droplets stopping" mask at all because I have always had absolute control over my sneezes.