Blast From the Past – XIII

This blog was from 12/18/20. It is interesting since earlier this week a White House spokesman finally admitted that there are no studies proving that face-masks actually work for Covid.

What if . . . ? 

What if some of those things which are supposed to make things better,   are in fact be making things worse? Here I am speaking about the coronavirus, and what the general populace is being told to do . . . “No questions. Just do it!”

Albert Einstein had many interesting quotes. For instance:

• “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
• “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

These two particular quotes came to mind this morning when I read an article in the newspaper this morning about one of my recurring subjects . . . the use of face masks to combat the spread of Covid. After reading this particular article, I asked myself, “What if the ubiquitous recommendations to wear face-masks, and the robot-like obedience to these recommendations is making the coronavirus spread worse? What if ?”

Here in California we are having the “surge of all surges,” and yet I am finding it difficult to find anybody who is maskless. People walking alone in parks, driving alone in cars, and sitting alone on their porches . . . all have face-masks on, despite the fact that they are alone. I had thought that the face-mask recommendations were initially for situations where social distancing was not possible . . . not when alone. Does anyone think that these solitary, alone face-mask wearers put on a fresh, clean, unused face-masks when they go from the porch, their car, or the park to Walmart or Costco, where social distancing is more fantasy than reality.

Now if all of the face-masks were of the tight fitting N95 variety, I would think differently, but now days “face-masks” come in all shapes and forms. More than 100,000 varieties of face-masks are presently for sale. They are made from a variety of different fabrics, cotton, silk, and various synthetics. Some are actually not wearing a face-mask but rather bandannas, gaiters, and even handkerchiefs, all masquerading as face-masks. What if a lot of these “face-masks” and face-coverings are in reality similar to a chain-link fence trying to keep out mosquitoes? 

Moreover, despite the dictums by “those that know best” to always wear face-masks (some even advocate wearing them indoors), what all of these face-masks and pseudo face-masks have in common is that none of them have any sort of evaluation as to their effectiveness or non-effectiveness in filtering our viruses or viral particles. Why not? Sunblocks all have a number that signifies how effective they are at blocking the potentially harmful sun rays from getting to our skin . . . but face-masks, nada. Now apparently this type of evaluation of the actual effectiveness of various face-masks will be coming soon according to the article I read today. Think about that for a second . . . Everyone should be wearing face-masks . . . err . . . but we do not actually know if some types of face coverings actually work at all.

Which leads me back to my original question:

“What if some of those things which are supposed to make things better,   are in fact be making things worse?”

And in the same context two other Einstein quote came to mind:

• Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
• “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

12/18/20

1/7/23