You all know the drill. You’re out and about with the family, dog, some friends etc. and all of a sudden you see something you want in a shop and decide to have a look. You hadn’t planned to go shopping or indeed enter any public indoor space, so when you are about to open the door, suddenly a panicky thought enters your mind: Shit! I need a mask.
If you are like me, that thought alone may disgust you enough to turn around and leave. Alternatively, you now start browsing through your bag or backpack, trouser pockets, or jacket until you find an old wrinkled cloth mask. The colour may have faded a bit and you’ve got no idea how it got there in the first place, nor any recollection of when or where you last wore it.
All you know is that “it’ll do” and you’re putting it on anyway, only briefly stopping to wonder how dirty it may actually be and how much bacteria it will have accumulated.
You’re not kidding yourself. You’re not wearing this mask to protect yourself or anyone else. You’re wearing it because you must.
Why, then, do press conferences hardly mention that masks should be used for short periods of time, washed if possible, kept in a safe container, put away neatly after use? It’s a bit like a surgeon putting in a cochlear implant and then telling you, “don’t worry about how it works. It’s there now, that’s all that matters”. Or someone giving you a pair of crutches, “no need to really use them. As long as you carry them in your car wherever you go, you’ll be fine”. One could give many examples. Some headache pills? “10 a day or 1, doesn’t really matter. What matters is you’ve bought them now.”
So if they don’t care how we wear it, what difference do they make? The answer is, of course, probably none. In summer 2020, some Dutch authorities trialed masks outdoors in some streets. Even the official document said that they might not work but would make people more careful.
Is this the primary goal of masking? To confront us with an omnipresent signal that the “evil virus” is still out there? A well-meaning tool to protect us and remind us to be careful? Or is it a more sinister plan, to reduce individuals to faceless members of a herd, that can be steered as one?
Who knows, but when we sum up, the equation doesn’t look good. Scientific evidence is, at best, torn, and unable to establish with certainty that masks are useful to prevent spread. Empirical, real-life evidence is even more concerning, with some of the countries with the best Covid numbers (notably, for the last months, Sweden) not really having used masks at all, while those who have insisted on medical grade masks are currently on the top end when it comes to imposing extreme measures (e.g. Austria, Germany). Harms haven’t really been a focus of any study of note, at least not those that were published by the mass media. Yet the more the pandemic regresses, the less lethal the waves become, the more intensely masks are being promoted.
It’s weird, then, that the more they are imposed, the less emphasis is being put on how to wear them. I’ve said before that we have two groups of “scientists” in the world and each group has a belief system that doesn’t overlap with the other even one bit. That in itself is a scientific impossibility and the only explanation is that one of the sides is making everything up. Real life will tell us who’s who. Arguably, it already has told us.
The same bizarre phenomenon is, of course, also in evidence when it comes to vaccines. A Pfizer, combined with a Moderna? No problem. Fancy a more exotic Russian jab? No worries in some countries. Cocktail of all of them? Coming your way soon. Every four months, every three months, half doses for kids? What’s in a booster? We don’t care, as long as you take one because you’re an outlaw otherwise, a despicable member of society.
Remember watching a thriller on TV that is so bizarre, yet so gripping and complicated that you are desperate for the big reveal, the explanation of what happened and who killed who? Remember also the feeling you get when the film (or book) is almost over - you know the explanation will come, yet you cannot imagine there’ll be a credible one that makes sense of what has gone before?
We’re in that moment now but in real life. We are living our own moment of fantasy fiction, in a bubble of disbelief, and we know there will be a conclusion to this - yet we cannot imagine for the life of us what it could be - how to make sense of it all.
While we are waiting with bated breath, again and again wondering when that moment will come, let’s not change our habits. Let’s continue to borrow masks off each other. Let’s not worry if our kids come back from school with that Paw Patrol mask on that we never gave them. Let’s keep hanging them on our elbows for maximum bacterial exposure. Let’s not read the operating manual. Never take masks seriously. It’s masks or sanity - you cannot have both.
FFP2 will save us all. Joel in particular.
This is so obvious its hard to beleive it gains so little traction in the real world. I keep about 3 in each of my old coats, wear whichever comes first, absolute idiocy, unless of course like Dr Faucci you know, " its just a bit of theatre" . I suspect the average builder's labourer has known it from day one but just gets on with his job, thinking ," who am I to question the experts". I was walking down an open quayside in France last year and 3 gendarmes were approaching, one whipped off his mask and sneezed into his hand, then put his mask back on. As we neared them they let me know in no uncertain terms that I must put my mask on or get out of town. Utter madness but entirely as you would expect.