COVID Chronicles: Unmasking The Hysteria About Masking
We continue our COVID Chronicles series. In this episode, Vince provides some insight into the latest COVID craze: mandated masking, and why mandates without education is not only stupid, but dangerous.
At this point in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic saga, there’s still a lot of information we don’t know about the virus, and researchers are still debating various components of our knowledge base. Unfortunately, the concept of “too many cooks in the kitchen” is more on-point now than several months ago, with regard to accurate information regarding the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its resultant disease COVID-19 (which sounds like it was named by someone on crack, instead of a medical professional). This has created a wide variety of responses to the virus and its disease state, from “I don’t care” all the way to “OH MY G-D, the Zombie apocalypse starts next week!”
Inaccuracies
The mask controversy is well-seasoned by this underlying morass of inaccurate information about the virus. Too much research is partially or completely invalidating previous research. Small sample size, non-peer-reviewed studies bringing up shocking information about the virus are being taken as gospel without even being validated. Various states are either deliberately or unintentionally miscounting actual numbers of completed testing. It appears that some states and/or localities are:
– counting each person’s multiple positive tests as a new count (over-counting re-checks)
– counting IgG-positive-only tests (IgG is a marker of past infection) as active COVID-positive
– demanding that medical providers list COVID-19 on death certificates of people with no known positive test, simply because they were in a hospital or facility that had positive cases
These errors have been occurring so often, that it’s hard to not think that, at least on some level, somewhere, the governors and other officials involved aren’t playing some malicious game.
The Political Bazooka
Various political figures, mostly Democrats but also some Republicans, have tried their level best to use this public health crisis as a political bazooka. The Democrats are clearly succeeding in this, but their success is a tragic loss for true medical science, patient confidentiality, and ultimately for traditional American Constitutional liberty.
Chaim predicted earlier that the Democrat party’s calls for “mail-in” ballots (not to be confused with true “absentee” ballots) could easily enable them to “steal” an election that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to win, with a front-runner who has terminal dementia and probably may not survive a year in office let alone four or eight.
Masking the Truth
The latest whine to hit America (as if we didn’t already have enough) is with masking. Again, too many cooks in the kitchen have been saying everything from “masks are 100% unnecessary ever”, to “every single person must be forced to wear a mask, from the time they walk out their front door, until the time they go back inside their house.”
Neither of these two extremes is medically sound, but that hasn’t stopped “Constitutional rebels” from demanding their right to not cover their faces in public because it “violates my individual liberty”, nor has it stopped local or state (thank G-d not Federal – yet) governments from making masks mandatory at all times in all public spaces.
Back in late July, Walmart and Sam’s Club entered the fray with a “mask mandate” that was to start on July 20th. This led to mass hysteria and backlash – primarily because nearly everyone who was commenting on it, didn’t actually read what Walmart had on their own website and on Facebook the clear word from Walmart/Sam’s Club. Their corporate dictum is that they will have so-called “Ambassadors” to work with customers who cannot or will not mask. But at the end of the day, they will still allow such people to shop in their stores without a mask if necessary.
Fear-Mongering
So, consider it as “situation normal” with the sheepish populace who don’t actually read anything for themselves, but simply parrot other crap that’s been passed from person to person on social media, like the story that gets radically changed after it gets to the end of a line of people whispering into the next person’s ear.
While we languish in the morass of artificially-created fear-mongering about SARS-CoV-2 and its disease which, I stress that as of this point, is not significantly any deadlier in worldwide terms than the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was early on, we need to be seriously considering a few things.
There are legitimate medical and psychological reasons why some people cannot use masks. These people are just as entitled to their individual freedom of movement and economy as everyone else. We need to ditch the mask-shaming – yelling and berating people for not wearing a mask in public – because we really don’t know if someone has a medical or psychological reason why they can’t use a mask.
Hitting a Bullet
So, instead of yelling and shaming a non-masked person, just keep your mouth shut, practice the 2-meter physical distancing guideline, and realize that the realistic chance of you contracting SARS-CoV-2 from a 5-second non-physical exposure to a non-masked (or masked for that matter) person is comparable to observations from the “new” Scotty from the Star Trek reboot movies: “trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse”, or “jumping out of a moving car, off a bridge, into a shot glass.” Yep, I love the new Scotty, too.
Add on to all this confusion, the fact that Dr Robert Redfield (who has to reign supreme as the most ineffective, inept, incompetent, and corrupt CDC director we’ve had in living memory), continues to insist on the use of cloth masks, which various validated studies in the past have already shown do not offer the degree of protection that Dr Redfield seems to persist in claiming.
This to me is important, as I have a good number of patients who have legitimate medical or psychological reasons why they cannot mask. These people are American citizens too, and have a right of freedom of movement, just as those who can and choose to use masks have.
Lost Concepts
Certainly someone will claim “they should stay home”, “they can get curbside pickup”, “they can get someone to shop for them”. These aren’t good excuses, and they are certainly not a blanket answer for every person in every situation.
Though this concept will be completely lost on those under 35, it still remains true that there are people who either don’t have a computing device at home, or for any number of reasons, choose not to put their financial information online aka using online shopping and curbside pickup.
Some of these people may not have family or friends who can shop for them; they may truly be all alone. They should not be forced to pay extra money to utilize some online shopping/delivery service (partially for the foregoing reason that some of these people may not have computers or the capability to put financial information online. These people must be accommodated.
Ditch the Mandate
The answer is obvious: DITCH THE MASK MANDATE.
As a medical provider, I’m not entirely opposed to public mask use. It is one of a group of interventions that people can do to protect themselves during times of viral pandemic – but contrary to the impression given by Redfield and various state governments, YOUR MASK IS NO JESUS CHRIST.
I am firmly opposed to mandating mask use, for several reasons, all of which can explain why positivity numbers have been rising, despite months of the CDC and various other entities encouraging constant mask use.
Wrong Mask
People don’t use the right mask. First off: dudes, ditch the bandana. It does absolutely NOTHING for virus protection. Also, for similar reasons, ditch the scarves, the dust mask with the valve in it from Home Depot (or the home-cottage-industry chatted up “tech” masks online), and multi-layer cloth masks. Yes I am going against the CDC director’s insistence that cloth masks are the only thing people should be using. But for a number of reasons, primarily those that involve the fact that such masks don’t filter micron-sized particles, cloth masks are totally ineffective at preventing you from inhaling virus particles, despite what some politicians and Dr Redfield want you to believe.
Wrong Method
People don’t use masks properly. So you got the right stuff, the disposable surgical mask. But check yourself: you put the mask on, go into the store, touch a bunch of stuff, readjusting your mask multiple times (or G-d forbid putting it just on your mouth leaving your nose exposed), go to the check out, pay with your phone or card (because Walmart is now apparently not taking cash?), walk outside, and WHEW! whip the mask down over your chin; you stow your groceries, get in your car, and take the mask off, and hang it over your rear-view mirror.
Any infection control expert (or any MD/DO/NP/PA worth his/her salt) would tell you that you just created and maintained what’s called the “chain of contamination”. Yet no one at the store is telling you how to break that chain, and certainly the CDC isn’t telling you either (thanks to the incompetent Dr Redfield who just wants you to keep wearing cloth masks).
Wrong Directive
“My mask protects you, your mask protects me”. This is one of the most misused directives I’ve heard regarding masks. While technically this may be considered true (for example, we use surgical masks in the surgical suites to minimize us contaminating a sterile field), its use in this context is misleading.
My mask will ONLY protect YOU, if I have SARS-CoV-2. But if I have the virus, shouldn’t I be quarantining? Some will say that those so-called “infectors” (I love how the leftists make what medicine calls “asymptomatic carriers” sound so deliberately devilish), won’t spread the virus if they wear a mask. Again, technically true, but contextually inaccurate since there’s no solid evidence that the simple act of breathing transmits enough virus to rapidly infect another person.
Wrong Attitude
“I’m wearing a mask, so I’m perfectly fine, I’m protected.” Anyone who’s said this (don’t lie, I’ve heard/read this literally thousands of times recently) let me offer a valid medical opinion to this: THIS IS A LIE. You are NOT 100% protected by simply wearing a mask, and even less so, if you use a mask in a manner that violates basic infection control principles. In fact, no one, ever, at any time, is ever totally protected from everything. Did the flu just suddenly say “aww, you got coronavirus floating around right now… that’s OK, I won’t bother you – I’ll get you next year!” BULL CRAP.
Any infection control expert will tell you that on your skin, right now, you have literally millions of bacteria, let alone in certain situations, fungi and viruses. And despite some physician somewhere who, wanting his proverbial 15-minutes of fame on MSNBC or CNN, spouted off that the virus isn’t really spread by contact anymore, this is a epidemiological fantasy. More solid evidence exists for the multi-modal transmission of SARS-CoV-2, than exist for airborne-only or droplet-only. In fact, the fomite transmission method (catching it from “fomites”, places where virus can deposit and thus be transmitted) completely explains why the virus spread so rapidly out of an area known to commonly use face masks as a cultural norm.
The Proof
In early 2020, the WHO sponsored a study looking at protection using various types and methods of personal protective equipment (PPE) as well as hand washing. Specifically, they looked as “surgical” or “procedure” masks and their effectiveness. Among other issues, they concluded:
We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility. However, as with hand hygiene, face masks might be able to reduce the transmission of other infections and therefore have value in an influenza pandemic when healthcare resources are stretched.
Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures. Jingyi Xiao, Eunice Y. C. Shiu, Huizhi Gao, Jessica Y. Wong, Min W. Fong, Sukhyun Ryu, and Benjamin J. Cowlin
Consider that the SARS-CoV-2 virus appears to be smaller on average (50-140 nm) than the average influenza virus (90-120 nm). It’s easy to see then, why if a procedure mask aren’t entirely effective against influenza (the subject virus of the study), neither they nor plain cloth masks will be any better against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Thus, masking is only PART of the protection kit at this stage. Unfortunately though, various governments making mask use mandatory only reinforce an erroneous concept that if you only wear a cloth or procedure mask, you won’t get COVID19. Medically speaking, nothing could be farther from the truth. Personally speaking, those who make such mandates, including Democrat governors, are deliberately whipping up hysteria and are part of the PROBLEM, not the solution.
They’re Not All Rebels
So, again – please don’t look with disdain or verbally abuse people you see not wearing a mask (because I’ll be one of them for my own medical reasons related to a wonderful sunny day in September 2001). You have no idea why they’re not wearing a mask, so it’s better to just walk by than to assume they’re somehow one of those “rebels”.
I would also call on businesses everywhere, national chains and local businesses, to immediately reverse any store-wide “mandates”, because it breeds confusion among those who already know they have medical exemptions on a state-government level. Certainly in-store mask use can be encouraged, as it’s not possible to always maintain physical distancing of 2m (6ft).
Oh, and please ditch the “one-way” aisle fallacy: viruses don’t care which way you walk down an aisle, so this concept is laughably erroneous from an infection control/epidemiological standpoint.
Please don’t refuse entry to your establishments to those who have legitimate medical or psychological reasons for not masking – don’t follow the example of a regional near-Midwest grocery chain “Giant Eagle” who reportedly actually physically forced customers who were unable to mask out of their stores (they’re being sued for this, by the way).
Finally, protect yourself. There is still way too much misinformation about the virus and the disease, to know everything, and believe everything you hear on mass media. Using all the methods we’ve been taught from grade school (wash your hands, wipe down surfaces, sneeze or cough into something), as well as using appropriate masks and using them appropriately, will protect you. Eventually the country will be protected, but if everyone stops worrying about what someone else isn’t doing (e.g. not masking) and does what they can to protect themselves, we’ll get over this a lot faster.
