Wait. Is it now conventional wisdom on the Fox News right that masks just flat-out don't work? I know they've always hated masks and mask mandates—and think liberals are weenies for constantly wearing masks just to show off—but when did they decide masks had literally no value at all? What did I miss?
53 thoughts on “A question about masks”
Comments are closed.
"What did I miss?" Two years of non-stop cherrypicked nonsense from FOX and GOPs. Also Manichaean conservative psychology. Work means work. 100%. Absolute. You can't claim 80% or whatever effective means works.
There is a lot of that kind of thinking on the libertarian right - if government can't solve every problem 100 percent perfectly, then it is a failure and should just be abolished.
Of course, by that thinking we would abolish police departments, fire departments, armies, etc.
Very much this, unless it's a position they're defending then their nuance can get extremely granular.
Dopes like DeSantis, Johnson, and Paul have been repeating so often that masks don't work that the lie has become truth on the right.
They will just ignore the multiple studies and real life data that demonstrate beyond doubt that mask wearing can reduce the number of infections by at leas several percentage points, all of which would add up to lives saved.
Um, since about June or July 2020. The "it's just the flu", "it's not that bad", "if you're healthy you don't need to do anything differently", "if you're healthy you don't need a mask" and all the other similar talking points have been the prevailing narrative on the right since at least that long ago.
I went to rural Iowa (where my family lives) in July 2020. It was already the sentiment by then.
And the really sad part is many of us have dead friends or relatives, just like the anti-maskers. One reason they have been less effective is because so many refused to wear them. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
They’ve been saying this for most of the last two years. Over at PowerLine it is an article of faith.
Wingnuts can never be extremist enough.
Well, I saw a write up showing that if you correct for community spread, masks (in schools?) don't have an effect.
Literally, that was the argument.
WTF
You didn't miss much. Other than the inexorable drift of the right (not just the Fox News right) into dishonesty and delusion. But it doesn't really matter. I am often reminded of Yeats' The Second Coming these days.
Sad, sad turn of events,
Clarence Thomas hospitalized, 'flu-like symptoms',
https://www.rawstory.com/clarence-thomas-in-hospital/
Well, he's getting better. (no further comment...)
Apparently a bacterial infection. They have him on IV antibiotics. Shame, that.
What bacteria could possibly do a thing like that?
Something that infects his brain. He's been suffering for years.
My god, that was just on Peacemaker!
Right wing delusions and magical thinking. I would invite these Fox News pundits to tour a Covid ICU mask less, and breath in real deep, especially near the ventilator exhaust outlet. When they get sick, they can also take "Seabiscuit" sized doses of ivermectin instead of the dreaded Pfizer covid antiviral pills, which are probably made with the same devil spawn DNA altering junk that they put in their useless vaccines.
You realize that everyone at Fox News has to be vaccinated?
Rudolph Giuliana actually making up something that makes Trump sound like an idiot but with so much brain damage he thinks it sounds great,
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-blow-up-russian-churches/
It doesn't help that first year statistics class contrarian fuckheads like David Leonhardt -- whom I think might be auditioning to be the next Kevin Drum -- echo their reichwing supposed enemies by saying protecting against the Rona doesn't matter since you prolly won't get it, & even if you do more people die in traffic accidents anyway.
Does he not wear his seatbelt and disable his airbags? Obviously they don’t work since people still die in traffic accidents.
Always remember: the drummer from Def Leppard would still have two arms if he hadn't done the supposedly smart thing (wearing a seatbelt).
Wikipedia: "His seatbelt came undone and took off his left arm as he was thrown through the sunroof"
No, of course masks don't work. That why surgeons in operating rooms no longer use them. What's everyone so worked up about?
A lot of anti-vaxxers have long argued the COVID virus is far too small to be filtered by a mask. They are right, but what they ignore is that outside of the human body the bare virus is fragile and quickly dies (dying for a virus means becoming noninfectious, given they aren't really living organisms). The virus survives by living in small globules of sputum that we exhale. It is the small globules of sputum the masks capture.
A move basic problem anti-vaxxers and wing nuts have is their Manichean view of the world. Masks are either 100% effective or worthless, therefore if they are not 100% effective they are worthless. The same for vaccines. It gets interesting with drug therapy, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are 100% effective while Remdesivir is worthless, destroying the kidneys of everyone it is given to. In fact, Remdesivir and the Covid vaccines passed clinical trials demonstrating efficacy at a useful but not 100% level, while hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin have failed clinical trials, showing no significant effect. Trying to explain this to MAGAts is casting pearls before swine.
At the same time that they argue that the virus is too small for masks to stop, they argue that masks make it hard to breathe.
When your clerics preach a sermon, intone a parable, and sing a psalm that say so - it is!
On a related note, I just saw A24's latest horror film, X.
Ridiculously good, given its directorial pedigree. (Ti West's last (only?) notable film was 2012's V/H/S... which wasn't good. At all.)
When I see A24 I feel like some sort of cinéphile pulling out the Criterion Collection.
I'll look into it, merci.
It's mostly performance art. Half the Wingers have been secretly vaccinated but just enjoy ranting about their precious bodily fluids. They wouldn't dream of going to a surgeon who didn't wear a mask. And the other half is dumber than a hockey puck.
What did you miss? Most of it I guess. I know here where I work there was one nutter who went around posting MASKS DON'T WORK on the bulletin board until he got a talking to (my work place was a strong mask+vaccines kinda place). That was like maybe seven months in, so still in 2020.
It's not new at all.
They don’t like to wear masks as they’ve ALL been jabbed .
This paper in particular from a JHU/CATO economist that "showed" lockdowns (aka masks) did little to save lives. I'm sure it will be awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine, maybe economics, or possibly both! https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf
Johns Hopkins?
Never trust a man with two last names.
I think the "my mask protects you, your mask protects me" messaging is fairly easy to misunderstand as "wearing a mask doesn't protect the wearer."
That's it right there. For the wingnut, who's universe ends at the hand mirror at the end of his outstretched arm, thinking of others is at best a distant trivia.
The Sarah Palin's Oldest Grandchild* Theory, with Rob Portman's Gay Son Corollary.
*Tripp Mitchell Johnston -- yes, that's Bristol Palin & Levi Johnston's son's name -- is thirteen. I wonder how soon til he'll be a dad. Will Bristol still be too young to be president when she becomes a grandmother?
Masks have no value at all? Nonsense! For many of us, a mask improves our appearance. For men, they diminish the need for regular shaving. Less attention to makeup, indeed, to grooming. This can provide a significant savings in time, and thus increased productivity.
For those of us who don't shave, "mask beard" is a decided pain, kind of like "hat hair". There's also the other problem that beards pretty much defeat the effect of masks.
This is something I've wondered about and never seen anyone addressing, how beards affect masks.
I think a lot of anti-mask sentiment may come exactly from this.
Beards are forbidden for "tight fitting" masks, which in this case would apply to N-95s. The typical cloth mask or KN-95 type don't screen as well as the N-95 in the first place, but a beard definitely doesn't help the filtering process.
You're not supposed to have a beard if you're wearing an N95 for professional reasons (and I dare say you won't pass the fit test). I've shaved mine off repeatedly during the pandemic. On the plus side, it improves the effectiveness of my mask and makes me look at least several weeks younger. On the minus side, I have to shave.
I have to shave, or architecture will cringe at my approach.
Aside from efficacy, is the mask very uncomfortable for people with beards?
Hey, humanity, conservatives have your back,
https://i.redd.it/nfalaizqmpo81.jpg
Bill Maher had covid, anyone else notice it clearly shrunk his brain?
Even mild cases of COVID-19 might result in brain shrinkage and impaired cognitive function,
https://nordot.app/878412438425436160?c=592622757532812385
Don't kinkshame but the pep bands & cheerleaders rocking masks at this March Madness are something else.
This was a reply to Salamander (until a 404 error intervened).
Regarding the beard-mask question, consider the following:
An unmasked "spreader", when breathing, and more so when speaking, and even more so when shouting, emits a "plume" of pathogen laden air directly forward. The most concentration parts of this form a sort of cone shaped area, with a sort of hemispherical shape on the front of the cone. This plume does NOT have a sharp boundary, where the concentration of pathogens goes from high percentage to zero; instead it drops off. Typically when two people are having a conversation, they stand facing each other fairly close.
If a "spreader" has a beard and wears a mask, instead of projecting a plume forward, the exhalation is subjected to some combination of: a) reduction in velocity, which reduces its forward reach; b) leakage around the edges of the mask where the beard reduces the tightness of the seal, which causes the plume to disperse sideways, upwards and downwards, with additional turbulences which accelerates dispersion.
A masked bearded spreader is still less dangerous than an unmasked bearded spreader.
An added note: it looks as if that beard would become filled with virus-laden particles. A guy might ought to shampoo his beard while washing his hands...
Here's another angle you can waste your breath on trying to explain it to masking deniers: The purpose of societal masking is to reduce community spread. A secondary purpose is to provide the wearer with a REDUCTION in risk of infection. Those who proclaim that masks are "ineffective" need to be held accountable for showing proof that the level of masking in society has NO effect of reducing spread in that population.
Proponents of masking do not contend that it reduces the mortality of the disease. The only things that affect the case mortality, either up or down are: a) vaccination, b) treatments (the sophistication of those, in terms of effective practices; the availability of effective pharmaceutical treatments; and population behaviors that support timely start of treatment).
Again, masking is about populations, and it's about reducing spread. Case mortality could be a constant and by reducing spread, we would reduce the numbers of deaths, serious illness, long-term cellular level damage, and long COVID.
oops, I left out my third thing that can affect case mortality: c) population characteristics, such as percentages of older people, percentages of people with co-morbidities.
What do you even do all day?