I use the cheapo foam ones, which stand up to boiling water and detergent (at least for a few cycles), washing and rinsing by hand. If you squeaze excess water out you can re-use the mask directly, or air dry it. I’d guess if this behaviour became general they’d use more fragile/thermally labile foam.
No fibres to shed, and the bugs are abated, but I suppose I can’t be sure no unpleasant organics are gassing out of the foam,
At the start of all this funfest I posted some studies questioning mask effectiveness, and IIRC WHO initially deprecated their use. I dunno if they’ve changed that because of better data, or are just keeping quiet because of “Burn the Heretic” bollocks.
I was thinking an SS-style death head (since, apparently, vaccine-deniers are Nazis who are responsible for millions of deaths) but yeah, that would work too
On the subject of masks, this is a very good summary of the subject:
You might be triggered by “The truth about …” caption (I usually am) but this guy does a sober review of the evidence. And he appears to be bona fide scientist.
It also covers the general mechanisms of transmission.
Interesting discussion about halfway through on the usefulness of low-level exposure to promote natural immunity (which, IMO, has happened anyway on a very large scale … which would explain why the vast majority still haven’t got sick with COVID).
Many thanks for that. My understanding of the science, pre 2020 was that there was little evidence as to their efficacy for such purposes and that doctors etc. don’t wear them to prevent disease transmission… and certainly don’t wear the same mask for several days. I just try to minimise their use, and thought that plastic insert might keep it away from my sweaty face.
There’s a big complication here that’s covered in the video (but not the article):
What do we mean by ‘work’, when we say masks work or don’t work?
What are we even trying to achieve?
Do masks reduce transmission? Yeah, somewhat, if you’re absolutely surrounded by people coughing virus everywhere. It matters to the extent that either you, or someone else, might experience a (slightly) different viral load if one of you is infected. But the fly in the ointment is this:
In situations where you’re likely to wear a mask (eg., in the supermarket) other factors are such that your chance of catching or transmitting COVID is very low.
In situations where you’re likely to catch COVID (eg., in the home) you’re unlikely to wear a mask.
The apparent contradiction between the observation “masks prevent transmission from an infected individual” and “masks don’t prevent community spread” is thus easily resolved: it’s well-known that 95%+ of transmission occurs within closed social circles, such as within the home and in workplaces. Since those are precisely the situations where you tend to take your mask off, masks become useless.
As for “what are we trying to achieve?” one might argue that the slight drop in viral load that masks afford is of no practical use. If (as many countries originally planned) the idea was to limit the spread until natural immunity fixed the problem, then controlled spread of the virus is totally OK - to get people exposed without them getting seriously ill. But getting people to mask up (including at home!) would not seem to be a realistic way of doing that.
Oh come on, old chap. Lines have to be drawn somewhere
Seriously, though, it would be quite ironic if France turned out to be the centre-of-gravity that brought all this fascist BS crashing down across the EU.
My god, your depth of analysis and knowledge is encyclopaedic! Respect.
That reflects my understanding of the science pre 2020 on the benefits of mask wearing: little to none.
But what about the risks?
My own body tells me clearly its not good for me to wear a mask for hours on end. (Thankfully, my body hasn’t adjusted downward due to the lack of oxygen, and I still feel the impact when I wear a mask for an extended period of time. I guess that’s like the person who has a steady diet of junk food, after a while, they lose touch with how their body really feels.) I don’t need science to tell me its not a great idea to run or exercise in a mask. But what about breathing in of particles from the mask, lack of oxygen, contamination (its scary to watch how kids handle their masks), bacteria that breeds in them, etc?
I’m sure you’re wrong! I have a small ration of free time and spend most of it talking to you. (You’re welcome!)
Wake me up when @cake can’t find anymore of the kind of stuff he likes (on the subject of covid) on those sites. If that ever happens, the content will of course be somewhere else. You can’t have capitalism without letting companies do their thing.
So, you’re not satisfied if it’s regulated, and you’re not satisfied if it’s not regulated. The conclusion then is, you’re not satisfied. Well that’s capitalism. Vote with your wallet!
If you want people to believe Big Tech is secretly enslaved by Big Whatever, show some evidence. If it’s just (B2B) economic incentives, that’s still very much capitalism.
So, you’re dissatisfied by protest being “wiped out”, but it doesn’t matter because you’re far more dissatisfied by protestors being a bunch of lazy losers anyway. The conclusion then is…
Duly watching.
No. Are you suggesting that just because a few scattered countries have done it, that proves all politicians everywhere are singing from the same hymn sheet? And btw in which of those countries is it actually legally compulsory, as opposed to a private sector initiative? Because those are not the same thing. (I also make a distinction between contact tracing in medical facilities and in general.)
What’s nothing new?
Compulsory vaccination? Definitely not new (whether I agree with it or not – and btw you do have a point about the experimental status of these new vaccines).
Governments hiring teams of psychologists and so on? Definitely not new either. If they do it legally, they don’t need to hide it. (They must have learned something useful from MK-ULTRA.)
Mass brainwashing? That goes way, way back, unless you use a very narrow definition.
Look, if you have a book to write, by all means go ahead and write it. If you have a lawsuit to file, same thing. If you have a hundred lawsuits, go ahead, I will not hinder you. I do hope you’ll get proper legal advice first though. As I tried to explain in the other thread, constitutions (and treaties and other things) are interpreted in accordance with jurisprudence, and you won’t get anywhere by using the more extreme kind of arguments that “sovereign citizens” tend to use, like (in a common law country) invoking the repealed or nullified articles of the Magna Carta, or (in Taiwan) claiming that democracy is dead because the LY passed a public health law.
I am not your enemy. What I object to is the general flavor of democracy is dead that you like to tout, because it’s a very short hop from democracy is dead to ergo violence is the only solution. It’s exactly the kind of thing people who know democracy isn’t dead but want it to be would say. Cui bono?
People who attack democracy often make good points, sometimes very good, but for me, no-one makes a better point about it than Winston C.
The fact that you think I’m “attacking democracy” suggests that, yet again, you’ve completely misunderstood what I’m saying (or possibly you have a radically different definition of “democracy”). In your other comments you appear to be having a conversation only with yourself, so I’m not sure if there’s any point trying to correct your impressions.
I’ll say this: I believe in freedom and free speech, which is why people like myself are very much not inclined to inflict violence on people who, frothing at the mouth, insist that we should all be held down and vaccinated, or boarded up in our homes, or perhaps just thrown in jail. We know perfectly well how “revolutions” turn out, and we believe those people have the right to say what they like and act as they see fit (even if they’re breaking the law, which in some cases they are). That’s a huge problem, because they do not think they same about us. They are firmly convinced that they are right, and anybody who opposes them must be silenced; and if we refuse to be silenced then we must be punished.
We worry about this, because such people invariably win. And they win mostly because so many sit on the fence and refuse to even acknowledge that there’s a problem. They are therefore left alone to indulge their worst excesses, without any inkling that, perhaps, they’re acting disgracefully.
So what is to be done? I don’t advocate violence, so the only solution is co-operation (people sometimes use the word ‘unity’, but I don’t think that works; only the brainwashed all think alike). People must somehow agree on a baseline of decent behaviour, and say: this far, and no further. And then they must stick to their convictions, even when the police come to batter down their door. There are some stirrings of this happening - as, for example, the demonstrations in France where people are burning the vaccine passports, and in the UK where people are compiling public lists of organisations that have committed to refusing to check vaccination status.
If people simply do not comply, it makes everything more trouble than it’s worth for the government. Of course some governments commit to doing nothing else except repression, but hopefully those once-democratic governments have at least a little shame.
I would say the risks go even deeper than the ones you mention. The original justification for masks was something along these lines: “it’s probably harmless, it might do some good, so let’s give it a shot”. You can’t really argue with that. It was a reasonable position at the time. And then the research was done, and suddenly it wasn’t a reasonable position, but by that time the PR machine had hammered in into people’s heads that masks were the one thing holding back Armageddon.
So the first big problem is that people now believe something that is demonstrably untrue. Superstition is not usually a good thing for society. In this case, for example, you’ve got people (no names mentioned) insisting that you’re a “selfish asshat” if you don’t want to wear a mask while jogging in a deserted park. That’s not good for social cohesion.
There’s the issue of facial expressions being muted, which has been discussed at length in the academic literature. This is not a minor consideration. Social interaction has already been messed up by “social distancing” rules and suchlike; with masks on, it’s hard to even hear what people are saying or read their non-verbal signals. Again, the result is social fragmentation. Masks can also operate in a more sinister way: terrorists and paramilitary types like masks because they hide you own identity and help to dehumanize The Other. One might surmise that there was some intent behind all this.
Then you’ve got the more surprising effects, such as the effect on food establishments. Not only are they not allowed to serve food indoors, their takeaway options are also constrained because people can’t eat on the hoof, or because people don’t want to eat warmed-over meals (a lot of foods are awful if they’ve been left to sit for half an hour). So some of them end up closing.
There are people (on these boards) that have been brainwashed to support death upon people who are unlike them - non jabbed.
I think they would have backed old Adolf in the 30s had they been there.
I am not saying the ten stages will come, but I would not bet against it either what with the unnatural psychotic need for the elites to jab every living human on the planet. #6 should be #1 right now.
I have a small ration of free time and spend most of it talking to you. (You’re welcome!)
If that ever happens, the content will of course be somewhere else. You can’t have capitalism without letting companies do their thing.
I do hope you’ll get proper legal advice first though. As I tried to explain in the other thread, constitutions (and treaties and other things) are interpreted in accordance with jurisprudence, and you won’t get anywhere by using the more extreme kind of arguments that “sovereign citizens” tend to use, like (in a common law country) invoking the repealed or nullified articles of the Magna Carta, or (in Taiwan) claiming that democracy is dead because the LY passed a public health law.
