There seems to be some widespread perception among left-wingers and other COVID crazies that freedom-loving Americans refused to wear masks during the COVID pandemic. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, Americans were more than happy to mask up. During the worst of the pandemic (which coincided with the seasonal flu), close to 94 percent of people said they masked up in public locations. This is of course easy to prove anecdotally — when was the last time you went into a store and saw more than one or two people (if that) NOT wearing masks?
I am sorry to report that I have seen literally hundreds of people on trails in Colorado and California wearing masks when they are by themselves far from other people. They somehow seem to believe that they can catch COVID from the trees or perhaps the rocks. I often see people on bicycles, again literally hundreds of yards from other people, wearing masks as they huff and puff up hills. Not only does this go against the science, which says that the virus dies in sunlight, it also goes against all common sense. Numerous studies have shown for years that exercising with a mask on is extremely unhealthy.
I will mention here that my kids’ basketball league insists that teenagers wear masks while they run up and down the court. This has to be the stupidest rule in a world filled with insane COVID mandates. Before the game they are all hanging out together without masks. Everybody sees this and knows this. And, yet, we are supposed to believe that somehow the mask on during the game does…what exactly? I am happy to report that in the last month or so the kids are wearing the masks like chin straps, ie, not over their mouths or noses, and nobody tells them to pull the mask up, but the whole thing is another sad chapter in COVID theater.
Even the COVID-promoting New York Times had to admit this week: “There is not a single documented Covid infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions, such as walking past someone on a street or eating at a nearby table.”
As a reminder, there has also never been a single case of people catching COVID from a surface such as a door handle or chair or church hymnal. So, stop with all of the unnecessary sanitizing, which is a waste of time and resources.
Yes, people have lost their ability to think rationally in the last several years. The irrational fear of COVID, which I have been trying to help people overcome, has caused a series of behaviors that have made people less healthy, not more healthy. Note: staying home and living off your government check while you watch Netflix and eat Cheetos is NOT making you more healthy.
As I have written more than a dozen times now, people should follow Church guidance that asks people to wear masks at church and at the temple and in other common sense locations. But, please, common sense. Stop wearing the mask outside, especially if you have been vaccinated. Accept that more and more people will stop wearing the mask altogether as natural herd immunity begins to help us return to normal. Don’t be a mask Nazi feeling that you are somehow self-righteous if you tell other people what they should and should not be wearing on their faces. Concentrate on proven methods of improving your immune system, which should always be your best defense against viruses.
I don’t accept a “new normal” where people act like lunatics when it comes to viruses. Neither should you.
That NYT article this week was great…The New York Times has likened the true but misleading overly protective “less than 10% of cases are occurring outdoors” stat promoted by the CDC as akin to saying “less than 20,000 people are attacked by sharks per year” when the actual number is less than 150 people are attacked by sharks per year. Both statements are true but one is grossly overstating the risk.
Thank you! I’ve resisted the idea of masks from the beginning, but I followed all the. mandates and always wore my mask in public (very liberal here, EVERYBODY MUST MASK in every grocery store in town, and of course, Costco and Sam’s. At the Costco pharmacy, you have to have your mask over your mouth and nose or they won’t get your RX. Sorry, I have anxiety and have had Covid, so give me a freaking break already. I’ve heard that our city council is thinking of discontinuing the mandate for our city next week. Please!
At our YW/YM activity last week we put all the hymnals back out. Hallelujah! Now if we could sit closer than every other pew, that would be a real accomplishment. I know Covid is real, but I also know my 93-year-old father had Covid, survived with no problems, but couldn’t stand the isolation in his assisted living situation and refused to eat or drink after he was discharged from the hospital. He gave up because in over a year he was locked up and not allowed to see anyone. We celebrated every single birthday, anniversary, graduation, and holiday without him, and he felt it. He was a very gregarious man, very outgoing and loving. But he had enough. I wonder how many other people survived covid, only to give up on life to gain their freedom back?
Mindi, I know a LOT of people who would rather move on to the spirit world than be cooped up in some room without being able to see anybody, especially if they are people who are older and believe in an afterlife. The evil lockdowns, imposed by tyrants worldwide, have terrorized an entire generation of people, and we will feel the repercussions for years to come. Shame on the people who supported these insidious policies.
I have to agree. Once vaccines roll out, the best advertising is allowing people who are vaccinated to get back to business.
I do think that mask policies and social distancing did save lives.
This whole Covid experience has taught me that ageism is dominant in many parts of our society. I think that if this virus was more virulent and dangerous among going young children and we saw them hooked up to ventilators, rather than the elderly. We would have had better compliance and tried to do our part to not infect others when it was truly raging.
Brandon E wrote: “This whole Covid experience has taught me that ageism is dominant in many parts of our society. I think that if this virus was more virulent and dangerous among going young children and we saw them hooked up to ventilators, rather than the elderly. We would have had better compliance and tried to do our part to not infect others when it was truly raging.”
I am going to disagree. The way we treated children during this pandemic was absolutely disgraceful. We shut down schools and made them lose a year of learning for a virus that was not a threat to them. We made them wear masks on airplanes and in the schools that were open for…no good reason. Children do not vote — elderly people do vote in huge numbers. If we had approached this pandemic with common sense, no schools would have ever been closed and no children would have ever been forced to wear a mask.
I am not defending the way that the elderly were treated. They also suffered ridiculous rules (like the ones mentioned above in the comments where they were stuck in solitary confinement for months on end). Of course the despicable governors of several blue states were guilty to killing thousands of older people unnecessarily during the pandemic by mixing in the sick with the healthy in nursing homes. Of course we should have done a better job helping seniors during the pandemic (which the heroic Ron Desantis did in Florida, which is one of the reasons numbers are so low in Florida even though it has an elderly population).
In terms of compliance, we had nearly full compliance to mask mandates and social distancing and people staying home. I don’t think much more could have been done. So, no, I am not going to buy the argument that people died because of lack of compliance. There is simply no scientific evidence of this.
These are not “vaccines” There is no COVID-19 contained in the vaccine and it isn’t even FDA approved, except for emergency use. The FDA has said it wouldn’t approve it, unless it was for emergency use. I don’t understand why people are so anxious to be a lab rat for the government. I won’t ever take an experimental anything, at this point I don’t trust our government to be in control of our well being.