Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Why Masks? Because Powerless Citizens Rarely Emerge.
Why masks? I think the answer to that is fairly simple, and fairly obvious as well.
I have just finished — much to my dismay — reading the 20th and final (not including the unfinished 21st) book in Patrick O’Brian’s amazing Aubrey/Maturin “Master and Commander” series. In a recent book, Steven Maturin discusses an old sailor who he is treating. He knows exactly what the problem is, and he treats it as best he can. But he notes that the sailor is absolutely convinced that the problem stems from the consumption of meat and alcohol. Therefore, the sailor self-prescribes total abstinence from these two things. Maturin comments that sailors are stubborn, especially with respect to their own health, and that the abstinence does no great harm, so he goes on treating the sailor as he would, and he doesn’t argue with him about the diagnosis. Later in the book, the sailor dies, as Steven knew he would.
This is partly why everyone is wearing masks. People are stubborn when it comes to things that are unknown and over which we have no power. Irreligious people are especially stubborn in this respect, and we live in a particularly irreligious time and place.
At the beginning of this pandemic, our politicians acted. Of course, they acted. They couldn’t just stand there. They acted on the best information they had, which was terrible, and they acted in the only way they could, which was clumsy, overbroad, and devastating. The more we know, the more we are learning that it is quite possible that these actions, for all their costs, were certainly ill-advised (on balance), and even without their costs, may have been almost entirely ineffective for their stated purpose.
But a terrified public went along. They were told that death waits around every corner and that the only way to beat it is to hide in their homes. They hid in their homes, obsessively refreshing their Twitter and Facebook feeds, eyes glued to the television. And deaths piled up in spite of the fact that they were all obediently cowering in their homes.
There is no way out of that.
The truth would be to say that, well, we were wrong. That is a phrase that appears in no government handbook ever printed, and in no media guide ever consulted. We were wrong. As far as we can tell, the outcomes resulting from this virus were inevitable and unavoidable — we may have mitigated them somewhat (especially by keeping people out of hospitals), and, then again, we may also have simply traded one harm for another. We’ll never know the outcome of that impossible balance between “lives saved” as a result of our actions, and “lives lost” as a result of our actions.
But there is still no way out. My local hospital lied to the public when it said that we would be overrun with COVID-19 deaths by April 8, and would be turning people away to die in their homes or in the streets. This was a noble lie because a terrified citizenry is most likely to be complacent. It wasn’t just my hospital, it was nationwide. Instant death lurks around every corner. Anyone could have it and is likely contagious. Even you. You probably have it and you don’t even know that you have it. Not only is instant death lurking around every corner, but instant death emanates from your very being.
Turns out we were wrong. This is a virus, and it is worse than some other viruses that we are used to, and it is not as bad as some other pandemics that we have experienced. It is dangerous for some, and we really do now have a pretty decent grasp on who those people are. It is either widespread and not very deadly, or it is not very widespread and pretty deadly … or, it is becoming more and more widespread, and less and less deadly. But it cannot be all of these things. Death is not lurking around every corner, and it is extremely unlikely that you have it, and even less likely that you will give it to someone else. It is even less likely that you will get it when you pass by your neighbor on the street or in a store, or when you eat at a restaurant or play in a park or go to the beach or earn money at your job or barbeque with your friends or watch your kids play baseball. It is less dangerous for children than most dangers they face on a daily basis (even at home!) and there is virtually no evidence that it spreads from children to adults, or even from children to one another.
There is still much that we don’t know. But what we do know is that we were wrong. Our CDC guidelines were wrong and continue to be wrong. Our models were unbelievably wrong, and they are only getting worse. Our politicians were wrong. Our Twitter and Facebook feeds were wrong.
And that’s why we need masks. We are not willing to admit that we were wrong. We are not prepared to accept that we were powerless and that we continue to be powerless. We are not about to crawl out from under the house simply because somebody tells us that we were mistaken to crawl down there to begin with. We cannot just stand there, knowing how little we know – we must do something! We must exercise control, and if we don’t have control, we must exercise what little control we can muster, even if it is only control over our own behavior.
The rationale for that behavior is itself filled with contradictions. If the virus is so contagious that masks will help prevent its spread, then we are too late to start wearing masks, and if it truly is that contagious, then “running its course” is the best and only thing we should be doing. If it is not so contagious that masks will help prevent its spread, then we are wearing the masks just for fun. Same thing is true if asymptomatic aerosolized spread is not a meaningfully important mode of transmission, even if such a thing is scientifically possible in some circumstances.
Even the best case for masks seems to be a pretty silly one. There is a small percentage of people infected; there is a smaller percentage asymptomatic; there is a smaller percentage asymptomatic and contagious; and there is a possibility that the subgroup within that subgroup may possibly sneeze, which is about the only thing cloth masks are designed to mitigate, and even then, they mitigate only slightly, so that at the end of the day, what masks accomplish is the slight reduction of contagion that could possibly come from the small percentage of asymptomatic contagious within the small percentage of asymptomatic within the small percentage of infected. But to be absolutely safe, we need to make laws that cover everyone. No, it’s not just like using a chain-link fence to catch mosquitoes, it’s like using TNT to catch a minnow when the minnow really wasn’t your problem to begin with. But, we’re not really concerned with the minnow. We are concerned with human nature.
Masks are the placebo that allows us to feel like we are still in control of a situation where all of the evidence tells us that we have never been in control. If you are the CDC or a politician and saying “sorry, I was wrong” is simply out of the question, it is essential that you have a plan (for, as we know, all smart people have plans, so if you want to be smart, you must first have a plan). If there is one thing a patient most dreads — and which most patients simply will not accept — it is to walk away from the doctor empty-handed, without a plan. Virtually all doctors know and understand this. Doctors in the 18th century understood this very well, especially where sailors were concerned.
I have heard and read interviews with doctors … fear is debilitating. It is not all of these doctors who have stoked and built and endlessly perpetuated that fear. But they do understand that fear is debilitating, and they have not lost the wisdom of Steven Maturin.
Should I wear a mask?
Sure, why not. If it will make you feel better.
Published in General
The entire underlying premise of this post is “we were wrong”.
Now, that statement is obviously too broad and sweeping to parse seriously: who are “we” and what were “we” wrong about. Given that thousands of people were making thousands of different statements, of course many of them were originally wrong and continue to be wrong.
But the “we were wrong” statement in this post seems to be insinuating the general principle that the threat posed by the virus was completely overblown. That, however, is not supported by our current knowledge of the virus.
Rather, what we have learned supports a hypothesis that this virus is a much greater threat than any pandemic since 1918. What we know so far is consistent with up to 1 million American deaths had we done nothing. I am not saying that would have happened – I am saying that is still a realistic hypothesis given what we currently know.
That knowledge could change and the virus could indeed turn out to be less of a threat. We won’t know for sure until it’s too late to act either way.
So in a world in which we know that the virus is not a threat, yes, masks are a form of saving face (pardon the pun).
But in a world in which it is still possible that the virus indeed poses a larger threat than any in the last century, masks are a very cheap form of hedging our bets.
Masks are the new litmus test.
First, this is not legislative action subject to vote. Do you honestly believe that your ability to vote against the governor of your state is reasonable protection from executive overreach? That’s why the constitution exists. But it was about much more than simply being able to vote. Even then, you’re not talking about just voting – you’re talking about showing up in parliament and arguing your case, having an active role in government. The revolution was not just about “gaining representation,” or we would have settled for a representative after winning the war… it was about the establishing of our constitution, which limits government and provides individual liberties. It was about an entire system of government.
Early Americans weren’t content with simply lodging a complaint and then accepting the majority rule (or the minority rule); that was the whole stinking point.
Using the number of people who have died of Covid so far is the wrong metric for deciding whether the countermeasures were appropriate.
The right measure is how many people would have died without those measures. Unfortunately, that is unknowable. I said above that the facts we have now are consistent with up to 1 million deaths. I imagine most Americans would be willing to bear major costs for the ability to save 900,000 lives, even if most of those lives were people with less than 5 years of life expectancy. But that 1 million figure is just one in a large range of hypothetical outcomes – much lower figures are also just as conceivable.
And the real problem is that we don’t know what that hypothetical maximum death count would have been. And we will likely never know it with enough certainty to make the calculations of which measures would have been most appropriate.
They are exactly a litmus test.
I still think once the election is over and Trump has lost, concerns over COVID will miraculously disappear quite quickly, but the lesson that governors have complete dictatorial powers if they say the magic word “health” will remain (as will conservative’s willing to gleefully accept dictatorial powers if they personally are afraid.) So, things only get worse from here.|
Every leftist wish-list will immediately become a “health crisis” and conservatives will have already conceded the battlefield – if there is a health crisis, the legislature gets no say in how to deal with it.
If the point of masks is to show respect for others – or, as Dr. Savage pointed out on a recent podcast (“the primary effect of masks is to show solidarity with your neighbor”) – then that ship has sailed. You could accomplish a million times more good, and at a lower cost, by simply banning twitter. However, this isn’t a theocracy. Respect is fine and good, but it is not the purview of government edict.
The costs of masks are extreme? I find this silly.
Masks are a real pain in the you-know-what. I hate wearing one.
But compared to measures that have put nearly one-third of the American workforce out of a job, masks are a miniscule drop in the bucket.
I fully agree that the evidence showing the benefit of masks is still very shaky at best. But constantly railing against masks when their detrimental effects are less than one-millionth of many other measures still in place reveals a breathtaking lack of perspective.
Bottom line: if you’re going to rant, please rant against one of the millions of restrictions still in place that is actually harmful.
If it can be proven that mask wearing by others in confined public places, such as a grocery aisle, confers no benefit on me (e.g., the prevention of transfer of “droplets”), I would likely view this differently. Perhaps that information is out there and I’m unaware of it, but, even apart from nursing home scenarios, it’s clear that a whole lot of people have contracted the virus somehow. Given my personal circumstances, which includes age and location, why would I scoff at wearing a mask for twenty minutes inside a store?
Now, again, if there is solid evidence that another’s mask has no chance of doing me any good specific to my circumstances, I might reconsider that and support the idea that everyone advocating wearing of masks is full of hooey.
I am specifically referring to “those in charge,” and, with respect to the issue of masks, to those who would force others to comply (namely, governors, public health authorities).
I have said many times that I don’t begrudge anyone who wishes to wear a mask. I’ll argue against it in conversation or on Ricochet, but I’m not confronting people about it and I’m certainly not suggesting that masks should be banned.
You are welcome to hedge your bets in any manner you wish. But when it comes to state action, I do not consider any of this to be “cheap.”
There were things known at the time that could have been done far short of shutting down the economy. What do you say now about the purpose being to flatten the curve to save our medical system? Wasn’t that just one big lie?
My view is, the government’s role should be limited to setting health standards, not saying which businesses should be allowed to remain open or not.
I’m on record as saying if masks will let the paranoid open up the economy, then I will grudgingly virtue signal, but I fear the game is already lost. Once people accept that the Governor can simply order whichever businesses he wants to close indefinitely (or all of them) because he thinks there is a health crisis, we are a centrally planned economy.
We are fighting about masks while the war has already been lost, and far too many (for my taste) conservatives have been cheering the government’s dictatorial powers, including David French – whose column that governors have the powers of a dictator in times of a “health crisis” have been pointed out to me by more so-called conservatives than I would care to count.
From what I understand, the evidence is that you need sustained indoor contact with someone to contract COVID and you are extremely unlikely to contract COVID from passing someone in a grocery store. Now the workers are a different story.
But I accept that I will never convince you of that.
My problem with the mask wearing is that it will become mandatory, Why can’t it be argued that we should always be wearing a mask? 50,000 deaths due to the plain old flu means nothing? If anyone wants to wear a mask then fine. I will wear one if a private business requires it. (But don’t think I’m not keeping score.) I don’t intend to wear a mask the rest of my life which is where we’re headed.
Herein lies the rub. But for the 900,000 number, the part about life expectancy is true, or maybe even too generous.
As A-squared pointed out, we already aren’t willing to do this every year for the flu. As I pointed out, we aren’t willing to do it for heart disease or for traffic accidents. You also neglect to mention that some of those “costs” are, in fact, lives. Does the net benefit outweigh the net costs, even if all we measure is lives? I agree with you that this is very difficult to say, especially when the net benefit is purely hypothetical. But that’s just it – that’s the major problem.
Did you watch “an inconvenient truth?” Politicians and interest groups are very, very good at coming up with hypothetical numbers that cannot be proven. Covid is not like global warming, in that it has actually resulted in real people dying, which we can observe. It is also easier to observe and to study in real time. But it is like global warming with respect to the changing goal posts, the changing definitions, and the ever-intrusive power grabs.
And even then – why are we still talking about saving lives? Last I heard, the only way this was going to result in saving any lives, was because our hospital systems would not be overhwelmed. It doesn’t matter if it’s lockdowns or masks, the point is to “slow the spread.” Absent extremely draconian measures, eradicating this virus is impossible. And even then, it is probably still impossible. You’re not talking about “saving the lives” of people with less than 5 years expectancy, you’re talking about slightly delaying the inevitable.
The “lives saved” side of this equation is a myth. Well, sort of a myth. We started out talking about not overwhelming our hospital systems – now we are talking about slowing the spread until there is a vaccine. Assuming there will ever be a vaccine, assuming the vaccine will work, and assuming it will be safe and universally adopted … this “life saving” is indefinite. Masks, social distancing, contact tracing …
Our governors justified their actions by declaring states of emergency. That’s a pretty big deal. Now we’re talking about this “emergency” being the new normal. Think about the implications of that.
Where we are headed, that will be the least of our concerns, but we absolutely are headed that way.
With respect to personal behavior, I don’t disagree with any of that.
With respect to legal mandates, the burden of proof is on those who wish to impose – and the burden is extremely high.
That’s a different point than the one I was addressing in my comment.
There are two distinct questions: was the threat of Covid significantly greater than that of seasonal flu to warrant unprecedented measures? And if yes, what should those measures be?
I think the answer to the first question was and remains “yes”. Based on many responses here, that is far from a unanimous opinion.
However, I did not think in March and I don’t think now that blanket shutdowns were the proper solution.
I don’t think it was a lie at the time. Based on the few experiences available, the notion that the virus might overwhelm our healthcare was justified.
The real problem is that the lockdowns were extended endlessly even after it became apparent that the virus could be much more easily mitigated through social distancing than originally feared. Once the outbreak in NYC began to crest and we got a first sense of the dimensions of the virus in a US setting, there should have been an immediate public debate about re-evaluating the strategy based on this new information. Instead, a dangerous state of paralysis seems to have entered at precisely that moment.
I agree with you, and I am contemptuous of the mask; it isn’t because I am so special and I know everything and if I don’t want to wear it then it’s ipso facto stupid.
I feel like I did when we were all told that AIDS was rampant upon the land – AIDS was lurking there in every public washroom. Possibly in every human interaction, but certainly sex, so condom! Even with your wife – “better safe than sorry!”
But also public anything – do not trust your fellow citizen, anyone could be delivering the terrible scourge of AIDS. Well, it turned out that it was not after all “anyone”. And that disease, while still existent, has been responsibly channeled into a controllable system of procedures and practices that strangely do not necessitate the destruction of the world economy.
Yet somehow this time they have maneuvered us into wearing masks wherever we go; I suppose I should be grateful that it’s not a full body condom (though, I guess, perhaps the night is young).
I hate that you have to experience this thing as your “little bit of rebellion”. That puts the burden of proof on you. The burden should be on them.
This. Identify the standard, issue guidance, and let it to the people to follow (or not follow). If business A can stay open and meet guidelines, and church B can meet the exact same guidelines, then the latter has as much right to be “open” as the former. If a big box store can stay open and meet guidelines, a small storefront that is able to meet guidelines should have the right to stay open.
There is no standard, and the guidelines change daily with little explanation offered as basis. This has, and remains, the primary source of my heartburn over this. It’s all arbitrary.
And for what it’s worth, mask or no mask, Hammer – it’s good to have you writing here again.
This will shock you, but I disagree. Why isn’t the national speed limit 5 MPH? That would easily save 900,000 lives over a lifetime. Why don’t we just ban cars altogether?
Why haven’t we banned alcohol, that would easily save 900,000 lives over a lifetime?
Banning firearms would certainly save a bunch of lives, though less than those things. Given the problems with obesity and heart disease, a government mandated diet along with morning calisthenics in the local stadium every morning could easily save 900,000 lives in a reasonable period of time.
I could think of a bunch of left-wing ideas that could easily lay claim to saving 900,000 lives. AOC’s Green New Deal certainly can.
No, you can convince me of that with links–particularly with ones that speak to what’s meant by “extremely unlikely” and “passing someone.” Note that I don’t want you to go to that trouble and would (will) do that myself. I’m just pointing out the need for precision here. And, if the goal is to show that every health professional who recommends wearing masks is loony, that doesn’t seem too much to consider.
I disagree because people perceive risks differently.
Everyone knows cognitively that commercial flying is much safer than driving, yet voters consistently want a level of safety regulation on airline travel that they would never accept for automobile driving.
That’s why I’m fairly convinced that the same people who would reject a speed limit of 5 MPH would welcome one month of lockdowns to save an equivalent number of lives (or years lived). People are more icked out by viruses than by drowsy drivers.
If you’d like to take up the counterargument that the vast majority of American voters (including the 45% that consistently vote for every Democrat) are rational thinkers, I’m all ears.
Well, I think health professionals should wear masks. I think store employees should wear masks.
But actual N95 masks, not virtue signalling bandannas.
I don’t. That is on the list of why I disagree with you that Americans would gladly accept the restrictions necessary to save 900,000 lives.
But again, I used to jump out of planes in the middle of night for $110 extra a month, so I’m not convinced I am a rational thinker
I personally favor the ones with The Rolling Stones’ “tongue” logo.
I am not comforted by the knowledge that people are logically inconsistent, and that they are willing to be glaringly inconsistent where panic is involved. In fact, that is a big part of why I distrust masses. It is also, to a certain extent, the whole point of this post… contrary to your prior assertion, I do not rely on its being a fact that we know the virus is not a threat. Rather, I am saying that masks are a social movement based primarily on mass hysteria rather than solid scientific evidence (that’s my whole point about most doctors saying “sure, if it makes you feel better.”) I am wary of edicts and laws that emerge from mass hysteria, and the evidence about masks (even the arguments you make) point to “an abundance of caution,” “hedging our bets,” or “this is the best we have.” The “evidence” that valiuth cited above is enlightening in that it lists the criteria required for masks to work, and it admits that their purpose is not disease eradication, but “saving lives” if adopted as a permanent change of lifestyle.
Again, contrary to your assertion, it is not the false alternative of “this virus is not dangerous,” vs. “this virus is dangerous.” If the virus is exceedingly dangerous, that still does not mean that masks are the appropriate solution to the problem. Hedging your bets cannot work if we are looking at different goals…
I don’t think health professionals should wear masks unless it is necessary for them to do their jobs safely, and I trust them to be the judges of that. I don’t think store employees should be required to wear masks at all.
If heart disease was communicable, it’s a safe bet our society would look a lot different. You would probably have been wearing a mask since the day you were born.
If you supported the wearing of masks in limited circumstances and were told that the viewpoint is a matter of “mass hysteria,” would you be inclined to challenge that assertion? Would you request “solid scientific evidence” that masks are not at all beneficial in all circumstances?
Do you think if all places restore normal activity while those who fit the vulnerable categories take precautions and others maintain physical distancing from non-household members that we will experience a significant second wave?