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Mask Theater
Today I had to cancel a scheduled medical procedure because I would not wear a mask.
I had no interest in causing a scene in the office (or in driving an hour to the office only to be turned away) so I called in advance and told them I would not be wearing a mask. The receptionist was polite and checked with my primary care provider, who is a Nurse Practitioner and was going to perform the procedure in the office. It was a minor procedure (removing a small cyst on my head that has been there for over ten years, which has not ever grown). The receptionist reported that the NP said I didn’t have to wear a mask in the office with her while she did the procedure, but that I would have to wear a mask in the waiting room and the hallways. So I cancelled the appointment.
I told the receptionist that if the NP thought the procedure was urgent — which was not my impression from the last time I had spoken to her — that she would have to grant me a medical exception to wearing a mask. The exception being, I’m not going to wear a mask. So if she wants me to have the procedure, then it’s medically necessary for me to not wear a mask in the office.
The backdrop of this is that I had my annual checkup with her a month ago and did not wear a mask, despite a sign on the front door that stated masks were required. No one asked me to wear a mask — not any of the receptionists, the lower-level nurses, or my NP herself. During the check up, she checked my cyst, saw that it hadn’t grown, but said if I wanted that she could remove it, so I said sure.
However, since then, the governor of New Hampshire, the ironically dubbed “Live Free or Die” state, issued an emergency order for a mask mandate for any place, public or private, where more than 100 people are at the same time. I thought maybe that the doctor’s office, between staff and patients, might meet the threshold. The governor’s order includes fines for everyone involved and also authorizes law enforcement to “enter private property…including without the consent of the owners” to enforce his dictates. Gov. Chris Sununu is reportedly a Republican, and I may even have voted for him twice, but only because his opponents were insane Leftists. I’m beginning to wonder what the differences are between him and a Democrat, though.
Meanwhile there are currently 12 people hospitalized in our entire state (population 1.3 million) with symptoms of COVID-19, and we have the 5th lowest infection rate (518 per 100,000 population) of all the states. This with no state mask mandate of any kind until the aforementioned order last week. To be clear, I see lots of people wearing masks in stores. That is, lots of people wearing masks incorrectly — under their nose, pulling them down to talk, over giant beards, etc. I saw one women pull into the parking lot at the grocery store, get out, open her trunk, and grab a mask from the floor of her trunk, and put it on. Presumably she takes her trash to the dump in the trunk of her car, as well. (For those of you who are city dwellers — those of us who live in the country take our own trash to the dump.)
So anyway, that’s how I came to have an appointment today and why I called in advance instead of just showing up again. I tried to be as calm and firm as possible. The receptionist told me that the mask was to protect the other patients. I told her I wasn’t interested in debating the issue and that I don’t care about the other patients. This of course is something you’re not supposed to say, but it has the benefit of being true. I have no responsibility for the health of people that I have never met.
So I cancelled the appointment. In the end, mask theater is more important than medical procedures.
Published in General
Masks obviously don’t work for men with facial hair. So when will it be compulsory to shave?
Well, I’m not sure you had to.
The point is a certain percentage of the population will get the virus. All masks can maybe do is slow the spread but eventually we will hit herd immunity.
What we are discussing is the old do your rip the band-aid off quick or slow paradox. Those for masks prefer to go slow and spread the pain out over months and years. Those that are against masks are the rip the band-aid off types willing to take the pain quick and go with it.
What I do not understand is those that have some false belief that the masks are going to stop the virus. That is not going to happen.
I am curious. We have pandemics for as long as mankind. We have many counties that all have health services funding research. So where is the definitive study on how much a mask works in a real world environment? Why no science?
Apples and oranges. A bloodborne pathogen is far different from an airborne pathogen such as COVID. Entirely different protocols.
This is another of those analogies that makes little sense to me. “you don’t complain about having to wear clothes.” Well… for thousands of years, people have worn clothes. No, it’s not an imposition to tell people to do things that they would already do. Obviously. People have not generally covered their faces, for many, many reasons. The imposition should be obviously different.
But that wasn’t my question. I asked at what point you would think that the imposition was too much. I will be homeschooling my kids this fall – at great cost – because the trauma we are imposing on children is inexcusable. That is one place where I draw the line.
But I also draw the line at mandates. It is one thing to allow people to make their own risk/reward determinations and act accordingly. I may have noticed that – virtually everywhere – this virus peaked and was on a steep decline before people started wearing masks… and maybe I’d choose to learn something from that. I wouldn’t complain if people still decided that masks were useful for them. And if private businesses wished to require them, I’d respect that and go somewhere else.
But my threshold for government imposition of mandates is very, very high. Otherwise, where do we draw the line? I already live in a state that has banned plastic bags and straws… how about exercise requirements? How about prohibitions on alcohol or soda or whatever else is unhealthy.
When we start defining appropriate government reach as extending to any area of your life where your decisions may have an impact on others… well, name for me a few that do not? This is not a slippery-slope fallacy, but an actual slippery slope. If masks mandates are ok for covid, they are ok for flu. If “social distancing” regulations are ok for covid, banning church services is ok for covid … when is it not ok? Why have rights at all? I don’t need the government to keep me safe.
It is also important to note that the crisis never ends. Covid is largely gone in my county (if it was ever a problem to begin with), and restrictions have not been relaxed. The goalposts continually move. Looking at the curve, CV will be down to zero by the beginning of September, and our governor just extended his “emergency orders” into October. There is nothing that comes even close to justifying those orders, anymore, but the goalposts keep moving.
Do you require men to be clean shaven, too? Because according to your logic, you should.
You cannot create a risk-free environment by ignoring all risks but one, and focusing like a laser on eliminating that risk. That is the vanity of the covid bedwetters.
This is a ridiculous comparison. First, there are not 180,00o dead from covid. I’d give you maybe 100,000, but that seems generous. Accurate reporting would likely cut those numbers in half. Second, 6 months of a seasonal “wave” is not the same as implied… by all of these people who pretend that there isn’t a wave but a plateau. At the end of the day, it really isn’t any different from the same thing that we experience virtually every year – sometimes better, sometimes worse. Again, you look at things in a vacuum, removing all context, and you can paint whatever horror story you want. Reality is much, much different, as “history” will show. I just hope that we are willing to learn our lessons from 2020, the year that science regressed to the mystical levels of the dark ages, and hysteria reigned supreme. If anything, it should be a humility-sock-full-of-quarters to the head for anyone who believed that our “science” was so advanced as to be immune to those things that have plagued humanity from day 1.
Nothing you said I can disagree with. It is time for the mandates to end, not just now, but forever. I’m very concerned what the reaction to the next virus will be, now that the precedent has been set that if it saves ‘just one life’ it is worth shutting down the economy and society.
You made a choice to not wear a mask. They made a choice to not have anything to do with you. You each made your own choices. Win Win! I do not see that you have an obligation to wear a mask. I do not see that they have an obligation to treat you if you do not.
Here is a thought experiment, going back to the demagoguery of this whole situation.
You would not point a loaded pistol into a crowd of people and pull the trigger. Why? Because you know that you have a deadly weapon in your hand, and you know that if someone is struck with a bullet, it is likely that the person will die, and you know that it is reasonably likely that, if you pull the trigger, someone will be hit by the bullet.
So – if you know all of these things, would it become more reasonable if you, say switch to sub-sonic ammo? Would it be more reasonable if you point the gun into the air? Would it be more reasonable if you place a phone book in front of the muzzle and pull the trigger?
The reason the analogy is so stupid – and, as I say, demagogic, is because it is an impossible hypothetical, for many reasons:
So – let us pretend that masks bring to the table even some absurdly high number – say they make it 50% less likely that someone will die. Assuming all of the stars come together and 1-5 are happen, putting on a mask takes you from .001% to .0005%.
On the flip side of that – let’s say that you knew you were sick. You knew you were contagious. You knew there were people nearby and you were reasonably certain they would be infected. You knew they would get ill, and you knew that there was a high likelihood they would die.
At that point, would it be reasonable for you to expose those people, provided you wore a mask? Would anyone here trust the mask under those circumstances?
That would be absurd! But that … (continued …)
I doubt that Kozak is going to exchange bodily fluids with his Aids patients. Most medical practices follow standard procedures to minimize ( not eliminate ) the risk of contacting diseases from their patients. Such as having them wear masks. You have your freedom to use your best judgement about your life — but don’t impose your judgement on others. If others don’t want to interact with you if you are not wearing a mask, respect that. They may be wrong or over worried, but that is indeed their right.
(…continued…) … That is what we are asking people to do!
We are asking people to assume that all of those conditions are met, and then we are asking them to mitigate that situation by putting on a mask, which may or may not reduce the chances of killing someone by some small percentage?
That, if true, is absolutely damned crazy. If the loaded gun analogy holds up at all, then putting a mask is like telling people to put phone-books in front of their guns.
No – if we exercise any sense at all, we understand that all of the aforementioned things can actually be analyzed. Do you feel sick? Have you been tested and you have this illness? Are you contagious? Are you around people? Are you around high-risk people? Well… you know what, even if all of those conditions are met, you are probably better off staying home than wearing a mask.
So we’re asking people to exercise some rationality, but not too much rationality. If they exercised too much, they would surely come to the conclusion that it is not worth the elimination of personal freedom, the personal discomfort, the social damage – it is not worth all of the downsides of mandatory masking to accomplish what amounts to a .0005% reduction of risk in the best case scenario, but which – if you’re not infected or contagious – has literally 0% potential benefit to go along with all the harms.
That is why masks have to be mandated. Because you have to make laws to force people to behave like idiots who lack the power of rational thought. And that is precisely why this absolutely should be unacceptable in any freedom-loving population, and why it should not be tolerated by anyone.
You might live in a free state, but I do not. In my state, the governor has said “no mask, no service.” If a customer doesn’t wear a mask and isn’t kicked out of the store, the business will be fined or shut down.
Does that sound like a choice to you? Does that sound like freedom? Because it’s not. And the only way we get that sort of tyranny is when people shrug it off and say “well, it’s not such an inconvenience, and if I don’t like it I can go elsewhere.” Right up until you cannot.
I’ve been treating HIV patients for over 30 years. Actually saw some of the first ones as a medical student in early 1982 when we had no idea what we were dealing with.
I’ve been stuck by contaminated needles. Spit on by drunks with HIV and TB. Intubated patients with meningitis.
I was covered in a fine mist of blood from head to toe packing the nose of a gay man with HIV with a nosebleed.
However when he told me he was going to pull the packing because ” I can’t work at the bar with this” I told him not to come back to my ED because I wasn’t going to risk my life and my wife life to repack his nose.
You are asking medical providers to take an increased needless risk so you can make some kind of statement.
Not gonna play. Grow. Up.
Nonsense.
You don’t know what you are talking about.
I’ve been in medicine over 30 years and never seen something like this. Never.
The fact is the first US death from Covid was on feb 29. Less than 6 months later we stand at 180,000.
Those are cold hard facts.
I can eliminate needless risk. And we are trying too.
They already proved that they don’t actually care if I show up without a mask. They probably wouldn’t have said anything this time either. My mistake was to bring it up because I was concerned I might expose them to fines from the state.
Absolutely! Have those people most at risk to wear a mask with a “Medical Alert” logo on it. I’d be happy to pull mine up or give a wide birth to those folks to help. I resent the hell out of these mandates and really doubt their effectiveness.
For those that think this isn’t a big deal, what’s to prevent these mandates during flu season? Allergy season? Not from a medical standpoint but from the authority already ceded/taken by municipal, county, state and federal entities?
You don’t know what you’re talking about, either. Do not pretend that your experience means more than it does. That level of arrogance is unscientific. I’m glad you’re not my doctor.
Actually, you cannot. And what you’re proposing has been shown to not do what you claim. At great cost.
Also, fwiw, I’ve visited with doctors and nurses who completely disagree with you. Careful when claiming expertise as a means of shutting people up.
Kojak… as you said. Grow. Up.
https://americanmind.org/essays/the-covid-coup/
I think you’re doing a good job of presenting how independent people assess their medical condition, represent themselves and take their own decisions. I’ve no idea how long the theatre will go on – people have “complied” with it far longer than I ever expected. But then again the “Authorities” have been far better at maintaining a high level of fear and a low level of reliable factual information than I would ever have expected.
Good for you even though that is one of the few place were wearing a mask per the evidence actually helps some.
This is a huge reason why I oppose masks. Unlike Max, I’ll wear one – for now. But like him, I definitely oppose them. Why? Because it’s way too easy to slide from “wear it for COVID’s sake” into “wear it for the flu’s sake” and then on to “wear it for the cold’s sake” and then …. In other words, it’s way too easy for it to never end – and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wearing a mask whenever I’m out and about. I just don’t.
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And this is why I choose to wear one at the moment. The events are so fresh and people are so scared (thanks, media) that I don’t mind trying to put their mind at ease. Can’t say I’ll feel the same come Christmas, though, if the hysteria is still high.
Max,
Check out, Tucker.
Regards,
Jim
I must be missing something here. If they don’t have a diagnosis, how do you know they have it?
I have already been a couple Webex where people in the meeting indicated that now they are aware of how much germs we all produce that maybe we need mandatory mask laws from this point forward. I can see the government doing it in the name of health.
Can’t have it both ways. If that many people have it, it’s less deadly than the flu… Far less. If it’s more deadly, those people don’t have it.
Either way, the hysteria is way out of line with the facts.
The doctor isn’t expected to have sex with his patients, and universal precautions cover the rest of the exposure risk where HIV is concerned.
With rare exception, requiring patients to wear masks is perfectly reasonable in these times. Wearing a mask does reduce the risk of exposure of COVID-19 to others. Many health care providers who worked with COVID patients have died from the infections they got, often enough from patients who didn’t know they were infected.
To expect health care providers to eat the risk of exposure caused by your own stubborn ignorance is really over the line.