I’ve spent my whole life fighting against figurative masks and to some extent literal ones. Masks are used in some places to prevent women from being seen or heard. The figurative masks people wear cause great emotional damage and prevent psychological growth and thus maturing. We need to take masks off, not put them on.
Prior to the virus, my thoughts about masks were figurative and cultural. At the bottom is link to a blog post I wrote last year.
In terms of the masks in question today, I respect those who feel safer wearing a mask. However, I do not want to wear a mask because they…
- Have no meaningful impact on the spread of this virus. The mask wearing mandate today does nothing more than drive us apart and lead us further away from our cultural roots and each other
- Aggravate a phobia I struggle with
- Destroy my greatest witness, which is to greet everyone with a smile and word of encouragement
- Destroy the social construct of being able to evaluate the people you are encountering for state of mind. In NC, we are violating a 1953 law passed against mask wearing. This law was passed to thwart the terror of the Klu Klux Klan. I’m very passionate about overcoming the division and discrimination that is carried on today by the same organization that brought us the Klu Klux Klan
- Divide us farther by creating a sense of shame and anonymity (much like the forced face covering of Muslim women)
- Make breathing difficult, especially in the heat and when laboring
- Make a mockery of American’s cultural willingness to go along to get along and concern for their fellowman. This is exacerbated by the forced mask wearing because it says you must do what I do or you can’t participate in society, even though there’s no real “science” to prove it helps and even though we were told repeatedly for months to not wear a mask
- Create a false sense of safety among those who truly need to “be safe at home” such as the sick and elderly. If a diseased tree is found in a forest, we remove that tree. If there’s spread, we take measures to protect the old growth trees. We would never remove the young or healthy trees or wrap them in something or spray them with something that could interfere with the exchange of oxygen or healthy functioning of the organism
When a mandate was made that all must wear a mask in June, I was very uncomfortable with that decision because it forces people like me into a position of either going along with it simply to pretend and make those that feel a need to wear a mask more comfortable with their decision or to follow my own conscience and disobey a governmental mandate.
The mask has now become a grandiose game of The Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s a dangerous game of pretending that will not end well. All situations that require people to lie in order to get along and participate in something are dangerous.
Before a pandemic was announced, I began reading a book by John Barry, related in 2004,, The Great Influenza (www.johnmbarry.com). This book had a profound impact on my understanding of pandemic and the evolution of medicine. He makes several important conclusions. Two of relevance include, the most lives will be saved if public officials tell people the truth and masks do nothing to prevent the spread.
Here’s an excerpt from John Barry’s Washington Post Op Ed from January 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/31/can-this-virus-be-contained-probably-not/
“Can it be contained? Again, if the disease transmits like influenza, it appears that containment is all but impossible.
By contrast, none of those control measures can contain influenza. In influenza, aerosol transmission is most important, though the virus can survive on a hard surface for hours and so also be transmitted by touch. Also, the incubation period can be as short as one day and the disease can be transmitted by people before they have any symptoms at all, making contact tracing and even quarantine ineffective.
Perhaps the most relevant data comes from U.S. Army camps during World War I; in some camps, soldiers were inspected twice a day and immediately isolated if they showed any flu symptoms, and if a unit had more than one symptomatic soldier, the entire unit was quarantined. In camps where measures were rigidly enforced, disease transmission was slowed, but quarantine had no impact on rates of infection or death; where the measures were less than rigidly enforced, they had no impact whatsoever. If quarantine could not work in the military during wartime, one can hardly imagine it working in a civilian community during peacetime.”
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
ROMANS 12:1-2 NASB
Understanding your Masks and Mantels
(A post I wrote a number of months ago, prior to the virus)