Masks? Fact, Fiction, or Fantasy?

 Masks are the hottest fashion trend in America right now. Bandanas brought to glory by Jesse James, the Frito Bandito,  and Billy the Kid now adorn the masses. Antifa is not just a terrorist organization, it's on the cutting edge of American fashion. Governors and grocers mandate their use. The great unwashed are scorned for their reluctance to wear a mask to protect someone else. But are they working?

The "Do they work?" question is almost impossible to answer. As a right wing, redneck, reactionary I have to believe that they don't work or some scientist using a massive government grant would have already been on national television showing us the science and the data involved in their success. I don't believe that show has been aired yet.

Let's start with the most outrageous claim by North Carolina Governor Roy Ass-Berry Cooper. Cooper tells the serfs and peasants that we must wear a mask to protect others. He claims that it is patriotic to wear a mask. He says that this shows that you care about others. Naturally enough, Cooper marched around Raleigh one day with a couple of thousand BLM protesters with his mask hanging from his ear. He didn't bother with "social distancing" either. Cooper is a fountain from which bullshit and lies constantly flow. He is a veritable spring of swill. Someone smarter than I said that if your doctor tells you the best way to stay healthy is to get someone else to wear a mask, fire your doctor. Why not fire Cooper?

Ass-Berry Cooper keeps telling us that he is following the "science and data" in his decisions. He just has never bothered to share the "science" or any real data. Of course, Ass-Berry Cooper hasn't answered any real questions on this since March. His "Press Conferences" consist of him answering pre-screened questions from reporters on the telephone after he issues his decrees from his bunker at Emergency Management Services. So here's a challenge to scientists, doctors, bureaucrats, and clueless governors everywhere, show me the data from a study showing how masks actually perform when used in public. Don't give me any of that bullshit from a laboratory experiment done under controlled conditions. Give me some real world data and science. If that science and data exists, why hasn't it been made public? Why isn't it on every plea on television for us to mask up?

A quick glance at numbers the governor tosses around shows that as the number of masked patriots increases, so do the number of cases of Covid. How can this be? Is it because more people are getting tested? Could it be that masks don't work? Is it that masks are causing the spread of the virus?  If I hear that we are trying to "flatten the curve" one more time, I am going to shoot the television. A pox on your house, Dr. Fauci!!

If there is no standard on the materials of the masks, how do we know what will work? Will the Frito Bandito look with a bandana work as well as one of those masks that looks like you are spray painting cars? Most mandates prohibit lace masks, but what is the acceptable opening size in the fabric? A high school classmate had planned to make red or black fishnet masks for sexy seniors. Are those acceptable? If there is no standard, how do we know what works?

As I have scrawled before on here, to demonstrate that your experiment is working, you must have a control group where you have not run your experiment. There is no control group in this country. So when we are told that "the curve is flattening", we should ask "Compared to what?" Sometimes, we just need to ignore the idea that man can control everything in this world, and just do nothing. It's the old story about having a cold. You can do nothing and it will last about two weeks. You can take some medication and it will be gone in 14 days.

But it is America and we have to do what they say on television. Strap on your Chinese made mask and head to Wally World. The Chinese could have saved some money if they had shipped the virus and the masks all at one time. Or would that have been too obvious?

A final closing question, if your patriotic, Chinese made, politically inspired face mask actually stops some virus cells from touching you, what happens to the virus cells? How long will they live on the mask? Will they spread from there? Will they be inhaled into your body dependent upon how long you keep that mask on? Will their ability to penetrate your mask make you regret the Frito Bandito choice? Inquiring minds want to know.

In 1962, I was attending Tinker Elementary School on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, MacDill was a top priority target for the Russian missiles in Cuba. I think the order was White House, Pentagon, MacDill, then others. During that time, we had almost daily " nuclear bomb drills" at Tinker. If we were in the classroom, we had to get under our desks. If we were in the hall, we had to get on the floor where the wall and floor met. If I had known then what I know now, I would have sat at my desk and read a comic book. Those actions were no more going to keep me alive than a cheap Chinese mask or a bandana is going to keep me from getting Covid. The bomb drills and mask serve the same purpose, they are to keep the masses calm while the government finds something that will work. Maybe I should just make a mask from a comic book?