I have a feeling that the masking misconception will last for years, and will likely be politically divided. And THAT might extend COVID for a long time!
The inconvenience of true altruism
It is the end of the second day into 2021, the Johns Hopkins University reports 20,388,141 pandemic cases and 349,933 resulting deaths in the United States. Followed by India with 10,305,788 cases and 149,218 deaths. Some quick math shows USA remains #1 with 10,082,353 more cases and 200,715 more deaths than the next most affected country in the world, which is by the way the second most populated country on Earth. How is that possible in the age of technology, when unlimited knowledge is at everyone’s fingertips on their mobile device?
The grim is answer is as follows: A lot of citizens on this world chose willful ignorance. Yeah, I can hear the nay-sayers outrage at my assertion (go ahead dear nay-sayer – vent, and prove me wrong with a logical, measured, and demonstrable argument). To which I say to anyone who’s reading my rant, if you are not confusing facts with opinions and are doing your part to control this pandemic, you’re helping the situation become better for everyone – you understand what is going on, you are part of the solution, thank you!
But if you’re one of those not YET understanding or chose to ignore the simple concept the brightest scientific minds broadcast daily to help us control this situation, then you are part of this growing problem. The good news is that we all have the opportunity to learn something new and mend our ways for the collective good. There is no shame in making mistakes, we all have blind spots. The key is to take corrective action after realizing that identified mistake.
The debacle with face masks
The infection “signal flow” is a frustratingly simple concept. It works like this:
1 –> Somebody gets infected with the virus.
2 –> Infected person may or may not know he/she is infected for up to two weeks.
3 –> Infection is passed through exhalation (a.k.a. they are breathing out), in other words stuff that goes airborne out of a person’s mouth or nose.
4 –> The virus is microscopic and very, very light (it cannot be seen with the naked eye); therefore, it has the capacity to float in the air and linger undetected.
5–> When a person exhales, talks, shouts, sings, chants, etc… the saliva creates little droplets not detectable by the naked eye, and those droplets can fly off and remain airborne and linger around depending on the environment’s air circulation. That’s why the six feet guideline was set in USA, that’s the average distance of these droplets to fall down to the ground or surfaces (because of gravity) – after leaving a person’s mouth or nose, depending on the air circulation of the environment. It is not a magic number, it is just a guideline to make it easier to remember (for example in places with the metric system they require two meters social distance, which is by the way more distance than six feet). And yes, prior-to-pandemic days, we would essentially be sharing each other’s microscopic spit when we were close to each other. Back then, our spit just didn’t have this particular virus happily floating from person to person in that spit plumb. That’s also how many OTHER communicative diseases to spread, by the way.
5 –> Unsuspected person inhales or rubs that microscopic plume of spit/saliva or exhalation droplets. They either rub it in their eyes after touching an infected surface, or simply just inhaled that microscopic spit.
6 –> Congratulations, the next person just got an infected, and could now potentially be a spreading vector without knowing it for up to two weeks… and perpetuate this process, unless they decide to do something to prevent it. Many have chosen not to be part of the solution.
7 –> Altruistic people would cover their faces and nose in order to deflect that spit from reaching somebody else, because they realize they could be infected, be a vector for disease, even though they have not exhibited symptoms yet. They rather err on the side of safety; they prefer not to unknowingly infect someone else.
My nine-year old understands this simple concept. The concept itself cares nothing about the person’s politics, corporate media “sinister” agenda (that’s a different rant – and I have plenty to gripe about that), or even the illuminati, none of that matters to the concept as described above… The real problem is that there are people who willingly or unwillingly do not understand this simple concept, and that have created – and/or exacerbated – the consequences we have come to hate for several months now. And yes, that includes opportunistic entities willing to exploit this problem.
The cloth masks became a mandatory garment almost everywhere – as they are intended to prevent/minimize GIVING the disease, because it deflects the amount of saliva a person exhales. You can still GET it because the virus can linger in aerosol longer (again, from whomever who was knowingly or unknowingly infected sneezed, talked, sang, chanted, etc. without wearing a mask or covering their mouth and nose). Again, particles can enter your body through your eyes as you rub that infected aerosol or by inhaling it (that’s why they ask you not to touch your face and wash your hands often). By the way, aerosol is a very fine mist, each little bubble too small to see, but large enough for this tiny virus to go on a happy voyage towards a new host. Any other mental gymnastics are just conjecture. People who make a living understanding the science behind this and other infectious diseases are trying to fix a problem that willful ignorance perpetuates.
And no, cloth masks won’t prevent from breathing under regular circumstances – true, not every fabric is the same, and some medical conditions are different, and so are different respiratory illness (that’s an entirely different rant). Cloth masks just need to be close enough to the person’s face in order to deflect the saliva and exhalation, if a person wears the face mask as properly designed, wearers won’t suffocate – I know I haven’t suffocated yet, nor has any other person I know of. Yes, the mask can be annoying, but at-this-time they are the easiest way to minimize the disease’s spread.
Be honest, how many people you see in a public restroom ACTUALLY washing their hands for 20 seconds? Not many, some people are pretty gross (I make a point to remind them… “that ain’t 20 seconds, buddy” – I say). All the scientists ask is to wear them while near other people, to protect THEM from US, in case we’ve been infected. This is especially true to protect the immunocompromised people.
Putting the mask as a chin strap or covering the mouth but not over the nose renders this prevention process useless, or at minimum significantly diminishes the reason why the mask is worn on the first place. I see people wearing the mask with their mouths and/or noses exposed in the grocery store, and it is just cringeworthy. The way I see it – when people don’t wear the mask as it should – it is as if the person is pushing an empty grocery cart and decides to carry all the groceries with one arm. In other words, they have not demonstrated an understanding of how the tool they are currently using is actually designed to be utilized. When an establishment is asking a person to wear a facemask is not a denial of their constitutional rights, just as the same establishment can reserve the right to ask their patrons to have footwear before entering their place of business.
And just like other garment touching the body or in contact with people-fluids, for the love of all that is good and decent… it needs to be washed, or better yet have more than one such garments… and cycle them just like normal people change and wash their underwear. That way the mask won’t become a breathing ground or a vector for OTHER infections against the person wearing it. It should be common sense, but apparently it is not. I’ve met people walking around with moist-with-spit masks for days at the time, and then wonder why they got sick with something else, such as strep throat.
The vicious circle
In our road to fix the problem together, a small inconvenience – wearing a face mask is a very small favor to ask. Think of it as if somebody ask somebody else to put sunglasses when the sun is too bright over the snow, they do that in order to prevent that person’s retinas from getting cooked with the light reflection (white bounces light #science). Scientists are trying to make us a favor. Seriously, this is not rocket science, putting a mask when around others only means a mask-wearing-person is an understanding human being who is making a viable attempt to prevent infecting somebody else.
No, not everybody dies from this disease, but that is something that is frankly irrelevant. A sprained ankle won’t be fatal on its own, but that does not mean a reasonable person would go around spraining other people’s ankles, or would they? Now, what if a someone sprain an ankle in a precarious environment where they would need all their limbs to help themselves climb out of that situation? It would exacerbate an otherwise minor problem, wouldn’t it? Well, this disease piggybacks on other immunodeficiencies, and for many that proved to be fatal, or at best very expensive. The difference is that infected person who refuse to wear a mask – might very well be the vector of disease that ended somebody else’s life – often somebody they never actually met, but suddenly created the most nefarious situation for that newly-infected-person and their loved ones.
Personally, I would not want to be a potential vector that would harm somebody else – in any way. I don’t need that in my conscience. This is not the same as living in fear, it means we’re doing what we know will make it better for all of us – which includes ourselves. Another analogy, it is just like checking your car breaks, so you don’t crash against someone else – who was probably properly maintaining their car – which makes you liable for the inactions that created an opportunity and contributed to the severity of that accident, rendering you as the de-facto person responsible for that car crash.
When responsible leaders wake up to the reality of a bad situation is getting worse, they know that adjustments will be required. Will mistakes happen along the way, sure, there is always the possibility fog of war in any battle. There are unknows, and a learning curve is inevitable. However, the right information is already officially out there, you all can look it up in your communities, it is posted mostly everywhere. It only takes for people to do the bare minimum… seriously, proper hands washing and putting a piece of cloth around the mouth and nose when around other people for that little bit of interaction. Is that really too hard?
Mandates are last resort guidance from pertinent leadership when the bulk of populace misunderstands what I stated above. All they formally ask is for people to wear a mask when close to other people outside their bubble for that relative short interaction time. Not unlikely wearing clothes in public. The more people refuse or misunderstand that simple guideline – the exponentially higher numbers will continue to go up. And if a casualty is allowed to grow, then stricter guidelines will be placed in order to control its spread. But do you know who really controls this? Surprise! It is each one of us, when we follow the basic guidelines. We all have the power of controlling this terrible situation no one of us asked for – together. Even if the science is confusing to some, don’t worry – we can let the scientists figure it out and give us the reader’s digest version. Which they did already, by the way.
We are only as strong as our weakest link in our collective fight against this disease. With this foe, each weak link strengthens the disease’s reach… and it has been able to reach quite a lot, therefore any shift in winds to improve the current situation will not be immediately apparent, at all. That does not mean we won’t be trending in the right direction. To illustrate, it is just like slamming the brakes on your car, you’ll skid a while depending how fast you’re going. So, at this time, we’re going pretty freaking fast – so we’ll skid for a while before we can regain control after slamming the brakes.
The more we skid, the greater the chance we’ll hit something along the way. That’s why it takes team effort. In case it was lost in translation, the weak links are those who refuse to do their altruistic bare minimum to help control this situation (wash their hands for ~20 seconds and wear a mask). In order to get out of the weak link category they just need to find and wear a fashionable, funny, scary looking, or even plain old mask… so long this cloth-face covers the mouth and nose when we’re around people outside their bubble. If they are able and/or can afford a fancier mask, more power to them, and that will benefit to us all. It is really that simple. HLC