The stupidity of mask mandates...
There are many people using mandatory seat belt laws as justification for wanting masking mandates brought back. There is an obvious and major problem with this comparison. Seat belts have to meet government mandated standards, car makers are not allowed to have seat belts made of string or rubber bands, they have to pass stringent regulations.
Not so with masks, anything goes.
You saw it all the time when masks were required for indoor public settings in Ontario, and even now that wearing masks is largely voluntary. SARS-CoV-2 is an airborne aerosol, everyone knows that. But still people wear ueless loose fitting medical masks that were never designed to provide control or protection against viral aerosols. It’s like using the mesh screening from your back door as material for an umbrella.
Would it be feasible to mandate everyone to wear expensive n95 respirators or better? Obviously not, and even if it were possible the damage to the environment would only be worse since n95s are petrochemical products. Billions of masks are already being discarded every day worldwide, many ending up in our oceans, lakes and other waterways.
And beyond the need to have the proper type of mask, they have to be worn and handled properly. Masks are medical PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), they’re not like a pair of dirty safety glasses. You see adults manhandling their masks all the time in retail stores, pulling them out of germ filled disgusting pockets. And yet there are so many double digit IQ types who think they’re genisues and want children to be required to wear the dirty viral magnets over their mouths and noses.
Back in January of 2022 during the peak of the Omicron wave, Ontario had 4,183 Covid+ patients in the province’s hospitals, that was when masks were still required. Now here we are in April, with the even more transmissible BA2 variant dominating, and numbers haven’t come anywhere close to that level. Last year April’s spike was higher than the wave in January of 2021 which takes away any seasonal aspect.
Back in March/April/May of 2020 when everything started, when there were no mask mandates and no vaccines, things were far better than they’ve been during any of the subsequent waves. We keep having interventions with lockdowns, masking, distancing and vaccines, and things just keep getting worse. Now with some of the interventions being done away with things are finally starting to get better.
Want to wear a mask? Fill your boots….but leave everyone else, especially the kids, alone.