Masks

As we approach the end of our second year of coronavirus tyranny, including but certainly not limited to having completely healthy people wear masks, I want to remind you of some salient points:

Why is no one addressing the stupidity of believing that single-layer cloth or paper masks do anything to stop or even minutely slow the spread of an airborne virus? Has everyone on the planet suddenly become innumerate?

The size range of human respirable aerosols is typically 2 to 5 microns. We’re not talking about spit from coughing or snot from sneezing, we’re talking about the stuff we exhale with every breath. If you’re coughing or sneezing, you probably ought to just stay home until you’re better. Okay, for those who don’t know, a micron is about 1/25,000th of an inch (1/25,400th, but close enough). The biggest human respirable aerosol is thus 5/25,000ths of an inch, or 1/5,000th of an inch.

A typical single-layer cloth or paper mask has a mesh opening size on the close order of 1/500th of an inch. Any tighter and you wouldn’t be able to breathe through it.

Does no one see a problem with this? The challenge material (human aerosols) are on the order of ONE TENTH the size of the filter openings. The aerosols simply flow right through the masks.

This is not trying to stop mosquitoes from coming into your house by putting chain-link fence across the open windows, this is trying to stop gnats with burglar bars.

The fact that NONE of these paper and cloth masks have air-tight seals across the face, and that the vast, nay, overwhelming majority of the air flow during exhalation simply bypasses the filter media (mask material) is left as an exercise for the student.

The ONLY masks that actually help slow/stop the spread are highly tested, custom-fitted N95 masks. There’s an elaborate procedure for fitting and wearing them, and facial hair (beards and mustaches) cannot be worn. You can tell somebody who is actually working in a high-risk environment because they have a bruise around the perimeter of their face and across the bridge of their nose since it’s the only way to get a good air-tight seal.

So the mandated wearing of these single-layer masks is just another example of theater from the statist, authoritarian collectivists running our governments, and ordered for the SOLE PURPOSE of exercising their power and control.

The voluntary wearing of single-layer masks is either massive ignorance, stupidity, or virtue signaling on the part of those wearing one…or maybe some combination of all three.

Math is haaaaaard.  So is history: 

 

Update:  A great quote from Thomas Sowell:

People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right—especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.

Perhaps this is why the lefties keep doubling down (quite literally!) on masks, as well as on failed policies.

Update #2, 12/29/21:  Another Sowell quote:

It is so easy to be wrong--and to persist in being wrong--when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.

Update #3, 12/29/21:  Masks are good for only two things:  demonstrating you have power over others, by forcing others to wear them, or virtue signalling, if you choose to wear them.  They're not going to protect you from the Moronic variant:

“Cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic,” CNN’s Dr. Leana Wen said on Monday night.

“It’s not appropriate for omicron,” she continued. “It was not appropriate for delta, alpha, or any of the previous variants, either, because we’re dealing with something that’s airborne.”

Update #4, 12/30/21:  They're no doubt looking ahead to next November's elections: