Nobody has asked you to storm any beaches. Just to go into a shop without wearing a mask.
– the delightfully named Kung Fu Movie Guy
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Samizdata quote of the dayDecember 10th, 2021 |
 52 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Safe space, the final frontier
Oh, that’s good.
Done that.
On one occasion, the guy in the shop actually said it was nice to see a human face, but also said ‘a customer had complained to his manager because he wasn’t wearing a mask’.
Another time, I had barely got through the door of one shop, before I was berated by the ‘assistant’ to ‘Don’t forget to use the hand sanitizer’, ( the door was still closing behind me as he said it ). Turned around and walked out on that occasion.
As little of my cash goes to these people nor the organisations they work for, as I can possibly manage.
So far, maskless, I have not been challenged but I am a small minority, which seems to have been reduced to a minority of one or two since the latest reimposition of ‘temporally’ restrictions the other day.
A man not wearing a mask, in his late 20s or early 30s, preceded me into a shop/post office. He paused to squirt some hand sanitiser onto one hand, then rubbed it around a bit. Then he stood in the queue and after a couple of minutes, fumbled in his pocket and put a mask on.
Do people know what hand-sanitiser is, do they think hand-sanitiser protects them – how? Do they know why they are wearing masks, how they work – or rather don’t – what they are designed to do, what they can’t do, how to wear and handle them properly? That after 10 to 15 minutes they are water-logged and provide a migration pathway through the fabric for pathogens, so are effectively useless?
Do they just do it because it’s what you are supposed to do? What must people wearing a mask and walking through a park, or along the street with nobody even close be thinking? Do they think?
I wonder if they were told they must stand on their head and whistle Dixie ‘to protect each other’ they would do it.
If masks and vaccination are effective, why is everyone still wearing masks and getting vaccinated again?
John B,
Stop asking questions. Have you signed up for your 15th booster shot yet??
For readers, and for any timid friends they advise (note how tactful I am 🙂 ), whose nerves need to work up gradually to storming this particular beach, may I suggest using a face-screen to accustom your local shopkeeper to the sight of your face – and yourself to something much easier to breathe in than the mask. You could then work up to the even bolder step of presenting your face to the indoors public without some transparent plastic between you and them.
The same timidity that makes people follow rules they suspect are stupid makes people very shy of themselves acting to enforce those rules. You can assure any timid friends, “You are not the only ones who are afraid of a ‘scene’.”
I have also witnessed the success of sly disobedience – those who, when (very rarely) challenged by a Karen, act like “Oh, I forgot”, put the mask sort-of on – and slip it off again literally as the Karen walks by them. I’ve not seen this often – but I’ve never yet seen the Karen return to the charge after realising the customer isn’t cringing.
For the record, I’ve also encountered old-acquaintance barbers and the like who will explain (in great detail, if encouraged) their co-morbidities, the feelings of nervousness these co-morbidities give them, etc., and thereby make donning the mask in their salon a favour they request more than a command they enforce. I don’t know what you all will think of me when I confess that I did, recently, put a face-nappy on and wear it for 10 minutes in that circumstance despite loathing the effect on my breathing – perhaps that I need some anti-timidity training myself?
APL (December 10, 2021 at 9:07 am) although I dislike being lectured on hand sanitiser, I find I am far, far less concerned by it than by face-nappies. I’ve known hand sanitiser at every table of a tea shop to be useful. In some other contexts I amuse myself with the historical fantasy that Jewish ritual cleansing has been reintroduced by gentiles in this rather dull modern form. We each are annoyed by particular things. Many loathe the mask, but at this time of year there are clearly some who mind it so little that they welcome its protection against the cold when outside, whatever its use(lessness) against the ChiComCold when inside.
Lastly, we should remember that, just as the virus is more dangerous to some than to others, so the lifestyles of some increase the likelihood and danger of accusation. “The help wear masks while the elite they serve don’t bother” is just one illustration of this. In Scotland, recently, I’ve been served in a busy tea room by a waiter who made no pretence of wearing a mask or apology for not doing so (while his two colleagues did wear them), and I’ve eaten in a crowded bar/restaurant where some staff had their masks round their necks far more often than over their mouths, but I think that is still rare.
Haven’t worn a mask since mid 2020
If neither were aligned in my mind with the COVID-19 terror campaign, I might be equally sanguine.
But they are, and I’m not.
Fair enough. However, I am not ( yet ) obliged to approve of
illmis-informed people behaving in a deranged and anti social manner.In this comment thread, Perry wrote: “We have known since last year that covid-19 is not a droplet vectored disease (coughs and sneezes) or fomite (spread via surfaces), it has an aerosol vector“.
Do you by any chance, have a source ?
Also, for my better understanding, could you expand on the distinction between droplet, and aerosol in that context?
Have seen some people with a sense of humour wearing Hannibal Lecter printed masks. Still trying to find out where I can get some – flying to the sun next week and can’t get on the plane maskless.
Remember the multiple loyalty oaths in Catch 22?
Your air travel is obviously different from ours. (“Take a sip, put your mask back on, and THEN swallow.”)
Penseivat – Try Redbubble
Good post – and good comments.
Dear Samizdata Illuminatus
I have never worn a mask. From the outset I regarded it as a public display of obedience (PDO) and a fine opportunity for a nice little earner and maybe recruiting a whole new herd of officious prodnoses.
I am self-exempt on the basis that at a time of universal deceit, upholding the truth is a disability.
I have had 6 hospital visits for 2 minor procedures including laser surgery for a retinal tear – four without challenge and all totally relaxed about my lack of ‘face covering’; a similar number of GP visits, with a few more challenges.
I got fed up with being asked by Waitrose staff on every visit and switched to M & S: 5 challenges in over a year of bi-weekly shops.
Rarely asked elsewhere. In one Christian venue I was harassed by a self-appointed guardian of the mask, the mask-free chef. I stopped going.
DP
On the BBC Breakfast TV show this morning (yes I know, I watched it briefly before my blood pressure rose too dangerously) an official was asked by presenter Naga Munchetty if the government should have been more strict in its new measures. What struck me was that was her line of questioning. The metacontext in which Munchetty and other “mainstream” reporters/presenters is that The State should do more. There’s little awareness as far as I see that the very way of framing issues is the wrong way around.
A small thing in the bigger story, maybe, but very symbolic of what is so wrong with much of what passes for journalism today.
At no point did it cross Munchetty’s mind, as far as I could see, that because the latest variant is more infectious it is, as is the case in the path of viruses, like to be less dangerous.
I suppose one caveat might be that the virus was cooked up in a Chinese lab as a possible bioweapon, but needless to say, no reporter or presenter, in the MSM or many other places, is going to want to be seen entertaining that as a legit area to go. Oh no sireee.
Have a happy Friday, folks.
I’ve rarely ever worn a mask, and not at all in the last six weeks or so. I’ve only been challenged twice, both times by people I know well. Just a week earlier, I’d spent an entire day in their home, and it was the absurdity of them then complaining in a public setting which finally decided me to stop the whole charade completely.
Mind you… dental appointment next week. That might be a challenge in the waiting room (if not, for obvious reasons, in the consulting room itself). We’ll see. Although, to be fair, I object to them less in a medical setting. It won’t stop Covid-19, but it might improve the place’s general hygiene, I suppose. Maybe. I mean, I’m not arguing for it either, but it’s not as insane as wandering around a supermarket with one of the bloody things on.
So what else is new?
Never worn one. Three challenges in 18 months, just walked out of the shop and will never return.
According to Bill Gates’ Facebook, the anti COVID-19 vaccines are ‘safe and effective’.
If you’re Bill Gates with population destruction in mind, effective maybe, yes.
Canadaian province stillbirth rate skyrockets.
Scotland infant mortality rates ‘spike‘.
What could it possibly be?
I wear a mask in shops because the shops ask me to.
Simple good manners.
Visitors to my house do not need to wear a mask because I don’t ask them to.
I wear a Swastika in shops when the shops ask me to do so.
Simple good manners.
Or… maybe it’s not good manners?
Masks don’t work against COVID, are antisocial, harm breathing, constitute a form of draconian social control, physically harm the person wearing it, prevent the reading of facial expressions, harm psychological well-being by preventing full in-person human interaction, hurt the ability of children to learn proper enunciation, and prohibit proper inhalation and exhalation. Doesn’t sound like only “simple good manners” to me.
Health (physical, psychological, and social) is more important than virtue signaling posing as “manners”.
If you normalise absurdities, you are part of the problem.
Shlomo’s answer is perfect.
I think you’re getting carried away.
A Swastika is pure emotional totem. No one believes that wearing one confers some tangible, physical benefit on anyone. It is pure team-signaling.
A mask is different, in that many people believe that they have some undefined value in prevention of illness. Out of fear, and some dim understanding that “science” is good, many people wear them, not for their social signal, but for their supposed physical function.
Those people may be wrong. Quantitatively, I suspect most are. There may be gradations of wrong throughout society. Personally, I think that proper masking might maybe give us a 5-10% level of protection. I think that the people who think they are 100% effective, along with the people who think they have NO value whatsoever, are uninformed in their own ways. Point is, wearing a mask is not merely an act of social signaling as is wearing a Swastika.
My dad is 86, has COPD and emphysema, and will likely die if he gets Covid. I wear a mask around him, on the theory that if the mask results in even a 1% level of protection for him, it is a decent trade. If someone denies that proper masking will give even a 1% improvement in limiting air transmission, I really question their grounding in the physical sciences.
We’ve carried masking to extreme and ridiculous levels, out of scientific ignorance. They have become a signaling totem. But they are not the same as wearing a Swastika.
Of course wearing a Swastika is not the same as wearing a mask. My point was that just because shop owners ask you to wear something to enter their store does not in and of itself mean that it is good manners to do so.
And I’m right about that point.
It’s not good manners to wear a mask or a Swastika in a shop, no matter what the shop owner says. Maybe you will do it anyway in the case of the mask, but don’t claim that it’s good manners to do so. It’s fucking not good manners to wear a mask in a store just because the owner asks you to – it’s an onerous, counterproductive demand that harms one’s own physical and psychological health. It’s not in any sense “good manners”.
Which is also what a mask it. It has negligible to negative overall health benefits and is mandated not to actually reduce infections but to show (a) a visible indication that the government is ‘doing something’ (b) to encourage people to demonstrate obedience to authority by wearing a functionally pointless piece of cloth, which really is where the swastika analogy works rather well. Perhaps likening it to a Soviet Pioneer badge might be less emotive for you? 😉
I sat next to a recently retired senior NHS manager at a club dinner the other night and he sneeringly called masks “pure theatre” and “political symbolism”.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.
I’ll agree with you to the extent that I will avoid (if I can) patronizing a business that demands that I wear the mask. (Not always. I wanted to fly around last week, Delta demanded I mask up, and I complied.)
But it seems to me to be strangely anti-libertarian to insist that a business owner not have the right to ask that I mask up before entering. I’m entering his property, using his facilities, enjoying his hospitality, and masking – which is essentially a generally dumb but costless act – strikes me as the polite response. I’m an atheist, but I try to not spit on any crosses when I enter a Christian friend’s home. That wouldn’t be polite, even though those crosses have no value to me.
Um, ok?
First of all, I’m not a libertarian.
Second of all, you keep changing what we are discussing in order to avoid conceding the fact that you are simply wrong. When did I say anything about rights? Of course I think that any shop owner should have the RIGHT to require the wearing of a mask or Swastika or rainbow flag or Kippah or burka or anything to enter his shop.
We were not discussing rights, bobby. We were discussing manners. Stop changing the topic?
The fact is that requiring me to wear a mask to enter a store is certainly a shop owner’s right but it is NOT GOOD MANNERS. Also me complying is not good manners. Period.
I wore one to get on the plane, cracked open a bag of pretzels, left them on my lap for 4 hours barely eating them. No one mentioned a thing.
As for shops and trains, not worn one yet, no one has asked. Perhaps a fifth of the train goers I saw were out of a mask, mostly young people.
People can wear a mask if they want, obviously. And shop owners certainly have the right to require the wearing of Swastikas or masks or unicorn costumes to enter their stores.
But saying that wearing a mask is “good manners” is false. Absolutely, unequivocally false.
And anyone who says it’s “just good manners” is implying it’s bad manners when I refuse to harm my own health by not wearing a mask that does absolutely nothing about covid. Fuck off.
Take a big marker and write NPC on your forehead.
Now, that’s just bad manners.
I know. That was more directed at someone else.
The COVID hysteria is so extraordinary that even certain Samizdata commenters appear to have lost their common sense. It’s very sad, and scary.
Remember, folks: those that cause you to believe absurdities can cause you to COMMIT ATROCITIES.
The idea that wearing a mask is “good manners” is fucking absurd.
Yup. Saying that it’s good manners to wear a mask that does fuck all about COVID offended me because 1. it’s false and 2. derogatory against people who, like me, are not NPCs and 3. it elevates the feelings of NPCs over the facts of science which is the thought process (or, more precisely, the feeling process) eradicating our individual rights, freedoms, privacy all over the entire fucking world.
I have absolutely refused to participate in the mask nonsense for the last year. If the local mask-Nazis ever get aggressive about it, so that it becomes impossible to (for example) buy food without one, I have some 1 inch nylon netting that will make a fine mask. Every bit as effective as the ones the NPCs are sporting.
So if a shop owner asks you to wear a Swastika to enter their store is it good manners to do so?? If your answer is no, then how can you claim that it is by definition good manners to wear something to enter a store only because the store owner asks you to do so?
I repeat, my point was that just because shop owners ask you to wear something to enter their store does not in and of itself mean that it is good manners to do so.
Let me spell out the nuance here.
This does not mean that wearing something that the owner asks you to wear is never about good manners. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Whether the wearing of the thing is about good manners depends on many factors, including the circumstances, what the actual thing requested to be worn is, what the reasoning behind the request to wear the thing is, and the situation.
My point was that just because shop owners ask you to wear something to enter their store does not in and of itself mean that it is good manners to do so. It may be about good manners, but this is rare and it is not automatically about good manners only because the store owner asks you to do so.
Taking off one’s shoes at the home of a traditional Japanese family is about good manners.
Wearing a mask so I can buy a sandwich in a deli is not about good manners; it’s about draconian social control, virtue signaling, political theater, and mindless hysteria way out of proportion to the actual threat.
Masks don’t work against COVID, are antisocial, harm breathing, constitute a form of draconian social control, physically harm the person wearing it, prevent the reading of facial expressions, harm psychological well-being by preventing full in-person human interaction, hurt the ability of children to learn proper enunciation, and prohibit proper inhalation and exhalation.
If you want to wear a mask, sure go right ahead.
Just don’t ever claim it’s about good manners. It’s about one of two things: 1. a personal choice to do so or 2. obedience to draconian social control, mindless hysteria, and political theater. That’s all.
Yes, or just not go in so as not to have to violate my own conscience while not impinging on his request.
For a bit, I thought that mask refusal was good, in that it confronted people with the fact that there are other opinions out there. I think that it has now lost effectiveness for that purpose – they know – and now just gives people another reason to demonize and otherize the other side. Now, it’s just goading. Better to spend the effort on spreading knowledge of the science and the real stats of Covid.
This is starting to sound like the equally pointless “nothing to hide nothing to fear” catechism.
I have not been wearing a mask, and have been perfectly polite and civil in doing so. As have those who have been wearing them in return. The shops and premises thus far have not been asking me to do anything one way or the other (I have one in my pocket and if asked – by a member of staff – will put it on, but would politely point out its uselessness). Nobody with a mask has so much as given me a second glance
We have all been politely ignoring “social distancing” which perhaps explains it. I would politely point this out should anybody masked – other than a staff member – ask me.
When the mask slips and there is uncivility, it won’t be from me.
I’m sure they’re perfectly mannered in the Australian chink flu gulag.
I would have thought that being pregnant would be a really obvious reason not to take a new and novel vaccine. The Thalidomide tragedy happened within my lifetime.
I have not been asked to wear a mask in a shop. My understanding is that this latest mask edict came from the government, you know, that bunch of incompetent liars.
I am temporarily visiting family in the USA and watching the politically inevitable events at home.
I see that the “protect the NHS” trope is to the fore as usual. However I cannot find the following pertinent information:-
How many current hospitalisation are due to Omicron?
I do NOT mean hospitalisations for other reasons where the person also tests positive. It appears overwhelmingly likely that this is an highly transmittable virus which sooner or later will sweep through the population causing slight tiredness and that’s about it (even though politicians, doctors and the media will label the inevitable flu-related winter deaths among the elderly and vulnerable to this new scary menace a.k.a. excuse).
Where is the evidence or even the claimed evidence to the contrary?
I know this thread is about masks and apologise for going slightly off track, however masks can only lead to further restrictions unless anyone is naive enough to disbelieve the endless planted media hints of “Plan C”.
Bobby B:
My dad is 86, has COPD and emphysema, and will likely die if he gets Covid. I wear a mask around him, on the theory that if the mask results in even a 1% level of protection for him, it is a decent trade.
I’m sorry to hear about your dad’s condition.
With regard to masks, there is not much point you wearing a mask to protect him. If he wants to protect himself, he needs to wear an N95 medical grade mask, properly fitted. This will help to filter the air he breathes. It also has a valve which releases his exhaled breath straight into the air. That’s why there is no point you wearing such a mask, your breath just comes straight out via the valve. These masks aren’t cheap, but if you want one which has any effect at all, they are what you need to obtain.
I’ve just been to the chippy and, for the first time in ages, masks were in the minority. Eight people in there, one with paper disposable mask, one with a scarf over his mouth, everyone else unmasked. Behind the counter maybe six or seven staff running around busily, only one mask.
A lot of the debate about what business enterprises may or may not do is really about economic CONCENTRATION.
If there are many shops and one shop is owed by a man by the name of Mr Smith, who insists that you wear a mask (or get vaccinated) before you enter his shop – and lots of other shops (owned by Mr Brown, Miss Jones, ..) do not make such demands – then FINE, Mr Smith can be pain in the backside – people will just avoid his shop.
Ditto with employment – if there are many employers it does not matter if Mr Smith (one employer) insists that you “use Woke pronouns” and all the rest of it – you just go to work for someone else.
But when the economy is dominated by a handful of “Woke” Corporations pushing totalitarian collectivism (what Dr Klaus Schwab and various international bodies call “Stakeholder Capitalism” – i.e. FASCISM) then things are rather different.
So why does the economy become concentrated in the hands of a few “Woke” Corporations – is economic concentration a natural process as Dr Karl Marx argued?
I think NOT – I think Richard Cantillon was correct some three hundred years ago. The expansion of CREDIT MONEY enables a few connected business enterprises to buy up real assets (such as land) before the price goes up – it is the expansion of CREDIT MONEY that leads to the economic concentration, that is (in turn) the threat to basic liberties.
But what we are seeing in the modern world is the monetary and financial system carried to an extreme that Richard Cantillon (some three centuries ago) could not have imagined.
Hence the concentration of the economy (and the threat to basic civil liberties that this leads to) is at an extreme he could not have imagined.
End the Credit Money and the stranglehold of a few “Woke” business enterprises will come crashing down.
The late Milton Friedman hoped that Corporations would be neutral in political and cultural matters – but no organisation is neutral.
Whether the idea of a Corporation is a good or a bad one is another debate (I used to think it was a good idea – but I am coming round to the opinion that it was a bad idea), but certainly the Credit Money must be ended. We must go back to a commodity money – not as a “standard” for the money, but as the money itself.
“Is Bitcoin a commodity money?” – I do not know.
UK poll: recent indications of high-level disregard of lockdown regulations in the past cause four-fifths of people to say they are less willing to obey any such regulations in the present and future.
I suspect this particular effect is not the outcome of any highly-placed person’s four-dimensional chess – or even any other highly-placed person’s two-dimensional chess. 🙂
Actually, I had (leftover in my shop) a large carton of good N95’s with no exhalation valves. That’s what I wear when I do wear a mask. I gave my dad half of them when this all started. So we very fashionably match when I’m over there!
Bobby:
No valve? Hope you can breathe in it.
Hate ’em with a passion. Bought 500 of them for pennies each at a farm-supply bankruptcy auction years ago. No good for exertion. But who knew they’d be worth 100+ times what I paid for them once Covid hit? 😉
Half went to my sister, a nursing home admin back when they couldn’t find any. Half of remaining went to dad. Have enough left for years of this crap.
We can make a judgement about this being just the shop owners/business owners preference. In this instance he/she is being coerced by the government.
The grounds the government is claiming in order to coerce these businesses to do a given thing, are false.
There are no good reasons to force the wearing of masks – at the very least the sort of masks the population choose to wear do nothing to restrict the transmission of the disease.
I think we may have all noticed that the plastic partitions that were ‘mandated’ at some expense to businesses, have been withdrawn. Those were stupid from the get go, and may even have been counterproductive because they actually restricted the free flow of air and caused the concentration and accumulation of disease vector in specific area. Far better to have efficient air conditioning to change the air in a confined space frequently than to create pools of stagnent air. Again COVID-19 hysteria, rather than a sound medical exercise.
So, if a given business for his or her own reason asks for a specific garment or apparel, I’d consider conforming to that request.
What we are discussing here is nothing like that, it is a government imposed and counterproductive exercise in population manipulation. I want none of it.
🙂 I was in the middle east ( as a civilian ) during gulf war 1, and we were issued with British army masks against the potential of a sarin attack. I got it for free, and could easily have sold it for £500 or more, as a consaquence of the hysteria, ( which I took part in, I’m sorry to say ) at the time.
BBC lead story:-
Covid: First people in UK hospitals with Omicron variant
Paragraph 13:-
It is not clear if those people who are in hospital with Omicron are there because of the virus or for other reasons.
In an economy where, thanks to Credit Money (which is backed by government “Men With Guns” as that utter swine Paul Krugman GLOATED) the economy is dominated by a few “Woke” corporations, then Freedom of Speech and all other basic liberties are theoretical only – if “private” persecution is allowed.
This is not a baker refusing to bake a cake with a Gay Marriage slogan on it – with another half a dozen bakers down the road (odd how the Gay activists never go and torment Muslim bakers – only Christian ones, and this was pointed out in Dearborn Michigan), this is a few “Woke” Corporations that have the power to persecute people for opinions that are NOT expressed at work.
As for mask mandates – they are despicable.
The people who impose them know they have no medical purpose – they are ritual humiliation.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1470120180873408514.html
An excellent read.
Shlomo Maistre – very disturbing.
By the way Sir – please look out for something, the death rate in Israel this year (when it is published early next year).
Not the Covid death rate – the total death rate.
As you know Israel is the most vaccinated country on Earth – I am interested in what, if anything, that is doing to people. Although with prions and so on – we may not know for some years yet.
Yes, good point. I’ll be looking out for that.