The eleven-year old started to swoon in the 93-degree heat. Sheltering inside a clothing shop, we pulled down his mask and fanned him. The shopkeeper irately informed us that even though we were the only customers in the store, the boy lying on the floor had to put on his mask or leave. We picked him up, and managed to cool him off in a neighboring ice cream store run by an actual human being with functioning empathy.
Welcome to your dream Florida vacation in any number of beachfront towns that require masks, indoors and sometimes outdoors and some even on the beach.
To combat the spread of a virus with a 99.7% survival rate, we are told by everyone from store clerks to social media to governors to, “Just wear the damn mask!”
Many of us are in full-scale rebellion against being forced to wear “the mask,” especially in environments where it makes zero sense. Like outside in 93-degree Florida heat. Like being alone as a family on a beach. Really, like anywhere we feel our health would be better served not wearing a mask.
There are many reasons to question the mask mandates. Having a kid pass out in the heat is one. Second, there is no scientific basis to believe a facial covering even helps.
Dr. Russell Blaylock, who retired from his neurosurgical duties to devote his full attention to nutritional research, summed it up this way:
As for the scientific support for the use of face masks, a recent careful examination of the literature, in which 17 of the best studies were analyzed, concluded that, “None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.” Keep in mind, no studies have been done to demonstrate that either a cloth mask or the N95 mask has any effect on transmission of the COVID-19 virus. Any recommendations, therefore, have to be based on studies of influenza virus transmission. The fact is, there is no conclusive evidence of their efficiency in controlling flu virus transmission.
Third, while the benefits are uncertain, the risks are absolutely known. The list of risks associated with community mask wearing include:
- Face masks decrease oxygen, increase carbon dioxide, and alter breathing in ways that increase susceptibility and severity of CoVID-19. Mask wearers frequently report symptoms of difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, headache, lightheadedness, dizziness, anxiety, brain fog, difficulty concentrating, and other subjective symptoms while wearing medical masks.
- The longer masks are worn, the more they are touched, the more contaminated they become. Masks capture pathogens on their outer surface and also quickly become moist, warm breeding grounds for bacteria and fungi. These opportunistic pathogens increase the risk of disease. Dr. Blaylock explained the risk, “By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain.”
- The public is untrained in the sterile techniques required to make medical mask wear effective. Further, medical masks are single use devices designed to be worn for a relatively short period of time, not repeatedly as is occurring among the public.
- Asymptomatic or mild cases of CoVID-19 become more severe when an infected individual is masked, oxygen lowers, viral load increases from particle re-breathing, and the disease overwhelms the innate immune system.
- No medical evidence supports the effectiveness of cloth masks, bandannas, or handkerchiefs in stopping the spread of coronavirus. The penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97%. In fact, they may actually increase your risk of becoming ill from CoVID-19 and other influenza-like illnesses.
Yes, wearing a mask absolutely can and does hurt people, especially for prolonged periods and under the wrong conditions. The lack of a provable reward for all the risk is why the medical community has waffled back and forth on this topic. CDC and Fauci said it was not necessary, maybe even risky. Now they are on board, while the WHO, many other agencies, and many doctors recommend against masks.
So why are politicians and health officials ramming the mask orders down our throats? We can’t say for sure. Just following the general hysteria? Power grab? Increased budgets? Desire to look like you are actually doing something productive in the face of this disease? Fear of civil liability for not “protecting” everyone? Wanting to get your 15 minutes of fame on CNN?
Whatever the reasons, mask mandates are proliferating and Joe Biden even promises us a national one if elected.
Personal health weighs on our minds as we resist the mandates, of course. As citizens, we should have the right to decide how best to protect ourselves. But there is one reason to resist mandates that stands above all others, and it is rarely mentioned.
If we passively accept mask mandates, they may never go away.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf was recently asked a question regarding how long the severe mask-wearing order in his state would be in place and if there were any indicators that would move him to end it sooner rather than later. His response was, “I’m sort of thinking this is until we get a vaccine, but I don’t have any real formal goal there.” Obviously, Governor Wolf is in no hurry to get back to normal. He doesn’t even know why we would go back to the “old” normal.
An Orthodox Christian Bishop, when pressed for details on when the Church could re-open fully, indicated that other than a vaccine, he had no real idea, “I hope and pray that in few months a vaccine will be discovered and a treatment so that people don’t have to die from this dreadful pandemic but until then we have to be patient.”
There is no guarantee of a vaccine, obviously. After all, there is no vaccine for the common cold, also caused by a virus. Or AIDS, despite decades of research and billions of dollars. All of which is why Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said, “I think that mask-wearing and some degree of social distancing, we will be living with — hopefully living with happily — for several years.”
All of us are over 40 years of age. In our lifetimes, we have been through the Cold War, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror and now the War on CoVID-19. From privacy to our presumption of innocence to our freedom of travel, every war saw American liberties surrendered in the name of fighting some mortal threat. Once lost in the name of safety, these liberties never seem to return. Almost 20 years after 9-11, we still walk through body scanners, take off our shoes, dump our water bottles, and pray we are not on some kind of secret “watch-list” that gets us strip searched in an interrogation cell.
Every time some grand war with poorly defined goals was launched, many of us wanted to fight to stop the loss of our liberties. But we never really did, did we? We all had families and careers to take care of. Our friends would downplay whatever had just happened. It won’t be forever, they said. It won’t affect you, they said. Besides, we are in a crisis, don’t you know? The government has to do something to keep us safe!
Those of us that love liberty just never found “the hill we were willing to die on.” Whatever the government threw at us, we surrendered that hill and retreated to the next one. And the next one. And the next.
Until now, we’re running out of hills.
To fight a virus with a 1 in 19.1 million chance of death, 43 states have crushed their economies. Businesses were closed. Millions were denied the most basic right of earning a living. Our first amendment rights to assembly and practice of religion were trampled. We have suddenly discovered that emergency powers are broad, easy to invoke, and hard to end.
While some protests were organized against the emergency orders, we by and large accepted our fate. All this was temporary, right? How could this go on forever?
But it is still going. Many states are barely open, and those that are continue to labor under restrictions at the state and local level such as mandatory masks. Our own bodily autonomy has been taken from us. We are now forced to potentially cause ourselves actual harm for little proven benefit.
Local law enforcement has frequently pushed back against enforcing these mandates. Sheriff Rick Jones of Butler County Ohio stated that he refuses to be the “mask police” and that wearing a mask “should be a choice.”
While that is a good sign, the truth is that most mask mandate enforcement is actually being left up to 
private businesses and snitches. Americans have become their own oppressors. Police are not needed to keep swooning 11 year-old boys masked up in an empty shop. The businesses themselves can do that well enough on their own.
Which is the saddest thing of all. If only we respected the right of individuals to make their own choices, then no mask mandate could ever be forced upon us.
There is no sense of when or how this will end. Just like the War on Terror, the War on Corona Virus is being set up as perpetual. Instead of trusting Americans to make their own choice to wear or not wear a mask, state and local officials are forcing the mask upon us.
Which, my brothers and sisters, is why this has now become the hill we plan to die on. We will not accept being forced. To wear a mask or not is a decision we reserve for ourselves alone. We should have defended our freedom when less had been lost, but at least now we have finally come to the end of our tolerance.
This will simply not stand. We will push back against the mask mandates and against the next lock down and against whatever else the Governor Wolfs of the world try to force upon us.
This hill, we keep.
