Inevitable, and yet, still bizarre. This is the head of the centre for disease control, second only to Joe Biden himself as the United States official most responsible for the management of the pandemic:
Masks can help reduce your chance of #COVID19 infection by more than 80%.
Masks also help protect from other illnesses like common cold and flu. Wearing a mask- along w/ getting vaccinated- are important steps to stay healthy. #WeCanDoThis @HHSgov https://t.co/bfOV5VzBpq pic.twitter.com/6DGj8nwPgD— Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) November 5, 2021
There are really two stories here, the first of which might not be immediately obvious: it is the claim that masks reduce your chance of infection by 80%. That would mean, after months and months of co-ordinated global efforts to get people to take a vaccine that… masks are actually more effective at reducing your chance at a covid infection than the vaccines are, once their initial protection has worn off. Right now, the best estimates are that the mRNA vaccines are about 40-60% effective after six months. So Walensky is claiming here that the masks are actually better.
That, of course….. is not true, at least, not in general. It might be true of the most effective facemasks – the N95s, and so on – worn perfectly in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions. It absolutely is not true of what we might term the normal standard of facemask useage in a situation where they are mandatory, which is where large numbers of people have one not-very-effective cloth mask that they stuff in and out of their pockets as they go to and from the shops.
The other story, of course, is the slow and inexorable shift, mainly on the political left, towards making facemasks permanent. The logic behind that, is, of course, unimpeachable: In general, masks, when used by a population at large, probably do reduce the number of colds and flus in that population. Colds and flus are bad, and we should want to reduce them. Facemasks (the argument goes) are not overly burdensome, and therefore… well, you aren’t in favour of colds and flus and people getting sick are you?
And of course, a reasonable person would answer: No. Not being in favour of colds, and flus, though, is not by itself sufficient to justify what amounts to a radical, long term social experiment with unknown consequences. Put simply: Humanity has lived with the cold, and the flu, for thousands of years. We are broadly aware of what colds and flus do, and how to avoid them.
What we have not lived with, however, is mandatory masking for an extended period of time. We have no certain knowledge, for example, of how not getting a cold or a flu once or twice a year impacts the human immune system. We do not know how facemasks, worn for a child’s school years, impacts that child’s social development or ability to read facial and social cues. We do not know to what, if any extent, facemasks add to the mental health struggles of those who feel isolated, or lack social contact.
There used to be a concept western society understood inherently: Proportionality. We know, for example, that people die on our roads. So, we enact a proportional response to achieve the greatest reduction in deaths, while still allowing people the advantages of travel by car: We set speed limits at 60, or 80, or 100, or 120. Of course, anybody hit by a car at those speeds will still likely die. If we wanted to eliminate road deaths, we could just set the speed limit to 15kph: Faster than anybody can walk, and slow enough so nobody dies.
But that would be, we would all agree, absurd. Life entails some risks. That includes the risk of walking on a road, or getting a cold, or a flu.
The extent to which Western Politics, and media, is now dominated by the risk averse, and the speed at which that domination has taken hold, is breathtaking. In Ireland’s defence, as risk-averse as the country has been, we have largely avoided some of the nuttier elements of American covid paranoia – like forcing children to wear masks in open air playgrounds. But the “keep your mask on to stop colds and flus” thing feels strongly like the kind of thing that many elements of the Irish public health establishment will find very difficult to resist. It will be up to the public to resist for them.
But if you want my opinion: demasking the population will prove almost impossible, for the foreseeable future. After all, the mask is no longer, really, about protecting oneself, or others. It is a demonstration of good citizenship. And people have become very attached to them.