Double masks?

The lunacy around Covid is getting worse. You’d think the vaccine rollout would have calmed the rhetoric but no, it’s becoming even more insane.

The people who told us masks don’t work are now recommending we wear two. I guess they have to clear their stocks before the game is over. I’ve never bought the disposable surgical masks. You know, the ones that state on the box that they offer no protection at all from this specific virus. I have some fun ones to wear on my rare visits to local shop but they are wash and re-use ones (minimum 40^oC, preferably 60 if they can take it, but as far as the virus is concerned it’s the soap that kills it not the temperature). I know they don’t do a damn thing but they give me an excuse to look scary while shopping. I’m actually going to miss the zipper mouth one and the Grinch.

If they want me masked up more I have a sugar skull, Bane, plague doctor and the little trike-riding puppet from Saw. As well as a few army surplus gas masks. Although the shop staff have trouble hearing me through the cloth masks as it is so I’d have to write down everything if I wear the gas masks.

Hmm. What if they insist I remove the plague doctor mask because it’s too scary, and I have the sugar skull on underneath? Look, the situation is ridiculous, I might as well have some fun with it.

Then there are the N95 masks. They won’t stop the virus either but they are better protection than the surgical or cloth masks. However, hospitals and other sites using these masks have technical staff to train people how to use them properly. You don’t just bung them on. They have to fit properly.

One of my nieces is a nurse. The shape of her face does not accommodate an N95. She cannot wear them effectively. Can you? How will you know? There is a way to test it, do you know what it is? Have any of those selling the masks mentioned it?

N95 masks are not re-useable. You can wear a properly fitted one for about two hours and then it’s done. Into the contaminated waste bin it goes and you can’t just put another one on right away. They really do restrict your breathing. Did the mask sellers tell you this? Did anyone tell you that used masks should be treated as contaminated material and not just put in a bin or worse – dumped in the street? It’s not just the virus. It’s been collecting bacteria and fungi while you’ve been breathing through it. It is now contaminated material.

Everything that left my lab went through an autoclave. Basically, a massive pressure cooker that uses high pressure steam to raise the temperature inside to 121^oC for fifteen minutes. Nothing survives that. It’s then safe to put it in the trash. Not just bacterial cultures – absolutely anything that had the slightest risk of being contaminated, which was… everything. One accidental aerosol, without even realising it, could have contaminated everything. I took no chances.

Yet people are being sold these disposable masks which they wear, contaminate and throw away in the street. You can call them idiots but they aren’t. They simply haven’t been trained in the use of these things. They don’t know. Nobody is telling them. At the least, put them in boiling water for a minimum of ten minutes before putting them in the bin. That should kill everything apart from some bacterial spores. Oh, and don’t use that pot for anything else. Pick an old one.

Look. You are doing all this for a virus with a well over 99% survival rate and which is killed by soap. Its outer coat is made of fat with attachment proteins floating in it. Soap makes it fall apart. It really is that easy to kill. And now you have all these experimental vaccines and masks and anal swabs for a respiratory virus… you never had any of this for flu, and it’s killed many more than Covid. Although this year it seems to have disappeared. I”m sure you have your own theories as to why so I won’t bore you with mine.

Well, it seems the end of lockdown may be in sight, but it’s been in sight many times this year only to be snatched away again. It’s not going to end. We might get a couple of weeks in summer but it’ll be back next flu season, and those couple of weeks in summer will be blamed. It will have popular support too. All those selfish people who went so far out in the countryside the police had to send a drone to find them were spreading it through infected butterflies or something. It doesn’t matter how bizarre the reasoning is now. People will believe anything.

I’ve already seen Twitter folk saying that the proposed (but conspiracy theory even though the government has firms working on it) Covid passport should be used internally in shops and pubs. So far it’s only being discussed for foreign travel and the government denies it exists at all.

Anyway. What pubs? They’re doomed. There are stories that they will be allowed to open in April as long as they don’t sell alcohol. Now, maybe restaurants could survive this. Their primary business is food. They could allow customers to bring their own wine and charge corkage. Their profits will be hit hard but it’s possible they could struggle along.

Pubs though? Food is secondary and not all pubs are equipped for it. Their primary business is alcohol sales and if they can’t do that, there’s no point opening. Besides, what’s beer going to be like when filtered through two masks?

Sure, pubs could charge corkage but how well will that work? When you visit a restaurant you are mainly there for the food. If you have to pay a small fee to bring your own bottle of wine, no big deal. If you go to a pub you are mainly there for the beer. You have to bring your own, and you have to pay more to drink it. It’s in cans or bottles, no draught, so why would you do that? You can drink the supermarket cans at home.

Well, taxes are going to rise to pay for all this crap. Yes, we’ve been locked in under house arrest for a year and now we’re going to pay for it. Boris is also considering taxes on meat and cheese to atone for our sins against the Green God. We’re going to be taxed harder and food is about to be taxed too. Taxes on certain foods are the same as one compulsory vaccination. It’s a foot in the door. You accept one and there is no limit. Don’t believe me? ‘One nonsmoking area in restaurants, that’s all we want’. Remember that?

Note that the Covid passports are actually called vaccine passports. It is not ending with one. It is not ending at all.

It has occurred to me that I have already written most of this. In Panoptica, physical contact simply doesn’t happen. It’s not even a conscious choice, nobody even tries. In 23-David and 81-Mohammed, set before Panoptica, 23-David considers a handshake as an assault. Back in Panoptica, 10538’s home and everything in it is reallocated when he is arrested. He owned nothing. Medication is centralised and not optional. 10538 has no personal agency, it does not even occur to him to not do as he is told.

Now I have to write a way out of all this. First though, I have to defeat lockdown ennui and get some editing finished…