The moral hazard of wearing and not wearing masks

Two months ago, I published an essay here on the Pandemic as a Religious Experience.
That essay was a follow-up on an earlier analysis of how Covid is discussed through the lens of cultural bias (grid/group) theory. Both still hold up well, but there is more to be said on the same vein.

This installment focuses on why people are not wearing masks and why mask wearing is not a permanent solution. Many people don't want to hear such explanations, because they believe that noting these things encourages bad behavior. This is bass ackwards. If we don't look at what is really happening, we are not doing science - we are simply scolding and shaming. That is a great way to feel morally superior while things get worse. This is especially the case if negative information is confused with partisanship. Believe me, I am no Trumper. I am to the left of both Sanders and Stalin.

Mask wearing is seen by many as both virtuous and faithful. Ironically, science is not based on faith or virtue. It is being sold this way by the government. People are told to wear masks so that they do not infect their grandparents and so that they do not die themselves (although for most, dying is not on the horizon).

Not wearing masks is now sinful, both because grandma may die if she lives in a multi-generational and because it is associated with the Devil (even though it is the Devil himself, or his right hand man, who is behind the task force). The reality is that living with young people means having better immunity. Studies of who died will likely show this, once the data is analyzed.

Avoiding sin is seen as an avenue to health. It always has been. Indeed, with virus as unseen enemy, maintaining virtue is paramount.

Then we have the Trumpsters. They look at mask wearing as unnecessary. They believe themselves to be saved and will therefore be spared any disease which arrives through sin. They have bought into the paradigm of mass virtue, but it is only required of sinners.

The virus has reemerged in areas that probably shut down before it got there. Indeed, it likely got there, not because people broke mask curfew, but because the virus model is wrong. Mask true believers want to believe the model is right so that they can have their virtue while returning to normal life.

The young who do not wear masks are being scapegoated from flaunting restrictions. They quite rightly do not expect to die from the disease, but their conduct will surely kill grandma or their Millennial  mask wearing elders. That their sin involves going to bars and drinking alcohol, which is still regarded as the devil's drink, makes them an easy target. It is why bars are being closed first as the disease soars out of control.

The main villains of this morality play are the super-spreaders, who are asymptomatic but deadly. They may never get infected, so they spread the virus with no ill effects to themselves. That is not entirely the case. Usually asymptomatic spread happens between the first sneeze and the first wheeze.

The CDC, in its wisdom, does not want the virus called a cold. This means that one is sick for two weeks, gets a cold, appears to fight it off while it is either being taken care of by the immune system (for those who are not far from their last cold or their child or grandchild's last cold) or is dividing in the lungs without the immune system responding. This is when super-spreading occurs. People who are fighting it off successfully may not be shedding virus at all. Those who are getting sicker are probably also spreading the virus. That was my experience.

The CDC needs to reconfigure its model. Breaking quarantine or mask discipline did not cause the current breakout of hot spots. No contact rules for six weeks may have, but that would have made a second wave inevitable. As it stands now, Dr. Fauci is correct that we could have 100,000 new cases a day. Given that their virus model is two weeks off, it is almost a sure thing.

No amount of obedience to mask protocols will change that. Masks are actually false security. No one who actually has the virus and is in the sneezing stage, will sneeze into a cloth mask more than once because those sneezes are heavy. Because no one is warning that heavy sneezes are most likely Covid, people think that they have just a cold or hay fever. When they feel a heavy sneeze coming on, they take off their masks and reach for a tissue or hanky. They might get to it in time. If someone is indoors, they won't be wearing a mask but won't be fast enough with the hanky. A tissue will do nothing to stop Covid, they are simply too thin.

Let us be clear, I am not advocating not wearing masks so much as saying why they are not helping. I am not putting anyone at risk. I am instead spreading disquiet. At this stage, disquiet needs to be spread. The truth is that mask wearing in public will not save you from someone who sneezed on or near you yesterday or last week. Virtue will not save you from virus.

Unless heavy sneezing as the first symptom (rather than some mysterious inhalation), people will continue to go out once the sneezing stops. People need to stay home at the first heavy sneeze and stay at home for three weeks. Mask virtue is not enough.

Covid survivors, especially those who were not hospitalized, are not seen as virtuous. Some weakness or sin must have made us vulnerable, especially the sin of violating mask discipline in public. We are not contagious unless Covid is an extinction event (meaning we all get sick over and over until we die off with SARS2 - sounds silly when you say it out loud, doesn't it). The reality is, we earned our immunity through considerable suffering. Even without SARS2 symptoms, the fatigue caused by manufacturing anti-bodies is extreme.

That we do not need masks except for social reasons arouses envy (as all inequality does) and fear. Those who have gotten sick and not died are a sign of doom. The reality is that the best way to be immune from the virus is to survive it. A vaccine, although considered a blessing from on-high, will provide some measure of cheap grace but is not an absolute protective.

If the recovered are not required to wear mask, it adds a bit of inevitability to getting sick from what is a serious infection. The fatality rate is only 0.15% per capita - or 5% of known cases. To have a known case, therefore, is considered a major hazard. The scarier reality is that if you have been sick, you probably were never tested nor hospitalized.

There are more of us out there than anyone knows and no one is asking us for input on our experience. Neglecting our experience is why many more people will get sick. Millions more. Half a million will likely die when all is said and done. Mass distribution of asthma meds to anyone after the first sneeze will save their lives, but it won't stop the spread of the virus.

Mask fear is no virtue. Being sick really is a function of immunological health. If you have kids or grandkids at home, you are probably safe. If not, you have reason to worry. Enter guilt. Locking your parents or grandparents away in a nursing home that takes care of them too well is also likely to kill them. More guilt.

The reality is that it is likely too late to do anything to stop this virus from making the entire nation look like New York in the spring. Mask etiquette will not let its disciples avoid illness or what is likely to be a more serious lock down in the near future. Sadly, it is too late to lock the door. The horse has already left the barn.

Obedience (which is social conduct, not science), will not stop what is about to occur. Nor is hating Donald Trump or those who have already been sick who are merely getting you ready for the inevitable. If one's immune system is not in hyper drive, the question of illness is when, not if, you will get sick. Until the virus burns itself out, not getting sick just means that, like some in Asia are finding out, is delay, not rescue.

The mask avoiders, who think that personal salvation and Donald Trump have protected them from disease will continue to do so are also among the doomed. Of course, their doom comes more from age than the lack of mask orthodoxy. In the next few month, they will also likely get sick. Their illness is more likely to be peer to peer rather than from public transmission. Snowbirds returning from Florida and Arizona, the current hot spots, are going to visit their friends and parents. It is not the young people that will and have killed grandma - it is their neighbor from across the street who comes over for a cocktail.

Donald Trump cannot be justly blamed for not getting the virus under control. He does not have that much power. Nothing he could have said or done would have made this virus any less lethal or prevalent - especially because the best minds in NIH and the CDC got the model wrong. He will be blamed by his supporters for talking happy to them. If he is still president, it will cost him the election - not because he could not stop the virus but because he is a public embarrassment.

When all is said and done, the high priests of the CDC will come out as the real villains. Those most likely to die are those whose caretakers followed CDC guidance on hand washing and keeping older nursing home residents safe from disease. That safety, like wearing masks, is an illusion. The belief by Fauci that shaking hands and social distance is necessary to prevent the next pandemic will make the next pandemic even deadlier.  May science show us their error so that they cannot sin again.