Wes Thomas, Vice President of Winthrop University’s College Republicans
Masks either work, or they don’t.
Let’s first consider the facts, such as how the only study that showed masks as having any efficacy at all used N95s, with the assumption that people would switch out their mask intermittently throughout the day instead of wearing the same cloth mask for months on end (as most do).
A more recent study from the University of Waterloo found that cloth masks fail to block 90% of the ‘particles’ in the air, or that CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen called face masks “little more than facial decorations.” This implies that they had been this useless since the spread of the delta variant, if not before.
If masks are not effective, then mandates regarding their use are authoritarian: rules without reason and authority without argument. Not to mention the yet unknown psychological effects of going so long without seeing human faces, especially for children. Take the over 50% rise of suicide attempts among young girls since the pandemic started, for example.
Moreover, if these masks do work, then we are harming not only our mental health but our physical health as well by dulling our immune systems against both mundane and uncommon sickness. This would lead to us falling more seriously ill than we would have been otherwise. Our immune system can only function properly when allowed to train itself through exposure, a process that vaccines mimic with less effectiveness.
So…what are we doing? What is the goal? Why wear masks at all, and especially now? To protect the unvaccinated? They do not want protection, and, besides, most can be assumed to have natural immunity by this point; this immunity is 10 to 30 times superior to vaccination in almost every way, according to the only study on the subject, which was conducted in Israel in 2021.
Is the purpose to protect those who cannot be vaccinated? That is ridiculous, is it not? If you cannot be vaccinated, then there is no protection for you that you would not already have. If that is the goal, then we are subjecting ourselves to never show our face in public ever again. There is no limiting principle for a population that does not statistically exist and for whom there are already alternative treatments.
Are masks meant to protect children? The average age of a death related to COVID-19 is 82, with younger demographics dying in so few numbers that, according to multiple studies across the globe, those under 30 are up to six times more likely to suffer health complications from the Moderna vaccine than they are from COVID-19 itself, which is why some European nations have banned them from being administered to the young at all.
If the sole goal is to protect oneself from COVID-19, with no other concerns, then it’s simple arithmetic. First, especially if someone is compromised or older, then they should get vaccinated and reduce their chances of getting seriously ill from zero to less than zero. They should then take the mask off, get COVID-19, and reduce their chances of future infection even further by acquiring an immunity that requires no booster.
By wearing a mask, by insisting that everyone sanitizes, socially distances and covers their faces, humanity is purposely and deliberately reducing their protection against mundane germs and bacteria and not just COVID-19. If masks work, then you are deliberately undermining our and your personal health, and for what?
It’s a Catch-22: if masks truly are ineffective, then a mandate is authoritarian. If they do work, then they directly cause more harm than good. So, I ask, what can a mask mandate be except an attack on “the science” and on humanity’s personal, physical, and psychological health? Not to mention such things as decency, humanity and common sense.
If you ask me, there is nothing sicker than insanity, and so I’ll end with a quote from Plato’s “Republic”: “…hypochondria is ill-fitted for any sort of learning, enquiry, or study of one’s self while one is perpetually dreading certain pains and headaches, and blaming philosophy for causing them…it is a great obstacle to both virtue and self-improvement.”
