Don't wear masks to slow coronavirus? Worst. Advice. Ever.

I’ll admit, I didn’t think the coronavirus would spread as far as it has, as quickly as it has. I was wrong. But part of the reason I was wrong is that the government was catastrophically wrong in issuing perhaps the worst single piece of medical advice in modern history:

Don’t wear masks.

They didn’t just issue it. Surgeon General Jerome Adams actually screamed it in all caps on Twitter: “Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!” According to Adams, masks are “NOT effective in preventing the general public from catching #Coronavirus.”

Are. You. Effing. Serious????

Take a moment to process this: Our government has been telling us for weeks that the most effective way to avoid COVID-19 is to stay at home. In other words, we need to put a barrier between ourselves and others.

That’s exactly what a mask does! Yet we’re not supposed to wear them because they’re not effective?! What the actual hell?! Are we supposed to believe the government when it’s talking out of the left side of its mouth or the right side of its mouth? Or neither, because, frankly, it’s lost a whole lot of credibility here.

Especially since data suggests masks DO work. (I used the capitals this time.)

Studies show ...

A 2004 study of SARS in Beijing found that “the use of masks was strongly protective.” How strongly? “Always wearing a mask when going out was associated with a 70% reduction in risk compared with never wearing a mask.” And wearing a mask even intermittently as associated with “a smaller yet significant reduction in risk.”

An analysis of several studies in 2011 found the same thing:

“Nine case-controlled studies suggested implementing transmission barriers, isolation and hygienic measures are effective at containing respiratory virus epidemics,” the authors concluded. And here’s the kicker: “Surgical masks or N95 respirators were the most consistent and comprehensive supportive means.” (Italics mine.)

In other words, they’re more effective than washing your hands or issuing government orders to stay home. Here’s the upshot: Because the government denied the obvious — that facemasks work — our entire society has been forced to shut itself down. Think about that for a minute. Yes, we might have been forced to take other measures as well, but if we’d started wearing masks in the first place, we might have flattened the curve, as they like to say, enough to get out ahead of this thing. We might have minimized the fallout. We might not be watching so many people die while we play catch-up.

Common sense

And yes, they were denying the obvious. The studies I quoted above were already out there, and had been for years. But when it comes right down to it, I didn’t need a study to tell me that a mask would help protect me from catching the virus.

Are masks 100% effective? Of course not. But neither are condoms, and that doesn’t mean we should all go around having unprotected sex.

Right?

Do locked doors always keep burglars out? No, but you’re not gonna leave your door wide open at night in a bad neighborhood (or even a good one) and invite one in. Are you?

Hell no.

Then there’s this: The government has been emphasizing — again, for weeks — that we should cough or sneeze into our arms. That’s just common sense and common courtesy. Mom taught me that when I was 3 years old. And the principle is obvious, even to a pre-kindergarten kid: If you put a barrier between yourself and the germs, most of those germs won’t get out there.

What’s a mask? Let’s all say it together now: “A BARRIER!”

Mommy medicine

And barriers work both ways. They keep things (in this case, germs) in, and they keep things (again, germs) out. So, of course wearing a mask makes it harder for you to catch a virus. That’s not rocket science. It’s mommy medicine.

That’s why, even as I was complaining about “social distancing” edicts, I was thumbing my nose at the government’s “guidance” by actually wearing a mask. (Oh, I’m such a bad boy.) In addition to staying home as much as possible, covering my mouth when I coughed or sneezed, and washing my hands far more often than I used to, I was, yes, wearing a mask.

Now, the government said it didn’t want us buying masks because it wanted to be sure health workers had an adequate supply … which would seem to indicate they’re effective for the health workers. Who are human. Like us. So it stands to reason they’d be effective for us, too.

So don’t tell me they’re not effective, then tell me that health workers need them because they are. I’m not that stupid.

That bit of absurdity aside, I understand the need to protect health workers, and people shouldn’t go around hoarding masks like they’re toilet paper. But even if we don’t have surgical masks, we don’t actually need them. Sure, they’re the best alternative. But covering your mouth when you cough doesn’t require a piece of medical equipment, just your hand or elbow.

Ergo, it’s possible to create a barrier even if you don’t have one of those things that tie back behind the ears. You could wear a bandanna, for God’s sake. In our case, my wife had bought a number of N95 masks for yard work before any of this went down, so we’ve been wearing those. And a couple of weeks before this got bad, I picked up a $5 fabric mask at a science fiction convention. (That’s it up there in the picture. I’m a cat person. Cute, ain’t it?)

Because I didn’t trust the government’s ridiculous, and horrible, advice.

I trusted my mom.

She’s been gone 25 years, but I’ve got a feeling that wherever she is, she still cares about my health. And the advice she gave 3-year-old me still works. As for the government? Idiotic actions speak far louder that all-caps messages on Twitter.

Case closed.

P.S.: Spread this. Make it go viral. Maybe we the people can succeed where the government has failed us and actually put a stop to this thing.

Mail-in election the only humane response to coronavirus

Politicians in both parties claim that Americans’ safety during the coronavirus pandemic is their top priority. Unfortunately, their actions indicate just the opposite.

Donald Trump, true to form, is more interested in protecting his brand and deflecting blame than anything else. His first concern is his own political survival. And he’s not alone. Politicians in both parties are showing their true colors — and their hypocrisy — in calling for businesses to close, events to be canceled and people to stay home. Except, of course, when it comes to political events. And voting.

Neither political party has, as of this writing, canceled its national convention. This is the height of irresponsibility, and more than that, it’s a thumb in the eye of ordinary Americans who’ve been put out of work and are facing fines if they don’t stay at home.

The Democrats deserve more blame that the Republicans, in this case, because its convention is set for July, more than a month before the GOP gathering. The Dems say they’ve got a backup plan, but won’t say what it is. Trump, meanwhile, says there’s “no way” he’d cancel the Republican con. He doesn’t give a flying you-know-what about anyone but himself. Neither, it seems, do a lot of other people in Washington.

Alexandria Cortez-Ocasio threatened to force representatives to fly back to Washington so they could vote in person on the massive virus relief package. Republican Thomas Massie actually did so. Because a roll-call vote was more important than being safe — even though it was entirely unnecessary.

Or at least not nearly as necessary as earning a paycheck to pay the bills, so families can stay fed and housed. It won’t do any good to have a “shelter in place” order if you’ve got no shelter in which to place yourself.

It’s yet another example of the clueless Beltway mentality: Politicos consider themselves a privileged class, and rich politicos (which is most of them), even more so. While the rest of us are stuck at home, many of us out of work and dealing with monthly bills, the parties are hell-bent on having their parties. To “protect democracy.” In their minds, democracy is synonymous with their own re-election, not with a fair and honest vote count. Read on for the details.

Speaking of voting, they’re telling people to go to the polls and cast their ballots, even though poll workers are contracting COVID-19. That happened in Florida, which (along with Illinois and Arizona) went ahead with their in-person primaries March 17 despite the spread of the virus. That was two weeks ago, and it’s spread a lot more since then. But even with 80% of the nation on orders to stay home, Wisconsin is vowing to forge ahead with its April 7 vote.

Republicans are largely to blame on this one: The GOP leader of the state Assembly called the Democratic governor’s request for a mail-in election “logistically impossible and incredibly flawed.” In other words, it wouldn’t benefit them. I guess people dying of a virus doesn’t rise to the level of “logistically impossible and incredibly flawed” in their book.

And it’s funny, because somehow, Ohio managed to make the switch to an all-mail-in primary on short notice. So it’s not impossible at all. In fact, it’s the only rational, humane way forward.

Resisting mail-in voting for political reasons is nothing new. Doing so when people’s health is at risk is. It’s a time-honored (and shameful) tradition: The party in power rejects mail-in voting because it recognizes that such an option will increase the number of votes for the opposition. Party leaders and incumbents don’t want to relinquish power, pure and simple. They do it for the same reason they draw “safe” districts, resist motor-voter laws — and for the same reason they supported poll taxes, literacy tests and other anti-democratic measures in the past. They’d do it again if they could get away with it.

They say they want to protect democracy? Their actions, historically speaking, say the exact opposite. And how about protecting people for a change?

The political parties should both cancel their self-congratulatory conventions; they’re little more than exercises in free advertising (propaganda) anyway. And, more importantly, the federal government should immediately institute a fully mail-in general election. If Ohio can do it on short notice, the feds can do it eight months out. If the virus abates, they can reopen the polls, but it’s time to plan for the worst-case scenario. If the government really believes 100,000 to 240,000 people could die of this thing, holding an in-person election amounts to a death sentence for some of the people who’ll show up at the polls.

A mail-in vote is feasible this far out. But the more they put off planning, the harder it will get. It must be done now.

Failure to act will prove one thing: Our supposed representatives care more about their own power than people’s lives.

I already knew that anyway.

It’s up to them to prove me wrong.

Photo: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 by eagle.dawg

Coronavirus rant from a Grumpy old introvert

Excuse me while I channel my inner grumpy old man:

I won’t “self-quarantine,” but I will be staying in. Thank you for asking. Before you jump down my throat, it means the same thing, smart guy.

As an author and freelance editor, I’m fortunate enough to work from home, so I don’t need a lecture about “social distancing.” I’m also an introvert, so I stay the hell away from people as it is. That means the same thing, too, genius.

Frankly, it’s absurd most of us still work in offices, anyway. We spend hours in traffic, polluting the air, just so we can spend hours in meetings, numbing our minds. Brilliant, that. (I’m not talking about people in service industries, who are, unfortunately, in a really bad situation because of all this. That should be obvious.)

After hearing how the air and water are getting cleaner since this Coronavirus hit, it makes me wonder if Mother Earth isn’t using it to cleanse the old palette. Less pollution is a good thing. We should have figured that out before we got smashed over the head with a damned infectious disease.

No, I don’t need your criticism. I wash my hands in warm water a bunch of times a day, and I wear a face mask when I go out. Don’t get on my case for depriving health workers of a mask, either. My wife bought a few to do yard work months ago, so no, we’re not being “insensitive” about that. Thanks for caring.

I’m not “flattening the curve,” I just don’t wanna get sick. Or make you sick, either. That’s why I stay away from B.S. media buzzwords like the ones I’ve put in quotes: They make me want to wretch. Speak plainly, or STFU.

I’ll stay home, but spare me your artificially euphemistic PR-speak about “sheltering in place.” The very use of “sheltering” as an intransitive verb is a buzz kill for me.

Yes, I want information about the virus. But I want details, and lots of them, not rah-rah slogans and sound bites. Not shaming and peer pressure.

Don’t worry: I won’t be getting within 6 feet of you, but I probably wouldn’t have, anyway, because I actually value my personal space. Imagine that. I won’t be coughing in your face, but I wouldn’t have done that anyway, either, because it’s rude as hell. Common courtesy not to, y’know? Maybe this virus has spread so fast because we forgot about that. A shame, really.

So now people are communicating even more on social media, where they’re blasting each other left and right over how they’ve responded to this thing. I heard recently that most of what people post on social media is criticism. That seems accurate enough. And the more you insult each other, the more social distance you’ll get, so I guess that works. Except you won’t get the corona kind of virus online: You won’t cough, but you might get hacked. 

People online either get pissed at you for wanting to stay healthy. So you can survive. Or they get pissed at you for wanting to go to work. So you’ll get paid. So you can survive. Tough choice.

Is social media shaming really what people need when they’re going through something like this? I kinda doubt it, but that’s what they’ll get … which makes me glad I’ve distanced myself from all that toxic middle-finger-pointing. I need it like I need a case of Covid-19.

And please don’t tell me we’re all “in this together.” We’re not. The people who are getting sick and losing their jobs are in it one helluva lot deeper than NBA players chillin’ at home or members of Congress with those free health care plans they’re denying the rest of us.

That kind of inequity is what had grumpy old introverts like me keeping our distance from society in the first pace. I didn’t need a pandemic to tell me people are dangerous. All I had to do was look at the way we polluted the planet long before this thing started. And the way we treat each other: like objects, marks and scapegoats.

So keep your P.C. rhetoric about social distancing to yourself. We cynics and introverts invented the concept.

We just put it differently: Get out of my face, and stay the hell off my lawn.

Healthcare and highways: Lessons of history forgotten

We Americans have a selective memory. And we trust labels over facts.

Anyone who doubts this only has to look at two words: Infrastructure and healthcare. Infrastructure is supposed to be something that “everyone agrees on.” Who doesn’t want better roads? And who has a problem with the government paying for them?

We view good highways as a human right. Healthcare? Not so much.

But it wasn’t always this way. There was a time, back in the late 1800s, when our roads were in terrible shape. If you wanted to use yesterday’s highways, you had to depend on private businesses to surface and maintain them.

Why would businesses want to do that? The only ones with any incentive were merchants, and manufacturers who needed them to distribute goods. Naturally, the roads used by these merchants and manufacturers were in decent shape. The rest of them were barely passable – if at all. If those businesses weren’t on a direct route, tough luck. You, the ordinary traveler, had to go out of your way to be sure they were getting their money’s worth.

Sometimes, a long way out of your way. Halfway decent roads back then were a maze of twists and turns and double-backs.

The private businesses that forced everyone to go out of their way weren’t in it as a public service. Like today’s insurance companies and drug makers, they wanted to make money. If travelers happened to benefit, that was fine. If they were inconvenienced or got stuck in the mud, that was fine, too. It didn’t matter to them.

Cyclists to the rescue

If you like the fact that today’s roads aren’t a bunch of rutted, muddy dirt trails, you’ve got the bicycle to thank for it.

Cyclists back in the late 1800s weren’t happy about the sorry state of the nation’s roads, so pressed for legislators to dedicate more money to improve what we now call “infrastructure.”

The prospect was expensive. The federal government resisted setting aside money for highways, preferring to kick the can back up the (dirt) road to states, counties and those private businesses.

But the movement picked up steam once farmers joined the cyclists in calling for better roads.

One cycling activist, Isaac Potter, published a plea to farmers detailing the cost of bad roads to their bottom line: He put it at $2.35 billion, which would translate to about $56 billion today – pretty close to Michael Bloomberg’s net worth.

Wagons broke down as a matter of routine; sometimes people were hurt or even killed.

Potter made another point, too: Roads in places like France, Belgium and Italy were well maintained – even country roads. The condition of these foreign roads stood in marked contrast to the terrible shape American highways were in. One early road advocate ranked them alongside Turkey’s roads as the worst in the world.

This was all back around 1900.

Flash forward to today, and the arguments on healthcare are eerily similar. Poor healthcare coverage costs the American economy billions of dollars in lost productivity. When people go bankrupt to pay obscene medical bills, it kills consumer spending: They’re no longer fueling the economy by spending on things like cars and Christmas gifts. And that’s not even mentioning the real price: People without health care suffer. They die. They leave loved ones behind who don’t know what they’ll ever do without them.

More than 100 years ago, other countries were building and maintaining roads while the United States was doing neither. Today, other countries are treating and curing patients, while the United States is – that’s right – doing neither.

The opposition

Back then, Americans responded. Starting in the 1920s, the federal government began kicking in serious money to build and maintain the nation’s highways. As part of that, the feds got to decide where the new highways went.

That didn’t sit too well with the merchants and manufacturers who had controlled where roads were built up to that point. They didn’t like the government deciding to bypass their businesses for the good of those who actually needed to use the road. They did everything they could to stop it from happening.

But they failed.

Today, drug companies and insurers won’t like being bypassed, either. Not for the sake of the people who need to use healthcare. Not for any reason. That’s why they’re fighting the idea of universal healthcare tooth and nail.

We’re all used to government funds paying for our roads. We don’t remember what it’s like before they did. Today, we view good roads as a human right. If we don’t have them, we get mad at the government and demand them. We don’t remember what it was like before the government paid for them, because we weren’t around then.

History and hypocrisy

If we did remember, though, we’d realize it was exactly what it’s like now with healthcare. Other countries provide it; ours doesn’t. Other countries are saving money because they’re willing to invest in something worthwhile. Something noble. We’re not.

If you want to dismiss universal healthcare as “socialism,” you’ll have to dismiss the federal road system, too.

But maybe we should flip things around and look at it the opposite way. What if we started viewing healthcare as human infrastructure? Without it, our society will break down, just as wagons broke down on those muddy, potholed 19th century roads. Our economy will suffer. People will die, too – and a lot more of them.

History forgotten is hypocrisy unleashed.

The history of our highways holds lessons for today’s healthcare crisis. It’s time we start listening and doing something to save the human infrastructure that’s crumbling right before our eyes.

Age brings more reminders of what we've lost

It’s a well-known phenomenon. You hear that song on the radio, and it takes you back to your senior prom, your first concert, summer camp or some other event relegated to memory. It activates that memory and makes it new again. You know you can never go back there again, but in that moment, you remember what it was like to be there.

You smile a little smile, and maybe you get choked up a little, too. It’s the essence of “bittersweet.”

Because music is such a potent reminder of the past, it hurts to realize it’s going to stay there. That’s what happened a couple of years ago, when a large number of famed musicians from my childhood all left us: David Bowie, Glen Frey of the Eagles, Prince, George Michael, Leonard Cohen, Merle Haggard, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake of ELP, Leon Russell.

It wasn’t just the year the music died, it was a year a part of us died, because with their deaths, we knew they’d never be making new music again. We’d never get another chance to see them in concert. Even if their bands had broken up, there had always been a chance they’d get back together, at least for a reunion show. No more. I remember thinking about that when John Lennon died. There would never be a Beatles reunion. Maybe there wouldn’t have been one, anyway, but there had always been that hope.

Hope is about the future; memories are about the past. They work best in tandem, and when we lose one part of that equation, we’re a little worse off for it.

We didn’t just lose musicians in 2016. My childhood sitcoms were decimated by the deaths of Florence Henderson (The Brady Bunch), William Christopher (M*A*S*H), Abe Vigoda and Ron Glass (Barney Miller), Alan Thicke (Growing Pains) and Garry Marshall (creator of Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley and Mork & Mindy).

They live on in reruns, but in some ways, that’s just as hard, because whenever you see them, there’s a chance you’ll be reminded that they’re no longer with us.

This happens to me a lot, with music, TV shows, landmarks, mementos, old photographs.

I see movies starring Alan Rickman or Robin Williams, and I can’t help but be reminded how much I valued their talents … and now, they’re no longer here.

TAKEN FOR GRANTED

You take things for granted when you’re young, at least I did. When I first became aware of things, I assumed they’d always been that way and that they always would be. I think the first time I realized they wouldn’t was when I moved back to my hometown, Fresno, at age 15, after six years away. The radio station formats had changed. The big discount department store called White Front, where everyone had shopped, was gone. The Lesterburger fast food chain, which had been ubiquitous in the 1960s, had gone out of business, too. It all seemed surreal, impossible even.

Three more years passed, and there was a new freeway and a new football stadium. Both were big improvements, but I still remember sitting on the splintery wooden seats at the old stadium and watching Fresno State’s football team rout Los Angeles State (back when it had a football team). The splinters aren’t a pleasant memory, but the game itself is, and they’re tied together in my soon-to-be-55-year-old mind.

Going south on a trip to San Diego last weekend on U.S. 101, I passed through the area where I lived for six years as a child and young teenager: Woodland Hills. I was reminded of riding in my parents’ Buick LeSabre down that same Ventura Freeway to see the Dodgers play every summer in the 1970s. People mention Bill Buckner’s error on his gimpy leg for the Red Sox in the 1986 series, and it triggers memories of when he was my next-door neighbor in Southern California, making circus catches in the outfield for the Dodgers before that leg slowed him down.

When I went back to Fresno as an adult a year or two ago, I went back to eat at the first Me-N-Ed’s pizza parlor on Blackstone, where my folks introduced me to my favorite pizza (cheese and black olives) when I was 5 or 6. Yes, it’s still there, and that’s comforting. But it also reminds me that my parents aren’t, and that will never stop hurting.

When I see high school football games, I remember when I used to cover them as a reporter for the Tulare Advance-Register. When I drive by my old office, I remember when I used to work there.

"BACK IN MY DAY"

Then there’s the music.

Whenever I hear the Eagles’ Best of My Love, I remember sitting by the radio in my room, listening to the week’s top 40 countdown and wondering what would be No. 1 that week.

When I hear Have You Never Been Mellow? by Olivia Newton John, I think of riding to summer school at A.E. Wright Middle School, the ride so much longer than it needed to be because of all the stops they made in the canyons and foothills west of the San Fernando Valley. And me, sitting there, my legs cramped and hurting because, even at that age, I was far too tall to fit comfortably in bus seats designed for third-graders.

Maybe it’s because I’ve done so much historical writing that these memories hit me so often, but I think it’s the other way around: The feeling that the past is somehow slipping away has prompted me to keep some portion of it alive, if only in recorded memory. I suspect it happens to a lot of people like this, even if they don’t write any of it down, and that’s why our elders reminisce so often about the way things used to be “back in my day.”

My dad did that, and now I’m doing it, too.

It’s bittersweet to remember the things that are gone, but the alternative, forgetting them, is far worse.