Mask hysteria
Lockdowns seemed to be the zenith of tyranny, but what’s the deal with all this mask business?
When I was growing up, there was a TV series called That’s Incredible! If there was a show like this now, it would be called That’s The Stupidest Damn Thing I’ve Ever Heard!
I got in some trouble with the law once when I was 22. I was charged with “trespassing” for using the library at Northern Kentucky University when I was no longer a student there. Wow, we’re getting into the big scandals here! I mentioned it to another inmate down at the jail. He was flabbergasted that this was even a law, and he said something like, “Next thing you know, we’re going to have anti-smiling laws!” He illustrated this by prancing around the cell with a goofy grin and imitating getting arrested. Twenty-five years later, the inmate’s forecast more or less came true.
This entry is actually just a preview of what’s to come. The main entry on masks is coming later. That entry was started early in the pandemic and kept having to be expanded. If you want to lose brain cells, wait until you read about some of the incidents in that entry. If you want to lose more brain cells, wait until the entry about mask mandates in schools. If you want to lose even more, wait until the entry about the frivolous lawsuits against schools that didn’t have mask mandates. Incidentally, NKU—where the “trespassing” arrest occurred—was one of the first schools at any level to announce forced masking, having done so in May 2020. That figures.
Masks were promised to be at most only temporary in any setting. But now it’s clear there is no finish line. Some places show no sign of lifting mask mandates—ever. The infamous Santa Clara County, California, has a permanent mask mandate that applies to patients and visitors of healthcare facilities for five months each year in perpetuity. Some might dismiss this because that’s only for healthcare, but the recent mandate at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park shows it isn’t just healthcare. This too is set to last off and on forever. Hawaiʻi Volcanoes is administered by the U.S. federal government, which had already declared an end to the COVID emergency way back in May. As these mandates are continuing past the official end of the emergency, there is no goalpost.
Now masks aren’t just for viruses or pandemics. In November 2022, Globe & Mail columnist Marsha Lederman penned a piece saying mask mandates should be the norm every winter in perpetuity—“not just as a pandemic measure.” She demonized those who opposed this concept. If masks are not just for pandemics and diseases, what else are they for?
Also that month, the CBC reported that Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth, an Eric Feigl-Ding acolyte on the school board in Ontario’s Ottawa-Carleton district, said schools should consider a mask mandate every winter—forever—to fight colds and the flu. The world’s rulers don’t have a lot of credibility on colds and the flu after they ignored it back before the COVID pandemic, but Kaplan-Myrth’s demand shows that masks now have mission creep and that the vow that masks would be only temporary was empty.
Kaplan-Myrth also sent harassing text messages to school board colleagues who wouldn’t support a mask mandate. She called one member a white supremacist, even though that member was Black. This resulted in an official complaint against Kaplan-Myrth for violating the board’s code of conduct.
Some pundit said masks should be mandatory on airplanes for every cold and flu season forever—not just for COVID—and condescendingly said opposition to masks was just “adolescent rebellion.”
A steady spate of propaganda-filled articles (probably CIA-backed) appeared in 2021 grumbling about the lack of COVID rules in Nicaraguan schools. One of these articles endorsed making mask mandates in schools permanent.
A user of a Reddit board for Madison, Wisconsin, supported making masks and even gathering restrictions permanent. This user endorsed limiting gatherings to only people in your own household—even after the pandemic ended. There would be no more sporting events, plays, or festivals—ever.
An epidemiology “expert” in Spain endorsed permanent mask mandates in healthcare settings and pharmacies. One Spanish official went even further and called for a permanent mask mandate for both indoors and outdoors—not just in healthcare.
In March 2022, Justin Fox of Bloomberg News and the World Economic Forum wrote an op-ed suggesting masks on mass transit permanently. The good news is that he at least noted that mask adherence on the New York subway was rapidly falling.
In short, it isn’t just healthcare where permanent mask mandates are being attempted, but also everywhere else, especially national parks, transit, and schools. It is particularly outrageous in schools, because it is so antithetical to the mission of education, and because schools serve the young, who are at negligible risk from COVID. Yet schools have always been among the biggest forts of COVID maximalism. Schools often stayed mired in the COVID abyss years after the rest of the community had moved on. When schools reopened, it was often for the wrong reason: At least one public figure said schools should reopen because schools were the only places that still had mask mandates. Our “leaders” wanted schools open only so they could control people.
For example, after the city of Denver lifted its mask mandate for just about all settings, it later enacted a new mandate that applied only in schools. The city actually issued citations to schools that did not comply. Before COVID, schools seemed to be their own fiefdoms that operated independently of cities and counties, as city and county officials claimed to have no authority over them. But when some schools finally got things right by not enforcing mask orders, the full wrath of city officials descended upon them.
Yet private schools were often just as bad as public schools, despite not being under state auspices. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago announced in January 2022 that it would begin requiring children in its schools to wear masks outdoors at recess. That was over a year after vaccines became available.
Masks weren’t the only thing that were set to be made permanent. A 2022 article said Canadian officials planned making permanent a mandatory app for travelers to verify COVID vaccination status. The app was said to be full of bugs. However, it appears that this proposal was later dropped.
Remote schooling—one of the most hated pandemic “innovations”—has become a permanent fixture too. WLWT-TV reported in March 2023 that schools in North College Hill, Ohio, were introducing permanent remote schooling, which went on to start at the beginning of the current school year. All students are required to undergo remote schooling on Monday of each week. Mondays are not vacations but actual remote days like those that filled the pandemic. WKYT-TV reported that schools in Bourbon County, Kentucky, were threatening a similar move.
In August 2023, a South Carolina district had remote learning because of heavy rain.
These are among the ways in which society has been radically restructured for the worse in only a few years under the guise of COVID. All of these changes were imposed unilaterally by people in highly paid political or bureaucratic positions. Mask mandates—especially permanent ones—were unthinkable only four years ago and are more extreme than what anyone then even thought possible. Yet anyone who lives by 2019 standards is accused of “killing Grandma”, thanks to our overlords’ Two Minutes Hate that has lasted four years.