The most effective barrier to infection is to wash your freakin' hands! Not just use the antibacterial gels, but to use BOTH water and soap, for about 1/10 as long as it takes to recite the reasons that the Flynn prosecution was a farce.
Secondly, maintain SOME distance from others. Six feet is fine, if you don't know the person, less might be OK if you have enough acquaintance with someone to not worry about catching some other disease (head lice, common cold, Democratic craziness). You have to know and trust that person sufficiently to know that they have common sense, and wouldn't risk putting you at risk if there was any question.
Most closely, your immediate family. You live in the same house, you can't help some exposure, but - because of the delights of their company, not to mention legal/cultural obligations, you've accepted the possibility that you might become ill. Of course, when you do, you spring into extreme protocol, masking, hand-washing, spraying any surface they touch, and isolating them to a single room (with occasional bathroom trips, after which you clean and disinfect ruthlessly).
Then, there are those whose appearance at work is mandatory. If careful to stay out of range of a random cough or sneeze, the mask MIGHT be dispensed with. Your call.
But the masks have problems.
Fran posted on the virtue of temperance yesterday. That struck a nerve in me because the lack of it is one of my many faults. I begin my day with coffee, prayer, and meditation. (Can't do the latter two without the first.) But as soon as I achieve consciousness I go to the desk top for the news of the day, and I almost always come away angry. Yesterday was no exception.
ReplyDeleteMasking infuriates me.
I will grudgingly wear one when I enter a store, but not because of the "rules", or what the TV says. I do it solely as a courtesy to the people at the checkstands. They have to stand face to face with strangers all throughout their shifts. They have no way of knowing whom they're facing.
But the mask comes off as soon as I exit the store.
What galls me is the number of people out on the streets, no one near them for hundreds of yards, yet they walk around masked up like obedient sheep. I finally lost it, and went off on one such individual yesterday. I did a Karen in reverse.
I was out on the bike putting in my daily ten to twelve miles. I pulled up at a crosswalk, and there stood some guy about my own age waiting to cross. There was no one else on the street. He stood there alone in his paper mask waiting for the light to change. Before I could think twice my temper broke.
"Just what do you think you're protecting yourself From? Except for me there is no one on the street for a mile in either direction. You aren't in danger from anything, you're a goddamn sheep."
I could see his eyes bulging. Then the light changed, and I rode away.
I was rude as hell. Yet I can't make myself feel any compunction for it. I can't make myself feel like I was in the wrong to do what I did. Maybe add Pride (arrogance) to my lack of temperance here. Lack of restraint. Whatever. I did what I did. Maybe ruined the guys walk. I can't know, and can't make myself care.
JWM
I wear a mask when I go shopping because my wife has an autoimmune disease and catching the Sino Syphilis Lung Rot would be a death sentence for her. I personally hate wearing the damn things.
ReplyDeleteAnd when I go back to work in June, corporate policy is to wear a mask while working indoors. No mask, no work. And since I'm the boss on site, I'll have to enforce the rule. It really sucks.
The mask is the symbol of obedience in the slave culture. It absolutely has no other purpose outside of the medical profession in a atmosphere of sickness. Such symbols were mentioned in Orwell's 1984. I refuse to ware a mask in public. I am not a slave.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably a good idea to establish the habit of masks everywhere. At some point this whole COVID brouhaha will pass, and when it does there will still be security cameras and increasingly effective facial recognition software. The minuscule silver lining of this whole debacle is that it's provided me with a socially accepted reason to conceal my face from the panopticon.
ReplyDelete