“the current debate over masks is ... currently the most obvious reflection of our idolization of liberty.”
“Community post-Enlightenment serves me now, not the other way around. The all important ‘I.’ In a word, our much beloved individualism. Some of you probably have calendars, t-shirts, and coffee mugs touting individualism’s tenets that tell you that you have the right to be happy, achieve your dreams, define yourself however you want, and live your best life now, among other distillations of secularism’s priority of the individual.” - John Ellis
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OK. Stay away from me then. And stay away from others. Please.
FYI, masks protect others from YOU more than they protect YOU from OTHERS. That’s why you are asked to wear one.
[Mark_Smith]OK. Stay away from me then. And stay away from others. Please.
FYI, masks protect others from YOU more than they protect YOU from OTHERS. That’s why you are asked to wear one.
We don’t know each other personally, so I’m sure that’s not a problem. I’m already staying away from those I know that are high-risk. If you lived near me, I’d add you to the list. The people I’m spending time with outside my family are those that see the disease as I do, so we’re all taking on our own risk.
Stay safe!
Dave Barnhart
[Mark_Smith]FYI, masks protect others from YOU more than they protect YOU from OTHERS. That’s why you are asked to wear one.
That’s the line they peddle. How do you know it is true?
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
A decent summary of them is you think COVID is not dangerous for almost all people. I disagree.
What is the evidence on which you base your disagreement? At what point (percentage, outcome, whatever) would you no long consider it dangerous?
But stop acting like they strip you of your rights
At what point would you say the government has overstepped its boundaries? Is there any limit to what the US government can do?
[Aaron Blumer]Comparison “not perfect” is an understatement… but there are similarities.
What I’m seeing a lot is crossing over the fine line between questioning government on these things vs. a spirit of rebellion. And sometimes, it seems, a crossing over the line from concern for liberty to idolizing of liberty. I don’t think John’s wrong that this happens. It’s just that there are other thought processes involved also.
On the other end, you have pro-mask folks who are driven by concern to help people avoid the disease etc., but some are motivated by idolization of government or wokeness or “the liberal social narrative” or what have you. So… isn’t it human nature that when it comes to motives, you’re always going to have some who are right for the wrong reasons and wrong for the right reasons?
Matt 7:1 comes to mind…. and 7:2, or wherever the part is that talks about the kind of standard we use to judge others ends up being the sort of standard we get judged by.
Of the two, it might be better to be wrong for the right reasons.
…discussion by finding a “Biblical” political position. I’m sorry, you don’t get to go there. God hasn’t seen fit to give us a handbook for politics. Christians can endorse a (limited) range of positions as consistent with Biblical truth. I’m sorry if that’s messy…
It’s not as limited as many think. In any case, we’re supposed to derive principles from Scripture and apply them to all of life. So the claim that “this is the biblical way to think and act” is a legitimate claim for debate and a legitimate effort, regardless of whether it’s “political” or not. There are no excluded categories of thinking and acting Christianly. So, claiming “this is the biblical position” is not shutting down the debate. It is the debate—for believers. “This is political so there’s nothing biblical to say” is shutting down the debate. (Well, sort of. It’s moving the debate back to a different, more fundamental question: What is the Bible good for? Or how do we use it for all of life?)
Alright, Aaron. Moving away from easy applications (e.g., should abortion be legal), let’s try some fun ones: is a constitutional monarchy or democratic republic more Biblical? A 6% or 7% sales tax — which should Bible-believing Christians endorse? People’s lives will be affected by your answer, you know, so Biblical principles are involved. Should more power reside on the state or federal level? Certainly we can find Biblical principles to guide us on these! Etc.
I’m saying for a great many political questions, the debate is going to move into pragmatics and statistics and a discussion about what furthers the flourishing of society. Simply stating “position x is the Biblical one” in many cases is simply a nonstarter and is indeed an attempt to short-circuit the debate by reaching for moral high ground.
[Don Johnson]That’s the line they peddle. How do you know it is true?
Disagree with Don all you like (and I do); as Kevin Williamson points out, the medical community, like our media institutions, has no one to blame but themselves that their credibility is shot, through the egregious politicization of their medical authority over the past several decades.
An excerpt:
There are a lot of people making a lot of bad decisions in regard to COVID-19. I wish they would make better decisions. But if some people do not seem to believe that they are getting a straight answer from the medical community about the pandemic, it may be because they remember not having got a straight answer from the medical community about gun rights, climate change, population control, abortion, and much else. If some people believe that the doctors and their organizations are playing politics with the pandemic, it may be because they remember the doctors and their organizations playing politics with a lot of other issues before.
I’ve read many articles on the masks, pro and con. The pro ones often use weasel words like, may, might, and could. This isn’t the language of certainty. They also frequently cite studies of N95 masks as if their effectiveness applies to any mask. That’s not a real argument.
I don’t think there is certainty about masks, from the articles I’ve read. The best that can be said is that they might help. Our own medical officer was asked about making masks mandatory today. (A lot of people are clamoring for it, even though we have one of the lowest infection rates on the continent.) She said we aren’t at that level yet, and it is the least effective tool we have.
So my issue isn’t simply “doctors lack credibility” but rather that the science on this is completely uncertain, with what little has been done suggesting that masks are next to useless.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Agree that the science is pretty uncertain on this, so far. Most of the existing studies examine how other types of viruses are affected by masks, and even these show mixed results (though the recent Lancet meta-analysis looks to me like there’s a majority showing strong mitigation w/N95 masks but also significant mitigation with lower quality masks… if I’m understanding it correctly).
But I don’t that matters a whole lot. If there is even a small chance of a few people not spreading the virus to others by wearing a non-N95 mask, it’s worth the minor inconvenience to have everybody as masked up as possible where people are crowded together.
And if we got serious about it, we could get N95s cranked out and distributed everywhere.
When you’re trying to fight a disease, you can do the “least effective” things along with the most effective things at the same time. Every little bit can help, especially when you multiply it across millions of people. (A penny isn’t much of every American gave me one, I’d be rich!)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Of course the “biblical position” is to take what the Bible says and apply it to all of life. We all agree on that.
However, taking your own application, i.e. “wearing a mask == the biblical position” and then assuming it is biblical truth, is indeed shutting down the debate. It still must be shown to be true, not claimed and then preached as sin.
I think we’re emphasizing different parts of that post but not really disagreeing. “Assuming what needs to be proved” is probably the #1 failing in a whole lot of debate on many topics. I wouldn’t call it shutting down the debate so much as not really engaging the debate.
But let’s be honest: it really takes some discipline sometimes to step back and look at your own position and ask, OK, what I am I assuming here, that actually needs to be proved?
In the case of John’s post, he does make a case: it’s a philosophical one. The argument is basically that enlightenment individualism gave rise to excessive focus on individual rights in our culture, and that this is what’s behind the mask push back…. which is why, in my first post in this thread, I didn’t say “Hey, you’re shutting down the debate!” I tried to engage the argument with a counterargument: enlightenment/post-enlightenment collectivism… which is also idoloatry in many cases.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Don Johnson]That’s the line they peddle. How do you know it is true?
I know by common sense. If viruses are carried in water droplets breathed out or sneezed out, then if I wear a mask it at least limits the amount of droplets leaving my respiratory system and floating into the air.
The reverse is also true.
Does it prevent infection? No. It does limit the viral load you receive however.
[Don Johnson]I’ve read many articles on the masks, pro and con. The pro ones often use weasel words like, may, might, and could. This isn’t the language of certainty. They also frequently cite studies of N95 masks as if their effectiveness applies to any mask. That’s not a real argument.
I don’t think there is certainty about masks, from the articles I’ve read. The best that can be said is that they might help. Our own medical officer was asked about making masks mandatory today. (A lot of people are clamoring for it, even though we have one of the lowest infection rates on the continent.) She said we aren’t at that level yet, and it is the least effective tool we have.
So my issue isn’t simply “doctors lack credibility” but rather that the science on this is completely uncertain, with what little has been done suggesting that masks are next to useless.
The most effective tool: isolation, but that only works so long
Then, not meeting people indoors for long periods of time where the virus can be shared (sound like a common activity?)
Then social distancing.
Hand washing is in there somewhere.
Also, a mask to limit your exhaling viruses and breathing them in or touching your face/nose where viruses are placed in your respiratory system.
[Mark_Smith]I know by common sense. If viruses are carried in water droplets breathed out or sneezed out, then if I wear a mask it at least limits the amount of droplets leaving my respiratory system and floating into the air.
The reverse is also true.
Does it prevent infection? No. It does limit the viral load you receive however.
how often is the virus spread by water droplets? I don’t think that is a known factor. It might be one way, but it isn’t likely the main way. As I read about it, people who aren’t coughing and sneezing are spreading the disease. They are doing that by aerosol spread, presumably. Masks won’t help with that
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Worth noting, regarding the contention that masks won’t limit aerosol spread, is that clean rooms around the world use surgical masks to greatly reduce particle contamination down to the micron range and below—current lithography is actually in the nanometers, and the #1 source of particle contamination is people in clean rooms.
A lot of people get confused, assuming that because the gaps in a mask exceed the size of the virus by far, that they are of little use in stopping or diverting the virus. Not true—if we were to apply the same logic to sails on sailboats with even bigger gaps in the fabric, we would assume that they are of no use in catching the wind, which is of course composed of particles measured in angstroms.
Reality here is that we’ve got two things going on with masks. First, the masks do indeed catch and divert viruses, whether in droplets or as an aerosol, reducing the viral load on those in the area. Since there is a concept in epidemiology of the “infecting dose”—the minimum amount of virus or bacteria required to infect the recipient—this can be a powerful way of reducing the rate of infection. So given a certain pattern of behavior—a level of social distancing—peer reviewed papers have indeed found that wearing a face mask can reduce the rate of infection by 65-90%.
The flip side, again, is that if people treat a face mask as if it makes you safe no matter what and stop other social distancing measures, all the benefit of reduced viral load disappears simply because you’re making more opportunities to get some more viruses. That’s why other studies have found that face mask use doesn’t correlate to lower infection rates—in the same way that many treated condoms as a way of continuing to have unsafe sex and learned the hard way that they’re not a perfect solution, thousands/millions have learned the hard way that if you keep going about your business, just with a face mask, you’re going to needlessly expose yourself to the disease.
One other thing which really bothers me is the insistence on total proof that something will work—brothers, we are dealing with an epidemic which is about half a year old, and there are simply going to be some places where we do not know things to 99% + certainty. We need to make our best guesses in light of the things we do know pretty well.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Either jurisdictions must decide to hermetically seal its citizens into Tupperware containers, or at a certain point they must decide to get on with life while taking some reasonable precautions. We have reached the point (nay, passed the point) where a significant proportion of citizens are no longer willing to listen to their feckless political leaders on this. When you lose that, elected officials become impotent.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
[Aaron Blumer]But I don’t that matters a whole lot. If there is even a small chance of a few people not spreading the virus to others by wearing a non-N95 mask, it’s worth the minor inconvenience to have everybody as masked up as possible where people are crowded together.
I think that’s just the question that people are asking themselves — is the inconvenience of wearing a mask worth it when it’s not clear it actually helps much. Many people have decided that no, it’s not. Now is that because of not trusting authorities or because they value liberty “too highly?” I have to think that for most the answer at least to the latter is no, if only because it’s been shown time and time again that the vast majority of people will choose safety over liberty, nearly every time. I have to believe it’s more because of a lack of trust of authority. Which one would be hard to say, but getting abused by many different authorities time and time again will cause people’s trust to diminish. Just look at all the polls about trust in different entities (like congress or the president) to see that trust is pretty low. And as the article quote above showed, even people’s trust in the AMA is diminished — and for good reason. It will be hard to re-establish.
And if we got serious about it, we could get N95s cranked out and distributed everywhere.
Agreed, this would actually make more sense.
When you’re trying to fight a disease, you can do the “least effective” things along with the most effective things at the same time. Every little bit can help, especially when you multiply it across millions of people. (A penny isn’t much of every American gave me one, I’d be rich!)
Sure you can, but again, it’s a cost-benefit analysis being made by each person (even if they don’t see it that way formally). I’m not sure what the total number of lost pennies is in the U.S., but it might be fairly significant. I’d venture to say that the number of lost pennies I’ve picked up in my lifetime is almost certainly less than $1.00. I guess I could keep my eyes on the ground more, and then maybe I’d have found, say, $10.00. I’m still going to say that’s not really worth my effort. I can even say that taking into account money of any denomination I found (smaller than a find so large I would feel it necessary to try to find the owner). I’ll bet it’s still less than $100 over my lifetime. In the same way, my wearing a mask (or not) impacts at most a few hundred people, not everyone in America. Sure, if you add it up among everyone, the effect *could* be significant, but since the majority aren’t seeing people get sick and die everyday from this, they’re not going to deem the cumulative effect very worthwhile.
If there were N95s available for everyone at a reasonable price, and all would wear them, I could believe it might make a difference. However, we can’t take every possible precaution in our lives at all times because of the “slight possibility” that the least effective thing MAY be worth the inconvenience. Otherwise we’ll eventually do nothing at all, because any action at all will entail a risk, and we’ll have possibly forgotten some “least effective” action we could have taken.
Dave Barnhart
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