Last Gasp for Masks

by Kerry Dougherty

A friend of mine went to the dermatologist yesterday. The medical office was in the Sentara Leigh medical complex in Norfolk and she was required to wear a face diaper.

Hey, there were a total of 5 cases of covid yesterday in Norfolk. That’s 2 cases for every 100,000 residents. There may have been more cases of TB. Of leprosy. But you can’t be too careful, am I right?

Of course if my pal had waited one more day to see the skin doctor she could have bared her pretty face. In a joint announcement from the region’s megalith health companies: Sentara, Bon Secours, Chesapeake Regional, Riverside and CHKD declared that beginning today face masks were no longer required in their facilities.

It’s about time.

“While we continue to evolve our COVID-19 policies, our priority remains the safety of our team members, patients, and community,” the joint release said. “Masks will continue to be an important tool, along with vaccinations, to keep people healthy and safe. Masks will still be available to patients and visitors who enter our facilities. Additionally, our health care colleagues can still wear a mask if they choose to do so.”

Presumably, the person writing this knows that the masks commonly worn by most people do nothing to stop the spread of infection and that vaccinations don’t prevent infection or transmission. Yet they keep repeating the lines. So much science in a single press release!

Frankly, I had no idea any medical facilities were still requiring masks. I have been blessed with good health and was able to simply avoid any doctor who required patients to participate in pandemic theater after the statewide mandate was lifted two years ago. When I mentioned on the radio once that I went to an urgent care center that didn’t require masks I was bombarded with emails from listeners begging me to name it.

People want to breathe when they wait endlessly to see a physician. Who knew?

The sad thing is, not only did the pandemic shatter our faith in national health agencies such as the CDC but many lost faith in their own practitioners who refused to acknowledge that masks offered little or no protection from the virus that everyone will catch.

After the loss of learning for kids, this loss of faith in doctors may be one of the greatest unintended consequences of the misguided — not to mention unconstitutional — mandates of the past three years.

Still, common sense is finally returning.

One magic mask mandate at a time.

Republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed and Unedited.


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Comments

18 responses to “Last Gasp for Masks”

  1. walter smith Avatar
    walter smith

    They can’t admit they were wrong, which only makes them look worse.
    If you want people to trust you, try being honest.

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    I’ll agree that we did not know the effectiveness of masks and so it was a judgement call that looking back can be criticized.

    But I won’t agree that masks are zero percent effective.

    They may not be 100% effective.

    The truth is somewhere in between and I say again, if no mask was effective at all, we’d not see them worn at all in any circumstance and that’s simply not true.

    The real question is why some folks are so willing to impugn the govt (and hospitals and other medical providers) over this in the first place.

    It makes no sense. People STILL wear masks right now today if they think they are infected and can infect others. It’s not at all entirely futile and the mask actually does give others a warning in terms of being too close.

    Why we have to generate so much hate over this is beyond me.

    1. walter smith Avatar
      walter smith

      It’s not beyond me, Larry.
      The tyrants wouldn’t listen to your god, SCIENCE!, and forced people to do theater, harming them badly.
      And masks are just the beginning…

    2. VaNavVet Avatar

      So much hate because Kerry and her ilk insist upon demonizing anyone who chooses to wear a mask for any reason. This would include my immune compromised neighbor who wears a mask at all times when outside her home.

      1. I have not noticed anyone demonizing people who choose to wear masks. To me, it appears the anger is against those in positions of power who continue to require others to wear masks.

      2. I have not noticed anyone demonizing people who choose to wear masks. To me, it appears the anger is against those in positions of power who continue to require others to wear masks.

        1. Matt Adams Avatar
          Matt Adams

          I just particularly fond of shaking my head as I see someone driving alone in their car wear a mask.

          Just for additional info, they don’t have any ride sharing signage to denote they are picking someone up.

          1. I also find that baffling, but to each his own.

            My biggest problem with the masks is that I find them very uncomfortable to wear, and they cause my breath to fog up my glasses.

          2. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            They’re also pretty uncomfortable if you’re doing any kind of physical exertion. You can’t pull that much air through them, they’re a big restriction.

          3. Matt Adams Avatar
            Matt Adams

            Yes, I concur about the glasses. They are awful when you’re wearing those.

            I also have the problem where it won’t stay in position and I have to keep touching it, thereby undoing the very reason for it.

      3. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        It’s just ignorance and idiocy IMO. It was a novel/new disease that no one really new about and science and the govt did the best they could do in the time they had to do it. It was this way pretty much around the world. No country or scientists that I know of said that masks did not need to be worn not social distancing and not vaccinations, etc.. that none of those things needed to be done because they were not effective at all.

        I can buy the idea that masks are variable in their construction and effectiveness depending on other things like proximity, type of disease, etc , but I have zero doubts that surgeons wear them for very good reasons. No scientist or surgeon that I know of is saying that masks for surgery are not effective and not needed. If the work for surgeons, they probably work for other situations especially as you point out for the immunocompromised.

        We had a pandemic caused by a novel disease and some folks can accept the reality of that and others have to assign blame based more on ignorance than facts and realities.

  3. Eric the half a troll Avatar
    Eric the half a troll

    So glad that Kerry is free to spread her diseases to others now. Congrats!

  4. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Don’t wear a chin diaper. Everybody likes a story, especially Karen, so here’s mine.

    Riverside ER circa 1990, standing at the desk filling out forms when an ambulance pulls up and they wheel in a emaciated Gandhi lookalike with a mask dangling from one ear who is coughing and hacking.

    The nurse runs up puts his mask back on him and yells at the EMTs, “Keep that on him. He’s got TB.”

    So don’t wear the mask, Karen. COVID ain’t so bad.

  5. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Not with a bang…
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WROdwlk9_h8

    Since the first time TSA forced me shoeless through a metal detector, I was convinced that the end of man would come as a deadly foot fungus… Socks — more important than a mask?

    https://www.livescience.com/drug-resistant-superbug-fungus-is-spreading-faster-in-the-us

  6. Thomas Dixon Avatar
    Thomas Dixon

    Maybe we should start wearing seatbelts, helmets and goggles too, just in case.

  7. Moderate Avatar

    Just this week the medical providers in my area dropped the mask mandate. I went in for an annual physical recently and had to pull the mask out. I did so without complaint. There’s so much misinformation around since this has been politicized that no one is sure what to do – but it’s not surprising to me that medical folks hung on the longest. They’ve used masks forever. I trust them more than others and while I wasn’t wearing a mask regularly, I was willing to do so in an environment where I might run into someone who was sick.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      My doctor still wears a mask even though patients are no longer required.

      I asked. He said that he sees a bunch of people every day and some of them are sick and some have COVID and he’s ended up infecting his kids and wife.

      Even before Covid, people would infect each other. People would come to work or to a social event or church and cough/sneeze on others, and they’d get it and take it home.

      Don’t understand why this is hard for folks to understand.

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