The day that "mask" became just another four-letter word
Hypocritically moralizing community/code of care meets common sense...
Perhaps a bit prematurely, anonymous Twitter user WatcherAfar declared this afternoon: “Friday, November 18, 2022. The day the mask died in Ontario.” He or she was referring to the developing story of Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Kieran Moore, being video-taped at a party, maskless among a 100% maskless indoor crowd. Days earlier, Moore had urged Ontarians to don face diapers in indoor settings, specifically “in social settings” and at home, to protect “our most vulnerable”, i.e. children, from the current wave of pediatric hospitalizations for RSV and influenza. The party was Toronto Life magazine’s celebration of the “50 most influential Torontonians of 2022”. Also in attendance: Toronto’s Mayor John Tory, maskless of course, and surrounded by other maskless individuals from among Toronto’s political and cultural “elites”.
There sure have been countless examples of #RulesForThee (ButNotForMe) during the nearly three years of the pandemic. An epidemic modeler comes to mind who pursued his extra-marital affair during lockdown while an entire country on the other side of the big pond was told by its “top doctor” to have sex by ourselves to stay safe from the coronavirus. Another pertinent example was delivered by Dr. Brian Goldman, emergency doc at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital as well as radio columnist, book author, and COVID-19 goofball on social media. A photo of maskless Goldman at a pub event contrasts with tweets such as “Only in a society in which selfishness is a virtue would masking be a personal choice.”
People are speculating about the deeper meaning of these unmasked appearances but I say it would simply be awkward for Goldman, Moore, and Tory to wear masks at events when nobody around them does. Thus, the more important question is: Why do all these other people on the photos not mask up? What do they know, and what do we, who don’t voluntarily wear masks, know that public health officials and TV doctors can’t seem to grasp? Let’s just say, there may have been an ounce or two of common sense going around…
While the #RulesForThee incidents have found their way into the legacy media today and could prompt a further delay of mandates until the current viral waves taper off, the day also gave reason for new concerns. The prime exhibit here is York University’s latest COVID-19 update titled “York University is calling on all community members to immediately resume masking indoors as part of provincial efforts to protect children and most vulnerable”. This is clearly not equal to “York University reinstates indoor mask mandate”, but the effect may be equivalent and likely intended. In the text, the “call” is repeated and a qualifier added, “if you are able to wear a mask, do so”. Yet, the next sentence uses the work “requirement”, albeit in what must be one of the most awkward and incomprehensible sentences of the pandemic: “Treat it as a requirement for your own health and that of others.” Treat mask wearing as a requirement for my health? Whose “requirement” would that be? And you’re no longer telling me what to do but instead how to feel about certain actions? Absurd.
YorkU president Dr. Rhonda Lenton also asks all university members to commit to a “community of care approach”. I am not very good with Gutmensch speak but had noticed this term on my own campus, where “Masking is still in effect at the Library Collaboratory” and “We ask that registrants follow a code of care and wear a mask for in-person workshops.” The moral superiority inherent in these statements and the appeal to altruistic care obliterate any rational objections to mask requirements. They put inordinate social pressure onto those who cannot wear a face covering — for a variety of legitimate reason. In a September 27 commentary urging “Post-secondary COVID-19 policies in Canada must end”, members of Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics had anticipated this situation on our campus when we concluded:
We cannot teach or learn in masks. The current recommendations will create tensions, judgements, and further division in post-secondary communities, encouraging particular expectations and “virtue signalling” that are not warranted. We must counter the climate of fear of one another, which has been so destructive.
We addressed our commentary to “faculty colleagues [and] campus unions” among others because we anticipated that they would press for stricter measures. Sure enough, another recent exhibit is a “joint letter calling for campus-wide mask mandate” from the Carleton University Academic Staff Association and the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 4600, supposedly written “On behalf of approximately 4,000 Faculty Members, Professional Librarians, Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants, and Contract Instructors” at Ottawa’s Carleton University. Their argument goes something like this (slightly shorten, see original for references):
Last week, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health strongly recommended public masking in indoor settings given the current triple-threat of COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus, … There is moreover growing evidence that the new COVID sub-variants now circulating escape prior immunity, while repeated infections can triple the potential for critical life-long infirmities. Dr. Vera Etches has called for an even more robust response, vowing that Ottawa Public Health “would support any organization and institution that introduces a mask mandate.”
Now is the time to do just that. The current recommendations to mask are manifestly not working, and the majority of people on campus at any given time remain unmasked. Yet, a recent Nanos survey found that most Canadians would support the return of face mask mandates if deemed necessary by officials. Our community awaits only your official word to do the right thing.
In other words, nobody wears masks despite a strong recommendation by the province’s top doctor. But if the Chief deems a mandate necessary, because apparently we don’t listen otherwise, then we’ll all gratefully comply. I can’t help but call this attitude infantile. It represents the growing infantilization of public health. Or perhaps even the infantilization of the relationship between individual and state?
In the press conference earlier this week, Ontario’s Dr. Moore had in fact evaded journalists’ pressing questions about a need for a mask mandate in order to achieve higher compliance among the populace, e.g. with reference to low mask use on the Toronto transit system (where masking is also “strongly recommended” and propagated in ads across subway trains and stations). Similarly, CTV Atlantic reports that Nova Scotia’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Robert Strang, “shuts door on mask mandate return“.
It has been a full three weeks since new Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced that her government won’t permit new mask mandates in the province’s school system. “The detrimental effects of masking on the mental health, development and education of children in classroom settings is well understood,” writes Smith. This may have come as a surprise to many unsuspecting observers. So, what are those detrimental effects and what is the evidence? Moreover, why does Smith not even mention the efficacy of masks, i.e. the protection they are supposed to provide against infection with, and transmission of, SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses?
The Brownstone Institute hosts Dr. Paul E. Alexander’s extensive bibliography of “More than 150 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and Harms”. Among them is a peer-reviewed rapid review by a team of researchers in Germany titled “Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards?” The author group, which comprises expertise in practical medicine, molecular and cellular anatomy, pathology, neuroscience, and psychology, identified “clear, scientifically recorded adverse effects for the mask wearer, both on a psychological and on a social and physical level” and termed these effects “Mask-Induced Exhaustion Syndrome”.
In addition to the issues represented in the above graphic, Kisielinski et al. (2021) also note the risk of self-contamination due to the accumulation of pathogens and improper handling; cumulative and longterm effects; and an amplification of these harms in vulnerable populations. Are these extensive, often serious potential consequences of mask-wearing in any balance with their purported protection from SARS-CoV-2 infection? We’ll have to leave this question of mask efficacy for another blog post. However, we can already determine that the over-stretched precautionary principle — doing something for the sake of being seen to act — is not sufficient to mandate a potentially hazardous breathing barrier. Decision-makers and propagandists are advised to bid farewell to the idea of forcing another round of hygiene theatre on the populace.