Wearing a farce mask
They brought in a new law yesterday.
As and from yesterday it is mandatory to wear a face mask on public transport in Ireland.
Our gubmint loves laws. There are libraries full of heavy tomes containing all those laws that date back anything up to a couple of hundred years ago. If they discover a flaw in a law they don’t fix it – they introduce another law which overrides the faulty part of the old law. So there are layers of laws upon laws which I suppose keep lawyers nicely busy. Equally any problem can be solved with a new law.
This latest law is a classic. The police are refusing to enforce it as they quite rightly can’t be expected to travel around on buses or trains all day in the hopes of catching an exposed face. The drivers equally and quite rightly say they are drivers, not law enforcers. So it’s a law which is somewhat typical of a lot of others laws – a load of print on a page to add to the libraries.
Apparently if I fail to wear one of their face nappies I am liable to be lumbered with a fine of â¬2,500, or, if I want I can do six months in one of our over-stuffed prisons. Nice. This obviously ranks as a really serious crime.
The law also fails to define a “mask”. So presumably I can tear a strip off an old sheet and tie it around my face and I’m grand? Or I can stick a bit of paper over my face and claim it’s a mask? What happens if I wear a full-face Halloween mask? Is that covered? Or a Balaclava? The latter is probably perfectly acceptable as terrorists and criminals are considered safer than someone who might cough in your vicinity?
Kids under the age of thirteen are exempt. So we have learned something new about Covid-19 – it is aware of human ageing and will steer well clear of a pre-teen.
I spent quite a while in the village yesterday. At one point a bus arrived from Dublin and I watched the passengers alight. They all seemed to have some form of nappy stuck on their faces all right, varying from plain to high fashion. They looked stupid. They were also the only people who wore the damned things as the rest of us in the village are trying to get back to normal.
Incidentally, I noticed that the entire county of Wicklow reported seven new cases in the past few days. I think the odds of meeting one are slimmer than winning the lottery?
When is this madness going to end?
madness never going to end. new reasons have to be thought up to keep the fear going until the vaccine is ready. crazy innit)
A mask, any mask of reasonably dense material, will prevent the wearer from expelling spit or other matter from the facial orifices into the facial orifices of someone else, if nearby – there is marginal use in that, though speaking quietly or not rudely coughing into someone else's face are other ways of not contaminating fellow human beings. Wearing a mask to deflect an inward current of the disease is a bit like putting chicken wire over a window to blockade gnats. A hermetic seal, however, can be achieved with an NBC suit: https://bit.ly/2WiMoUB – a suit well suited to buses, for going to the pub, etc., as can be seen; but, despite its absence of credibility as a fashion accessory, probably proof against "droplet nuclei" and suchlike fragmentary manifestations of the virus.
Perhaps the outgoing Minister of Agriculture could advise citizens on ways to appear to be observing the law while doing what you liked.
It’s just like the complete nonsense we’ll have to put up with in the UK. From July 24th. Not from the start of the Covid outbreak, not from the reopening of pubs etc and not from now. But from 10 days time. Yes that’s right, it’s so important that we wear a mask that it will become mandatory in ten days time. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry.
We should rejoice that the heroes of MFI, or whichever of the intelligence services it was, have rumbled Covid's dastardly plans to mount a surprise attack on the 24th. That's some top-notch sleuthing. Knighthoods all round!
Fortunately, here in New Zealand, we are over the worst of it. We are lucky in having easily sealed borders and a very spread out population .We are now in midwinter and I know from experience that if I wear a mask I would be unable to see where I was going as my glasses steam up no matter how well fitting the mask is. Being somewhat deaf I would also have difficulty in understanding anyone as I rely on lip reading and facial expressions to follow a conversation.Wearing typically available masks does nothing to stop the spread of an airborne disease.
My (fragile) mental health has just taken another hit – I saw this site linked elsewhere:
https://www.masks4all.org.uk/
And if you think that's bad enough, check the "About" page and follow the link to "If Not Now"…
I wish I could say "Thanks for the link, Microdave" but that's another ten minutes of my life I won't get back.
Who is going to pay for these masks? As they’re supposed to be mandatory I don’t wish to buy one they should be provided, isn’t there a certain standard, do they have a British Standard Number for quality purposes , but how many do I need , how often should I change it , where should I dispose of it , as technically it is medical waste and possibly infected with all sorts of nasty things. Where are all these police persons coming from to police the wearing of asks. So many questions so many stupid laws.
It might be different in Eire, but in the UK the government merely stipulates "a face covering", not a mask, and with no mention of the covering's filtration properties. I'm thinking of sticking a panty-liner to my face to comply.
More seriously, most close-fitting masks trap unhealthy levels of exhaled CO2, so the wearer is re-breathing stale air. The CO2 may reach concentrations ten times normal atmospheric levels, i.e., 4000ppm! Health guidelines recommend a maximum of 30 minutes exposure to levels above 1000ppm, so masks should not be worn for hours continuously.
As this health risk is being imposed solely by Covid panic, not for genuine medical or scientific reasons, it's possible a legal action could reverse it.
Following the specification (lack of) by the UK Government, I plan to drape a fishnet stocking across my face.
The bonus is that you can also smoke at the same time.
Walmart just declared that all customers will be required to wear a "facial covering" as of July 20 which our normal Walmart shopping day. Since the Wife and I have never worn the things and since Walmart stated facial covering, we have decided to wear a beekeepers outfit (head gear only). Floppy hat and all. After all, Walmart failed to state what type of facial covering.