Who is really pro-mask?

The improper use of a thing does not invalidate its proper use, but making masks into religious iconography harms pandemic mitigation efforts.

When I had a particularly nasty case of influenza back in 2018 - over a year before the COVID-19 virus was created in a lab in Red China - the urgent care clinic handed me a mask as I was leaving and asked me to wear it when I went to get my TamiFlu prescription. I did. That is where masks are the most effective: As source control for people who are sick.

This brings me to the protest against Jim Banks last week. Almost all of the anti-Banks protesters were wearing masks. I was not wearing a mask, yet I am far more pro-mask than the mask-wearing protesters are. Here is why: During the height of the pandemic, I supported masking as a pandemic mitigation tool. I was wearing a mask in the summer of 2020 before it was mandatory. The mandate is gone and it is clear it was not terribly effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19. I am fully vaccinated and boosted, and I also have natural immunity.

The mask-wearers protesting Banks are probably not masking out of an abundance of caution. They seemed young and healthy. I am 250% of their age, so they are probably much less likely to have a bad infection than I am, in the event they are infected with the virus.

No, they are virtue signaling. They are showing they care. COVID-19 has become a religious cause, and for a small but significant portion of the population face masks are now religious iconography. The religious aspect of it is causing people to take pandemic mitigation measures less seriously or even outright disdain them. The next pandemic will be worse because of these people.

COVID-19 killed well over a million people. We need to take it seriously and protect the vulnerable, even four years after the pandemic started. But the pandemic is over, and the virus is now endemic. It is much less dangerous now than it was in 2020. Caution is fine, but virtue signaling is not. We need to follow a science-based approach, not a political agenda or a religious cult.