by Barton Cockey
When the Wuhan virus first appeared in the news, the American Left denounced President Trump’s travel ban as xenophobic paranoia [‘Apocalyptic’: Trump’s Xenophobic Travel Ban Causes Chaos at U.S. Airports, CommonDream, March 15, 2020]. New York’s communist mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged everyone to eat at Chinese restaurants. [New York Mayor Urges Support For Chinatowns Amid Racist Coronavirus Fears, by Marina Fang, Huffington Post, February 13, 2020] Nancy Pelosi called for people to gather in Chinatown [Watch Pelosi urge people to ‘join us’ at mass gathering last month amid coronavirus, WND, March 30, 2020]. But the hive mind of the Left quickly embraced the worldwide message of fear, so that lockdowns and mask mandates proliferated in rough proportion to the totalitarian inclinations of the respective state and national governments.
Among individuals, the response was mixed; but my own observation was that many (but not all) on the Dissident Right suspected instinctively that the infection posed a far smaller threat than whatever Bill Gates and the globalists had in mind for us.
For Lefties, though, the alleged pandemic was a bonanza.
Dictatorial powers for governors! Recruitment of private businesses as enforcers of arbitrary mask mandates! Contact tracers and informers! Destruction of small, independent stores and restaurants! A beta version of the Universal Basic Income! Closure of meat packing plants! Restriction of travel! Maybe even a vaccine passport!
But best of all, the phantom plague offered a whole new opportunity for Virtue Signaling. The summer of 2020 brought out a blooming crop of conspicuous good-thinkers, standing in public squares with Black-Lives-Matter signs and hand-made face masks of colorful cloth.
And the beauty of the masks was that even if you weren’t waving a sign, you could show the world how really, really good and smart you were, just by flaunting your face diaper.
Alas, profligate minting eventually debases every currency, and the mask is no exception. Walk into a grocery store today, and you will see everyone muzzled up to the eyeballs. You just know that most of those people are covered up for the wrong reasons: selfish fear for their own health, dull obedience to the signs on the door, or tactical avoidance of confrontation with officious store clerks. How can a Leftist, amid all this mindless throng, stand out as ethically and intellectually superior?
Social media to the rescue! Admire the artistry of this Facebook post. The #becausescience hashtag is priceless.
Because, you know, science is what the fact-checkers say it is. The Tech totalitarians have relentlessly suppressed any scientific dissent from the official line—which is that Covid-19 is a disease so uniquely dangerous that all normal rights and procedural safeguards must be disregarded.
The grateful shout-out to Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) sets the tone for anyone who might still wonder whether the masked woman is a genuine Social Justice Warrior. If you have guessed that PHR is not fighting to protect the Bill of Rights, you are correct. Are they concerned that vaccine passports would infringe on liberty? Not so much.
The real worry: whether people of color will be disadvantaged by not having equal access to the jab [How to Ensure ‘Vaccine Passports’ Do Not Magnify Inequities, April 30, 2021]. What are the organization’s four key goals for the first 100 days of the Biden administration?
- Act urgently on Covid, including mask mandates and “equitable distribution of vaccines.”
- Restrict excessive force in policing following the “murder” of George Floyd.
- Protect “asylum-seekers” at the U.S. border, essentially by turning them loose inside our country.
- Restore U.S. leadership in the international community by kissing up to the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
As a doctor, I have to say that there does appear to be clear evidence that masks are not reliably effective against respiratory viruses (or even against postoperative bacterial infections).
- Effectiveness of surgical masks against influenza bioaerosols, by Makison Booth et al, Journal of Hospital Infection, March 18, 2013
- Unmasking the Surgical Mask: Does It Really Work?, by Crystal Phend, MedPage Today October 5, 2009
- The efficacy of masks for influenza-like illness in the community, by Wang, Hua MD et al, Medicine, June 5, 2020
- The use of masks and respirators to prevent transmission of influenza: a systematic review of the scientific evidence, by Faisal bin‐Reza et al, Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses, July, 2012
- Disposable surgical face masks for preventing surgical wound infection in clean surgery, by Vincent M, Edwards P, Cochrane Library Of Systematic Reviews, April 26, 2016
Of course, you won’t hear that from Physicians for Human Rights. But then, their idea of human rights advocacy involves suppressing the police and flooding the country with illegal immigrants. So their goals are more in alignment with the One World Order, Great Replacement agenda than with medical science or the Rule of Law.
