I\u2019ve been pretty stringently self isolated since March 16. I\u2019ve got my reasons – a number of people in my family and immediate social circle with immune and cardiovascular problems, as well as a mother in memory care and a father who is doing quite well, but he\u2019s 82, so why chance it, anyway? I\u2019m blessed with a job that allows me to work from home. It makes perfect sense for me to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I believe the closest thing we have to scientific consensus – drawn from decades of experience in operating rooms worldwide \u2013 is that masks don\u2019t prevent anyone from catching viruses; they prevent them from being spread from the infected to other people. Which is my operating room staff wear them. And if you were able to get all the worlds asymptomatic yet infected people to wear masks, I suspect you might cut the infection rate down by a fair chunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That being said, I think the current orgy of virtue signaling over masks is largely pseudoscientific logrolling – a festival of malinformed logrolling and bandwagoneering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And with that, <\/em>in turm, being said, I\u2019ve worn a mask twice in the past week: both times to go to Menards, which requires masks. It\u2019s private property, and it\u2019s about 7 miles closer than the nearest big box home improvement store that doesn\u2019t require a mask. Putting on a cheap surgical mask for 10 minutes burns up less of my time than driving all the way to Home Depot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wearing a mask, in short, is purely a matter of contingency, not belief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I believe that Mayor Frey’s order that all people wear masks while in any indoor public accommodation in Minneapolis is, if not pointless, then merely virtue signaling of the most callow order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet, if I had taken the call from the Strib’s \u201c Minnesota\u201c Poll, I would\u2019ve come down on the \u201cmake everybody wear a masks\u201d side of this fairly dimwitted bit of propaganda, which appeared as an at taken out by the DFL on the various Star Tribune online properties over the weekend. It read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
74% of Minnesotans have worn a mask in the past week<\/strong><\/p>
Minnesotans support the lockdown!<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Now, we don\u2019t know how many people among the \u201c74%\u201d in this \u201cPaul\u201d are like me Dash people who wore masks for utilitarian or social reasons, rather than out of any conviction that Governor Walz is anything but Way over his head and being led around by a bunch of party hacks whounderstand neither business nor science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, obviously, we have no idea how many of them are committed mask wearers, like this woman, whose mooring in the world of science is clear and utterly unassailable:<\/p>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s the thing I love about \u201c progressives\u201d: their absolute, categorical commitment to science and reason.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
But the Democrats \u2013 and some of their apologists in the \u201ccenter\u201d \u2013 are claiming this isstar Tribune Minnesota poll is a mandate for the governor.I don\u2019t think that necessarily means The DFL, the posters or the various media organizations involved (the Strib, MPR and KARE11) are stupid.I think it means they are counting on Minnesota voters to be stupid. And doing their best to keep them that way.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been pretty stringently self isolated since March 16. I\u2019ve got my reasons – a number of people in my family and immediate social circle with immune and cardiovascular problems, as well as a mother in memory care and a father who is doing quite well, but he\u2019s 82, so why chance it, anyway? I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74232"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74236,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74232\/revisions\/74236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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