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April 11, 2021

Leftists will say anything to keep people masked

By Andrea Widburg

Vaccinations or not, Dr. Fauci wants everyone to continue with lockdown behavior and, most especially, to keep wearing masks. It’s safer that way. Meanwhile, a San Francisco publication says we must keep wearing masks because race-based vaccine inequities make it rude to cast them off. Underneath this specious reasoning is the leftists’ desperate desire to erase our individuality with masks.

As we’ve noted at American Thinker, there’s increasing evidence that masks not only aren’t helpful, they’re counterproductive, as well as being dangerous and dirty. Nevertheless, leftists will not let go of their mask obsession.

Fauci, of course, is all-in on masks. Indeed, he’s still all-in on lockdowns to judge by all the activities he urges Americans to continue avoiding. I’m not making that up. Pay attention to the last tweet in this thread:

It's not just Fauci, though. SFGATE is the free, hard-left spin-off from the venerable (and leftist) San Francisco Chronicle. It’s the hipster version of the paper, so it’s a good window into leftist thinking.

On Saturday night, SFGATE’s top promoted article explained why people should continue wearing masks even if they’ve been vaccinated. Ultimately, the article explains that, because of racism, not all people can shed their masks so it’s rude to flaunt your privilege by going maskless.

The article opens by acknowledging factual truths that fully justify abandoning masks and lockdowns entirely. It says that the CDC has relaxed its guidelines -- although the author thinks the guidelines have the force of law. Otherwise, why would he write that the CDC is “permitting fully vaccinated people to congregate indoors with one another in small groups, unmasked”? The CDC does not permit or prohibit anything; it recommends, that’s all.

Even the neurotic CDC, however, has “found that infections, including asymptomatic ones that could lead to transmission, have been reduced by 90% post-vaccine….” As you contemplate that information, recall that, for ordinary health adults, COVID is only slightly more deadly than the annual flu and that only 134 children have died in America because of COVID. Each death is a terrible tragedy, but those numbers cannot dictate national policy.

The new CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky, who thinks her feelings (“I’m scared”) should dictate policy, has conceded as well that vaccinated people don’t carry the virus. Nevertheless, “experts who spoke to SFGATE said that you should still be wearing a mask when out in public settings for a multitude of reasons.” What’s amazing is that these reasons have nothing to do with contagion.

Dr. Monica Gandhi says you should wear masks because it’s “sort of a polite thing to do” because of “vaccine inequities.” Thus, in California, Latinos and Blacks are less likely to be vaccinated and more likely to die:

“It’s almost impolite that some of us can run around scot-free and some of us have to wear a face mask and so I guess that's how I'm framing it, and I'm going to be criticized for that.”

And of course, there’s that same insistence we’ve heard all year about protecting others. But at this point, when the disease is no longer a pandemic, and vaccinated people are not carriers, those who are vaccinated are not protecting others by wearing a mask. It’s theater. Still, as the author of the article says, “don’t be a jerk.”

But what’s really jerky is the effort to erase Americans’ individuality. Our faces are the most immediately recognizable thing about us. Just that little patch of our body’s geography has 42 muscles that enable us to communicate wordlessly with others.

Nothing makes clearer how masks delete who we are than smiling at babies. In a pre-mask era, the babies smiled back. Nowadays, if you smile at babies, all you get back is a blank look – and then you realize that all they see in your face is a mask.

There is nothing polite about – and it’s incredibly jerky to – force people into unhygienic, useless, dangerous, and personality-deleting masks. Instead, it seems to be part of a concerted effort to delete the American sense that we are not a faceless nation of drones (or serfs) but are, instead, unique individuals.

IMAGE: Masks by rawpixel.com.

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