Maggie's Farm

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Sunday, May 24. 2020

QQQ: "What a f-ing joke."

What an elderly gent who I know socially said to me as he came out of the supermarket today and immediately ripped off his (required) mask. 


"Yeah I know what you mean," I replied consolingly. "Just play the game." 




Posted by The Barrister at 15:18 | Comments (25) | Trackbacks (0)

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It is a fu*&#ng joke. Half the employees wear it beneath their nose. Most don’t even fit properly. And don’t get me started on the bandanna, something that can barely stop a sand particle. I absolutely detest going to the store. Revolt!
#1 B. Hammer on 2020-05-24 15:32 (Reply)
You'd better share your expertise with the front line doctors and nurses who are so badly mislead that not only do they insist on masks, they were using bandanas when masks weren't available.

How do you account for that level of ignorance by trained medical professionals? Were they mislead by the commies? All they had to do was consult anonymous internet posters.
#1.1 Hugh Evan-Thomas on 2020-05-25 14:56 (Reply)
This whole lockdown has been a strange situation for me. On the one hand, I think it's nuts that the almost the entire country is locked down - especially when we know who are most at risk and then I remind myself that I am in the age group where there begins to be a higher risk!

On the whole, I'm with the elderly gent.
#2 mudbug on 2020-05-24 15:46 (Reply)
Was down in SC for a few days. It was so nice to leave the safety theater behind for a few days, sit down at a bar and order a beer.
#3 NJSoldier on 2020-05-24 15:56 (Reply)
For a mask to be properly effective, it would need to stop you breathing.
#4 DeGaulle on 2020-05-24 16:04 (Reply)
As a medical genius, you should explain this to mere medical professionals to not bother with masks. Think of all the lives you'll save.
#4.1 Hugh Evan-Thomas on 2020-05-25 19:52 (Reply)
Here in Missouri, we play no silly mask games - at least not by law. A few individual merchants have such policy, but I simply take my business elsewhere.
#5 LB1901 (Link) on 2020-05-24 16:13 (Reply)
I'm in central Missouri near the Lake of the Ozarks. Stores are required to have their employees masked but none of the customer are masked. Went to the Outback a couple of times already and they seat every other table and again the employees have masks but no customers wear them. I think it is best to treat this just as the flu is treated. Nothing more or nothing less. Even the auction houses are open.
#5.1 indyjonesouthere on 2020-05-24 22:57 (Reply)
I also take off my mask immediately upon leaving a store. Very few people walking around in my neighborhood wear masks. Nor do their dogs have masks.

The 7-day average for deaths has fallen from its April-15-21 peak of 2208, to 1,233 for May 17-23. That is a drop of 44% in a little over a month.
#6 Gringo on 2020-05-24 16:41 (Reply)
There's a lot going on now, but I will try and pull a string or two.

WE are essential; we stay home safe on full boat. You are not essential and must close your business, cancel your medical care and go home. You may leave home to pursue specified ends, if you wear a mask as an acknowledgement of our virtue and our beneficence. When we decide, you may leave the house to do the menial tasks available for a net compensation to be determined by our needs. You work because you are born to work, and will perform the same tasks over and over again for the benefit of the community.

Sorry its so long.
#7 SF jeff on 2020-05-24 18:20 (Reply)
Here in deep blue So Cal the hysteria is deep and blue. Wednesday I hiked in a wildlife preserve in the Puente Hills. Saturday I did twenty miles along the Santa Ana River bike trail. The preserve in the hills separates north Orange County from the San Gabriel valley, which is now home to half of China. The park was crowded with Chinese, every one of them masked up like they were visiting the ICU. This is out in nature on a hot morning with a good breeze blowing. It was, as the kids say, creepy AF.
Saturday, likewise, was sunny, warm, and windy along the riverbed. Easily half of the riders were likewise masked up like plague doctors. These weren't old farts like me. They were young, healthy, and faceless in their virtue masks. It's almost unbearably creepy. It leaves me feeling like I'm in some science fiction nightmare. I had to fight the urge to scream in someone's faceless face. I can't shake the notion that these folks LIKE wearing their masks. They enjoy the smug feeling of "helping". Or maybe it gives them a sense of moral superiority. Still, it feels like I'm caught in a bad movie, or a worse dream.

JWM
#8 jwm (Link) on 2020-05-24 18:37 (Reply)
as most people know, wearing masks is a cultural norm in the PRC and in Chinese communities abroad. Under certain circumstances, such as now, it would be considered rude not wear one.

I can understand your discomfort around them, they are different. For example, it is possible they would wear a mask around you because of your body odor, but they would not be impolite enough to complain about it on the internet.
#8.1 Hugh Evan-Thomas on 2020-05-26 00:59 (Reply)
"We wear the mask because Baker says so. It's like putting up a chain link fence to keep out a mosquito."
- Checkout clerk at my local Cape, non-chain, hardware store, ~16 yrs old
#9 steve walsh on 2020-05-24 18:52 (Reply)
A-men. I fully understand the Salem Witch trials and other hysteria's now. I'd tell the young fascistas to F-O if I didn't know they wouldn't happily call the cops for lowering my bandanna to breathe.
#10 Bill (Link) on 2020-05-24 19:03 (Reply)
I don't play. Unless going to see the doctor. Oh, wait. My last appointment was done over the phone. Don't think she got a really good listening to my heartbeat and lungs....
#11 gospace on 2020-05-24 19:08 (Reply)
I'm going to swim upstream here. After all we've been thru, and given up, wearing a mask, inside a closed space, with strangers, for 15 minutes or whatever when you are shopping just doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. There are people with compromised immune systems that need to live their lives also. Even if its not 100% effective at blocking whatever germs you might have getting out into the air, its better than nothing. And if that makes them marginally safer, or even just a little less stressed, I don't consider it that big of a deal.
#12 bk on 2020-05-24 20:26 (Reply)
I absolutely hate it, but I make the concession when it comes to the grocery store. I make the concession, not for the rules, or for the Karens, but solely for the people working the cash registers. They have to stand face to face with strangers for the duration of their shifts. I see very few people, and only seldom do I deal face to face with complete strangers. The guy working the checkstand sees hundreds of strangers every day. He's in a much different situation. The people out walking alone, or driving with their masks on get no sympathy

JWM
#12.1 jwm (Link) on 2020-05-24 21:04 (Reply)
Sorry but having the whole country locked down just so the people who should be locked down care feel safe is irresponsible and insane.
#12.2 Robert Sendler on 2020-05-24 22:55 (Reply)
Sorry but asking people to wear a mask in a store is not being "locked down". As sacrifices go, its minimal. I understand people don't like being told to do it; so just think of it as community service.
#12.2.1 bk on 2020-05-24 23:14 (Reply)
The problem here is not the wearing of the mask, it’s the near-certainty that we are being lied to and humiliated by charlatans and fools. It’s about coercion, lies, and power. The mask is just the symbol.
#12.2.1.1 Jeff Brokaw (Link) on 2020-05-25 00:26 (Reply)
I have no problem with wearing a mask. Like you, I'm certain the problem is we are being lied to and manipulated.
#12.2.1.1.1 barnhill on 2020-05-25 08:51 (Reply)
My wife made about 50 masks and gave a lot of them to friends and family. We both have them of course and we carry them with us when we go anywhere just in case they are required. I try to accommodate the wishes of others to "be safe". I give them space wait if the aisle feels too small to pass. It's no big deal. I feel really bad for the little old ladies many of whom I'm sure live alone or if they live with their husband he is probably not ambulatory. I know they are afraid because of the stats on the deaths of the elderly. I am "elderly" too and I am worried about getting the virus.
#13 Anon on 2020-05-24 21:03 (Reply)
I live in SoCal, and I wear the mask in stores, but no one in my neighborhood (up in the foothills) wears one while walking a dog or riding a horse. It’s just performance.
#14 Marina on 2020-05-24 21:36 (Reply)
We live in the Age of So Many Experts.
#15 Aggie on 2020-05-25 09:02 (Reply)
I refuse to submit by wearing a mask. The cashiers are all behind plexiglass anyway and I am not sick. The County elected officials or some fools in a local 'Public Health Bureaucracy' decided I must wear a mask in May.

The time to wear a mask might have been in February or March. No one was concerned in February at all until after the Superbowl at the earliest. In May it was decided (in Denver) that the peons must wear masks after 'Cinco de Mayo' but not before. Now Aspen has a $2,650 fine if you are outside w/out a mask so Boulder made it a 5,000 dollar fine. It is a conspiracy among the Communists in Government to see how much they can push the people before they push back. JMO
#16 annieoakley on 2020-05-25 14:43 (Reply)

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