I am proud to say that we don’t own a single cloth mask anymore, and while I’m sure we have a box of disposable masks somewhere, I haven’t the faintest clue where we might’ve stashed them. I don’t even wear a mask to my doctor’s appointments anymore, which is refreshing because I find comfort in seeing my doctor’s facial expressions when she tells me what I need to do to be healthier.
Just because my family has stopped wearing masks doesn’t mean we don’t still see them from time to time. For example, just today, at my kid’s swim school, the teenagers working the counter wore masks, and the instructors in the pools wore face shields.
I don’t mind seeing the sporadic establishment wearing masks or a random person on the metro train wearing one; I figure it’s that business and person’s prerogative, and I go about my day.
However, a growing group of individuals thinks we all must mask up indefinitely. Their platform looks suspiciously similar to that of communist China.
Reminder: The reporter who published the hit piece on the @PeoplesCDC in the New Yorker is the same reporter who published a hit piece on COVID prevention measures in the Atlantic on May 2021.
Since May 2021, over 500,000 Americans have died due to dropping COVID measures. pic.twitter.com/F6Hl641OET
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) December 28, 2022
It’s Even In The Name
I recently read an article in The New Yorker titled, The Case for Wearing Masks Forever, about a group of individuals who have formed “The People’s CDC.”
At first glance, the article makes you think the writer is advocating for masks forever. Still, as you read it, it is more of a glimpse into this bizarre ragtag group of people who have a burgeoning following on social media.
The People’s CDC comprises various people from various industries, including academics and doctors, activists, and artists. The organization prides itself in not having a hierarchy with someone in charge of anything in particular.
Member and filmmaker Mary Saba explains:
“The problems of the pandemic and its response are rooted in hierarchical organizations.”
Because that’s what we need, public health advice from failed artists. So what is the point of this organization?
It’s a direct response and protest against the actual Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the federal government’s response to COVID, which this group thinks is too lax.
Yes, you read that right.
They argue that the CDC and government no longer have the public’s interest at heart but are making their pandemic decisions based on dollar signs and in the name of big bad Capitalism instead of science.
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Interesting theory, and I don’t necessarily disagree that the last two years have proven that political and financial gains corrupt the scientific and medical community. But this might be swinging the pendulum slightly too far in the opposite direction.
People's CDC? Same energy: pic.twitter.com/ymQTq0EfAc
— tëach thë classics (@TeachTheClassic) January 1, 2023
Opposing Masks = Racism
Just as The New Yorker headline alluded to, one of the main arguments The People’s CDC advocates for is universal indefinite masking of everyone all the time. As I mentioned earlier, we don’t mask in our family.
That’s not to say we won’t grab a mask if asked to wear one at an establishment or in a building that requires it. We might not go to that place again in the future, but we don’t make a scene out of it. However, my husband and I are very healthy adults in our early to mid-40s with two very healthy kids, so we have decided not to wear masks anymore.
According to The People’s CDC, that makes us – you guessed it – racists.
A ‘study’ they performed showed that:
“A lot of anti-mask sentiment is deeply embedded in white supremacy.”
I wonder which artists or activists determined that super scientific ‘fact.’ Dr. Lucky Tran, who is a member of the group’s media team, reiterated the racist connection to masks:
“Saying ‘we can’t mask anymore, because at some point we have to get back to normal’ is racist.”
No, Dr. Tran, it isn’t racist to say we must get back to normal. We aren’t ‘anti-mask’ because we choose not to wear one.
We are independent free Americans who make our own individual risk assessments based on our physicians’ recommendations and our beliefs.
I read the article because I needed a good laugh. The kicker: "A lot of anti-mask sentiment is deeply embedded in white supremacy."
Let's face it: Some Covid cultists will never be de-programmed. pic.twitter.com/Pu292d5BFr— Gerry Callahan (@GerryCallahan) December 29, 2022
And We’re All Nazis
You have to give it to this group; they’ve really gone all in on the name-calling.
When the CDC started to scale back its recommendations this year, The People’s CDC replied:
“To name it clearly, the CDC’s policies are Eugenic.”
Whoa, ouch, that’s a pretty severe accusation there, guys. For those of you rusty on your history, Eugenics is the theory that you can improve upon humanity through planned breeding and genetic elimination of certain races.
You know, like what the Nazis did during the Holocaust to the Jews or Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger wanted for the black population.
The People’s CDC went on to claim that the CDC’s new policies:
“…promote the indefensible stance that disabled and elderly, poor and working class people are disposable, unworthy of care, and unworthy of participation in society.”
https://twitter.com/jgownder/status/1608535258965708802?t=kcddigUrVz8us_wIwlZy2g&s=19
I don’t generally sing high praises of the CDC. Still, it’s fair to say that scaling back masking recommendations and the like is not akin to the massacre of millions of Jews by the Nazis or the concept of breeding out those considered “…human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”
RELATED: America’s Political Rhetoric About Nazis and Hitler Prove How Stupid We’ve Become
The Problem With Public Health
The public health, medical, and scientific community screwed the pooch with this pandemic. As Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves explains:
“There’s a struggle going on right now for the soul of public health.”
Perhaps the best illustration of why so many of us have lost trust in institutions such as the CDC comes from the Dean of the College of Public Health and Ohio State University Amy Fairchild, who said:
“Public health is an argument. It’s an argument about what we owe to – and what we must sometimes do to – each other; in the name of the common good.”
That’s a pretty chilling statement. Is that really the line we are at regarding public health? That sounds downright un-American to think that an institution should have the power to decide what is done to us in the name of the greater good.
Ms. Saba of The People’s CDC says that:
“We’re all responsible for the safety of all life.”
Curious about what the majority of the opinions are in her group on the life of a fetus. I venture to guess that her claim has a limit regarding the womb.
Life is meant to be endured, not enjoyed, right? Is that part of the manifesto?
— Jenin Younes (former handle @leftylockdowns1) (@JeninYounesEsq) January 1, 2023
The Real Point
I read another article in The Atlantic by Jacob Stern that posed a similar question about masking, if we should be masking every winter from now on. In his piece, he discusses what Emory University flu transmission expert Seema Lakdawala practices for masking.
Ms. Lakdawala wears a mask at the grocery store, the office, and on public transportation – but not when she is out to dinner or at a party. Now, I’m no doctor or scientist, but that seems silly.
But the truth is people like Ms. Lakdawala and those in The People’s CDC aren’t concerned with anyone’s health or wellbeing. Instead, they are concerned with their own power through fear-mongering, mandates, or virtue signaling in the grocery store or on the bus amongst the ‘commoners.’
Anyone still wearing masks in December 2022 is essentially saying they intend to wear them forever
No matter how much evidence there is they they don’t work, there are huge numbers of people who refuse to give up on the unearned sense of superiority they get from masking https://t.co/rZxzfnEy2L
— Ian Miller (@ianmSC) December 29, 2022
Mr. Stern writes:
“Regardless of what public-health research tells us we should do, we’ve clearly seen throughout the pandemic that limits exist to what Americans will do.”
And thank God for that. Because if we all just went along with what those in The People’s CDC or other fringe borderline communist groups believe, we’d all be acting a lot more like China than the U.S.A.
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