My respirator mask fights fascists and protects myself, my family, and my community.
Put yours back on indoors and in loud, crowded outdoor spaces as often and well as you can. Maybe not always. Maybe when you can. When you know there are vulnerable people around, or when you are in a crowd. Keep it on as well as you can, and remove it to speak to folk who are hard of hearing or deaf, or for an occasional sip of a tasty beverage. Clean the air, Davos style.
Until we have Davos-quality clean air, a well-fitted N95, KN95, KF94, or FFP2 respirator mask will block at least 95% of the viral particles that float in the air. The more we collectively mask, the stronger we will be.
My mask fights fascists. Maybe yours can, too.
But that’s not the essay.
How did they get us to remove them in the first place? Read on. That’s the essay. There’s no catchy story here, just facts and quotes speaking for themselves. Facts are tricky, b/c our brains are tempted to *Meh, whatever* them away, but here goes. Come along with me.
You already know that HHS, NIH, CDC, FDA, NIOSH, and more are being dismantled. That includes
- Health and Human Services
- The Centers for Disease Control
- The Food and Drug Administration
- The National Institutes for Health
- The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
As I write this, the Supreme Court has voted to allow Trump to terminate 16,000 probationary federal workers. Many of these were probationary because of a promotion due to excellence. These destructive moves will make people in USAmerica less healthy, less safe, and less able to fight the oligarchical, white nationalist, and patriarchal takeover of the government of the US. This week Musk/DOGE closed a staggering 50 vaccination clinics in Texas — amidst a raging measles outbreak. You know this is bad.
But this isn’t where it started. Without going into all the history and political maneuvers of the hard/far/religious/nationalist right and their love affair with people who value money over any and all human life, let’s just stick with this:
The people who told us the effingvirus was a cold and there would be herd immunity and there was nothing to worry about, are the same people doing this destruction now. But, we can’t fight fascism if we keep getting sick[er].
It’s the same people. It was never about health or ignorance. It’s about politics and capital.
Musk:
- March 2020. “The Covid panic is dumb,” and “kids are essentially immune.”
This is back when he sent CPAP machines instead of Ventilators. Remember that time? - April 2020 “Give the people back their goddamn freedom” [because shutting down his factories presented a risk to his business.]
- Sept 2020: Musk says he won’t take 💉 because he and his kids are “not at risk,” and Covid “has a low mortality rate.”
- March 2021: Musk doubles down on the danger of the vaccination, “There have been quite a few negative reactions.”
Trump:
- Jan 2020: “We have it under control.”
- Feb 24, 2020 “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
- Feb 26, 2020 “The risk to the American people remains very low. We have the greatest experts, really in the world, right here.”
- Feb 27 2020 “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
- Mar 2020: “It will go away.”
- April 3, 2020 “The C.D.C. is advising the use of nonmedical cloth face covering as an additional voluntary public health measure. So it’s voluntary. You don’t have to do it. They suggested for a period of time, but this is voluntary. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”
- April 2020: “It’s gonna be gone.”
- May 11, 2020, the day the USAmerican death count hit 80,000, he spoke in the Rose Garden,
“We have met the moment, and we have prevailed. Americans do whatever it takes to find solutions, pioneer breakthroughs, and harness the energies we need to achieve a total victory.”
The Strategic National Stockpile had been depleted of N95 respirators from 2017 to 2019, when the first Trump administration failed to replace supplies used in earlier disasters.
In May 2020, in a House subcommittee meeting, Dr. Rick Bright, previous director of Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, explained that the Trump administration had ignored his early warnings to stock up on masks and other supplies that could have been used to combat Covid.
In the absence of enough N95 masks, surgical masks, which are designed to stop splatter, not air, would commonly be used instead. People started calling everything “masks.” When surgical/paper/baggy blue masks didn’t help much, “masks don’t work” became a calling card for freedom.
May/June 2020 The World Health Organization declares an “infodemic” of incorrect information about the virus that poses risks to global health. Russia, China, and Iran are all huge purveyors of disinformation all over social media. A Cornell study finds that Donald Trump is the single largest driver of infodemic.
Meanwhile, Trump:
- June 2020: “It’s fading away.”
- July 2020: “I don’t agree with the statement that if everybody wears a mask, everything disappears.”
- Also July 2020: “I’ll be right eventually. It’s going to disappear, and I’ll be right….I’ve probably been right more than anybody else.”
- Sept 2020: “I’m sometimes surprised when I see somebody sitting and — like, with Joe [Biden.] Joe feels very safe in a mask. I don’t know, maybe he doesn’t want to expose his face. There’s no reason for him to have masks on.”
There is a reality that this truly did get complicated. For real. Cloth and paper masks didn’t protect people as much as hoped. When it was believed that most infections came from inhaling large cough globules and sneeze boogers, it was hoped the flimsy masks would be enough to stop them. And for sure, they stopped a sneeze booger from getting in our mouths, but they did nothing to stop the aerosol backwash of the moist exhalations of people building up indoors. But since there was a shortage of N95 masks (which had to be saved for folks working in hospitals), these type of masks would be all that most folk had at that time.
Meanwhile, staying home/limiting public outings and work was emotionally and economically hard on working and poor folk, and emotionally hard and economically uncomfortable for middle-class folk. The richest folk, though, were practically dying from their investment income not being huge.
Oct. 4, 2020, The Koch Foundation funded Great Barrington Declaration, aka Let It Rip. Co-author Jay Bhattacharya wrote, “We know* that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity” and “allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection,” and “nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity.” These statements, of course, turned out to be factually false, but they sounded good at the time and were repeated by every anti-mask/anti-vax influencer.
(*Yes, they had the
ballstemerity to say they knew what would happen. Reasonable scientists at the time were clear about how much they knew, what they hypothesized, and what they didn’t know, and were racing against the clock to add to the depth of data.)Ahem. Anyway, moving on.
- October 2020, one week after the Great Barrington Declaration, Trump publicly questioned the usefulness of masks. Again. Still.
- A week after that, “I don’t wear masks like [Biden.] Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from it, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve seen.”
- August 2023: In a video message, Trump returned to his roots and trashed the idea that masks protect people from airborne contaminants and viruses. “The left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back Covid lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fearmongering about the new variants that are coming… Gee whiz, you know what else is coming? An election. They want to restart the Covid hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal drop boxes, more mail-in ballots and trillions of dollars in payoffs to their political allies heading into the 2024 election—does that sound familiar?”
Also in 2023, the World Economic Forum met in Davos, Switzerland. The invitation-only annual event brings thousands of investors, business and political leaders, economists, and celebrities together to talk shop and schmooze. They were required to test before entry (and if positive, entry was denied no matter who it was.) PCR tests were available to them at any time up to and including when they left to return home. There were HEPA filters in every small room and UVGI (ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, light that kills viruses) in large rooms, and the entire air supply was completely replaced with clean outdoor air multiple times a day. All staff and drivers were masked. The latest vaccinations were strongly encouraged, and participants were offered FFP2 (N95 quality) masks. While the super rich were telling us to unmask, get back to work, and “don’t worry about it,” they layered protections like a wedding cake.
More here and here and here, It’s worth taking a look, because we can do this, too!
Mar 25, 2025, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is rewarded for his alliances and allegiances with confirmation as the new Director of the National Institutes of Health.
It was never about health; it’s about politics and capital.
It’s the same people who are currently dismantling the government supports who got us to let down our guard, not learn what we could during the most intense five years of medical and scientific research ever (450,000 articles) because a firehose of anger and denial overwhelmed the more complicated science. So many of us instead leaned into comfort and denial.
The removal of respirator masks and other clean air mitigations only serves Empire.
We were hosed. tricked, manipulated. They moved us with a social media and public statement firehose of public denial, misinformation, and disinformation, and leaned into making us hyperaware of our personal discomfort. They moved us to remove protections that would have helped us stay collectively strong. Removing masking made us weaker and more vulnerable. Hundreds of thousands get Long Covid every year, some already disabled, others newly disabled, all less able to resist.
Another significant impact is that so many of us have become less empathetic to those around us who *need* us to mask so they can be safe enough to be in public, and less caring about the reality that we still have the collective power to flatten the curve each time there’s a surge. We were sold immediate comfort with a false promise of safety, and then what? Maybe fell into the habit of immediate comfort.
Same as now. They did this.
Two birds, one stone. Bird one leads us to increase our own infection rates, with the subsequent damage to our immune systems and organs, and weakens us all. Bird two is another ding in our capacity to hold empathy for others.
They successfully moved the Overton Window of Empathy away from “Clapping out windows for hospital staff” and “How can I help?” and toward “Whatever. Not my problem.”
My respirator mask fights fascists and protects myself, my family, and my community.
Put yours back on indoors and in loud, crowded outdoor spaces as often and well as you can. Maybe not always. Maybe when you can. When you know there are vulnerable people around, or when you are in a crowd. Keep it on as well as you can, and remove it to speak to folk who are hard of hearing or deaf, or for an occasional sip of a tasty beverage. Clean the air, Davos style.
Until we have Davos quality clean air, a well-fitted N95, KN95, KF94, or FFP2 respirator mask will block at least 95% of the viral particles that float in the air. The more we collectively mask, the stronger we will be.
My mask fights fascists.
Maybe yours can, too.
With gratitude for the original artist, who I hope isn’t AI because don’t get me going.
Gratitude to some of the pieces where I got the quotations.
What Trump Has Said About Wearing Masks and Covid-19 – The New York Times
Unmasked: How Trump’s mixed messaging on face-coverings hurt U.S. coronavirus response
Trump repeats inaccurate claim about masks, citing CDC study.
Trump, downplaying virus, has mocked wearing masks for months – ABC News
Despite new mandatory mask rules, Trump insists it’s everyone’s ‘personal choice’ – ABC News
Elon Musk: a Timeline of His Comments During the Coronavirus Outbreak – Business Insider
World Economic Forum: Here Are All The Covid-19 Precautions At Davos 2023
The #DavosStandard safe air should be for all of us – Boing Boing