The Good Idea

Vincent J. Curtis

15 July 20

Today, the Hamilton Spectator ran a front page photo piece of people wearing masks, and all exclaming that wearing one is a good idea.  Worthy of the Peking People's Daily at the night of the Cultural Revolution.  One of the four people said it best.

Dr. Peter Kilonzo articulated it best, “If it helps prevent getting infected by this virus, then [wearing a mask] is a good idea.”

If!

If only there were data to justify that conditional; but there isn’t.

If no virus is present, if I’m not infected and neither are you, then wearing a mask is useless.  If you social distance, wearing a mask is useless; it’s one or the other.  Out of a population of half a million, Hamilton had 856 known cases, so how prevalent is this virus?

There is no scientific evidence that wearing any old mask can stop your becoming infected.  Mask wearing has some use if worn by an infected person, but that’s it.  And infected persons should be isolating.

If mask wearing stopped the transmission of the virus, then there was no need for the lockdown; people could have masked up and proceeded with caution more or less with normal routine. 

If you’re under eighty years old and are otherwise healthy, the odds heavily favor your being asymptomatic - if you are one of the 1.7 per thousand infected.  If you’re under eighteen, you simply don’t get infected and don’t pass on the virus – that’s the data.

If thumb-twiddling helped prevent getting infected, then twiddling your thumbs is a good idea.  What’s never a good idea is to argue against the folly of the latest fashionable rage of the age.

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