The facemask balancing act: a matter of controlling heat in the economy

The thing about wearing facemasks to prevent supposed infection from so-called SARS-COV is this: if you are breathing while you are wearing one, the mask is not working. On the other hand, if air can’t pass through the mask – which is the only way to guarantee a purified intake of breath – then the wearer should be more concerned about illness, or even death by plain old asphyxiation, rather than some remote possibility of a somewhat more exotic variety.

The link here is one to a review of the medical literature regarding effectiveness of masks in terms of stopping the spread of SARS-COV (and yes, we are going to assume that SARS-COV is a microbe or microorganism that needs to be ingested to inhabit a host). The most notable statement in the introduction explaining how masks do not work is this:

The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective dose is smaller than one aerosol particle.

From this, and after a quick search of the internet to appreciate the size of the SARS-COV-2 virion, one can understand that at 50–200 nanometres (nm), or (0.05 to 0.2 μm) in diameter, it should not be stopped by a mask.

Now, a useful study that one can use to come at the same idea from a different angle can be found via the link here. This document discusses the capacity of the fabrics from which masks are made to filtrate the air. The following statement taken from it reminds us that there is more than meets the eye with regards to this subject:

For nanometer-sized particles, which can easily slip between the openings in the network of filter fibers, electrostatic attraction predominates the removal of low mass particles which are attracted to and bind to the fibers.

As it turns out, the best masks are those with an ability to draw particles to their substance rather than using their substance as a simple obstacle (and being critically minded as we should be, it should be remarked that if a study is commissioned to promote masks – as this one may well be – it would not be a surprise to find an explanation where there is filtration independent of the fact that, on an essential level, masks just aren’t structurally capable of mechanically preventing passage through them):

Although the filtration efficiencies for various fabrics when a single layer was used ranged from 5 to 80%… for particle sizes of <300 nm…, the efficiencies improved when multiple layers were used and when using a specific combination of different fabrics. Filtration efficiencies of the hybrids (such as cotton–silk, cotton–chiffon, cotton–flannel) was >80% (for particles <300 nm)…. We speculate that the enhanced performance of the hybrids is likely due to the combined effect of mechanical and electrostatic-based filtration. Cotton, the most widely used material for cloth masks performs better at higher weave densities (i.e., thread count) and can make a significant difference in filtration efficiencies.

What we should note from this, whatever science is claimed for the apparent fact of filtration, is that in the best case scenario, there’s a margin of up to 20% of filtration inefficiency. Basically this reflects the adage stated above: if one is breathing when one is wearing a mask, then it’s not working. On top of that, this doesn’t tell us how the efficiency percentage changes – as it should – as particulates become smaller than, and approach up to half the size of 300nm†.

Then there is the issue of oxygen restriction caused by masks. Those who vouch for masks say that any such idea has been debunked, but those people cannot be doing it in all seriousness. It’s not that oxygen, which is 0.299 nm in size, cannot get through a mask that is the issue. It is the rate at which it can do it. Common sense on its own informs that a restricted airway, which is what a mask amounts to, equates to a lower rate of oxygen. Then there is the issue of the expulsion of CO2 (0.33 nm) away from the upper respiratory tract openings. Again, we can imagine that rate would be a key issue.

So, the mask talking point that is currently occupying the zeitgeist of public discourse (thanks to the corporate-media and social and alternative chatterati which, being reliably reciprocating, keeps the ball from going out of play) is a non-issue in terms of prevention of Covid-19, and indeed suffers from the fact that to advocate masks is in fact to introduce a risk to health.

However, be that as it may, the subject is being explored and sounded because i) it means, yet still, no one ever talks about the fact that real Covid-19 is an obscure disease related to a specific state of one’s health terrain, and is so generally harmless that masks wouldn’t even come up in any discussion about it (between rational human beings), and ii) the UK Government wants a replacement for the optics and commercial repercussions of social distancing, which has recenly been having to stand two metres apart, and in certain supermarkets, all sorts of hoops that only circus monkeys would contend with.

Of course, the matter in point i. has had plenty of coverage at FBEL. As for point ii., as the reader can see, there are two aspects: firstly, the appearance of things for psychological manipulation, for the purpose of keeping most of the public on the plantation; secondly, the UK Government wants to sustain inefficiency by social distancing.

The issue of fencing by psychology can be summed up in the same way it has been previously hereabouts (see here): its objective is “to teach and consolidate an echo chamber perspective by which the UK Government can most easily pursue its agenda.” Moreover, the whole idea of the disease being unsanctioned behaviour is another face of the same idea. The FBEL article, The disease is unsanctioned behaviour; Switched On Syndrome and Covid-19, is an important read in this respect. It explains that, as a matter of political survival, behaviour to subvert the power of the ruling class must be controllable (by the ruling class) to the point that it can be eradicated by linking it with deadly disease. So, in fact, there is plenty of material along these lines at FBEL too.

As for the second aspect regarding creating inefficiency, controlling behaviour is of course key to this too. Again, that UK Government is using the cover of a public health emergency to perform an operation on the British economy to rearrange debt-wealth permutations as a matter of continuation of rule is an idea well established here at FBEL. While businesses have until recently, due to this operation, been unable to trade because of closure, now they have to contend with social distancing measures as the destructive means by which they are forced to further engage in debt-for-wealth swap activity (and for many, their continued existence is jeopardised).

Naturally, the impact (of what is only guidance by UK Government) to working practice and ability to collect trade income will be different depending on whether a business is based on a shop floor, or in an office, but there will be a commonality of inefficiency. Indeed, the high street “coalface” of the economy is inextricably linked to a hinterland of product and service provision, so disruption where social distancing will be most destructive (where the public must engage with a business face to face) will inevitably upset everything else.

As mentioned, the nature of social distancing is changing (which will reflect the perceived threat of Covid-19: the UK Government cannot expect to get away with full lockdown at this time). Looming on the horizon is a state of affairs where the public may be expected to wear a facemask as a social distancing measure (for where the requirement used to be that people spaced themselves two metres apart, the replacement is one metre plus facemask). However, large swathes of the public are loath to wear a covering. The reader doesn’t just have to rely on his own personal experience of this when he is out in public (where he will no doubt see plenty of people who haven’t volunteered into wearing a mask): there has been a survey, as reported in the Express and other outlets.

That, as the survey shows, 60% of adults will refuse to wear a face mask in a pub or restaurant is not a figure that is very meaningful: it just shows that 40% of Britons are too stupid to understand what one would need to do at such establishments so that facemasks were impracticable. More important is this cunningly delivered line:

And less than half would consider donning a face covering when shopping, despite being surrounded by other people.

It is saying that more than half would refuse to wear a mask when shopping.

What this means might not be automatically clear. The “three in 10 [who] believe wearing a mask to protect from Covid-19 is both unnecessary and over the top”, and the “13 percent [who] think they [masks] are ‘pointless’” is a measure of extra-plantation numbers. Obviously, then, when there is more than half of the population that will refuse to wear a mask to shop, it means that there is a good slice of on-the-plantation dissent.

So, the UK Government has a problem because there are potentially more refuseniks than it would have bargained for, and this is probably why mandatory facemasks have not yet been made a requirement, despite much noise about it being a prospect. As explained above, facemask wearing is about keeping heat out of the economy in the absence of forced closure, and as a replacement for lines of people standing in 2 meter spaced queues – but as yet, evidently, UK Government hasn’t convinced its plantation population to comply. In other words, it would appear that too many people would not shop in a place where they were forced to wear a mask. This is bad news because there is no balance in it – businesses will not be able to survive on bottom lines, and actually irrevocably obliterating the economy is not the objective. Secondly, there is no theatre of submission to social distancing if people will not engage in it.

So, it sounds like a job for Hitchens. His most recent Sunday newspaper column (there’s no link to Hitchens as he won’t link to FBEL) finds him groundlessly asserting that “We’ve all turned from normal humans into muzzled masochists”. The article goes on:

Now it is clear that a new faith, based on fear of the invisible and quite immune to reason, has all but taken over the country. And it turns out to be one of those faiths that doesn’t have much tolerance for those who don’t share it.

My guess is that about 85 per cent of the population now worship it and will continue to do so. The rest of us are, as each day goes by, a persecuted minority, forced to go along with beliefs we do not hold.

Its evangelists will not leave you and me alone, but constantly seek to force us to join. This is why I make such a fuss about the demand to make us all wear muzzles. This is not about health.

There is simply not enough evidence to compel us to do so. It is an attempt to force submission on Covid unbelievers.

Of course, there are many that will see in this opposition to compulsion to wearing facemasks – a sad indictment of his obtuse and know-it-all-know-nothing audience, given that Hitchens’ piece is such a badly disguised effort at neural-linguistic programming; it is a disgusting piece of writing intended to demoralise, from a character who has become too nauseating to have to deal with (although, his danger is such that it must be done [and follow the link to find the most recent previous occasion when it was necessary]).

Firstly, note the defensive perspective: the pressure is coming at us, but there’s no evidence for it; it is undeserved. And we are under siege, we are a persecuted minority. In other words, it’s just a matter of time until we concede, or something worse will happen to us. How hopeless it is that we must concede when there is no rhyme and reason to it.

In fact, in terms of evidence, everything is quite the other way around. All the evidence shows that there is no need for masks – as demonstrated at the head of this article. And that good numbers of people in reality think that masks are unnecessary is indicative of this being something widely understood. So, there is no need to be on the back foot with the issue, as Hitchens would have his readership psychologically placed.

Secondly, there is indeed the matter of that very small number that Hitchens would have us believe is about to be steamrollered by insistence from persistent zealots to conform. Again, those who would not wear a mask when shopping is a majority percentage; the percentage who think facemasks are unnecessary is 30%. Hitchens would have individuals in his readership believe that they were isolated in their anti-mask stance, when it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Of course, the bit about the harassment to wear a facemask is sensationalism; even if it was mandatory, pressure to wear a facemask would not come about until an individual went to a place where one was required to be worn. However, the idea is to instil a sense of being haunted by the prospect. The idea is to present a psychological millstone against which resistance will be ground down.

But the biggest insult to be had from this excretion is of course how Hitchens is the anti Rosa Parks: instead of making it an issue that he has to wear a mask when he travels on a train, Hitchens demonstrates extra compliance by wearing a gasmask.

Now, what Hitchens is essentially doing in his latest piece of dog muck has been explained before hereabouts. It is about conjuring the illusion of consensus in places beyond the ken of the reading individual so that he thinks he must conform. That’s why the piece is so despicably fork-tongued. It wants to coax people into compliance, not steel them to refuse.

To finish, however, please look at this reaction to Hitchens’ piece; it was copied from the comments section underneath the article, and had been posted on 7th July, at 2.02pm:

Peter, I’m not sure you’ll have time to read all these comments, but well done for having the courage to write this article. Since I don’t read The Mail and would never normally be on it’s [sic] website, I was lucky enough to hear Mike Robinson read out the pertinent points on “UK Column”. He applauded your effort and stated that to his knowledge you were the only representative of the MSM that was speaking the truth about the situation that we’re now all in…

Well, for all the notice that gets taken of it, there is no point telling you, who are reading this, (yet again) that there is something wrong with your alternative media. Don’t be surprised when you don’t emerge from this latest abuse by UK Government in a manner that is to your advantage.

Which leads to this: because the alternative media have Covid-19 so well covered for you, FBEL is going to try and leave off the subject – that is, at least, until the resultant deep and ugly economic problems kick in.

† The author doesn’t have the data regarding how SARS-COV behaves in relation to the supposed electrostatic draw of various masks. As such, the really pertinent information about filtration inefficiency is missing. As it stands, we can say that masks don’t work in stopping the spread of “Covid-19” (again, assuming that SARS-COV is ingested).