Does Wearing a Mask Protect the Wearer?

Parade Magazine: Ask Marilyn: Does Wearing a Mask Protect the Wearer?: We repeatedly hear how masks prevent the wearer from transmitting COVID-19 to others but do not protect the wearer. Can you explain?—John Smith, Lake Wales, Florida 

This is a rampant misunderstanding. Masks (except those with exhalation valves) do work both ways. Yet masks worn by sick people are far more effective at preventing the spread [...]

What I Believe (Politically)

Going to use this to post when I do things that are good for society. Stuff that could actually inspire someone someday just ends up getting lost in news (world peace is the top goal of my facebook account, and that involves educating people so they can get involved) and music (my Twitter is used mostly for posting a music playlist publicly...and possibly getting involved in the entertainment industry one day). 

I should add that I’m ACLU-friendly, which means that keeping people out of jail for stupid reasons like marijuana is part of what I consider to be useful in predicting (and shaping? I don’t know who reads this except for my NSA agent...since they collect information on absolutely everything just in case) a utopian/realistically achievable society. I’m also Black Lives Matter-friendly.

Also, I’m still sick, I’m no longer a Republican (obviously), and the things I’ve done for society recently include re-introducing click-to-donate charity sites, giving out awards on Reddit for thoughtful contributions, and trying not to be moneyist/ageist/clothesist/eyesightist/oldest/fattist/skinnyist/whatever. It’s harder than trying “absolute honesty,” which I’ve found is way less beneficial for society than lying/choosing not to speak about something sometimes and being polite and respectful. I have a Republican in my family, and I’m trying to avoid stereotyping Republicans based on his best and worst qualities and logical arguments.

I think I need to make a post about what I believe now that I’ve come up with arguments I was never taught in school. Not to brag, I’m just overly analytical and I’ve spent a lot of manhours thinking about what would be best for society.

You can’t just choose what you think is best for society in the long-term (which is why I think a lot of people are libertarian). Of course everyone would like their utopian society to have no rules and endless parties 24/7. But defunding the police department so anarchy returns in the form of subtle and not-so-subtle, direct and indirect...gang warfare. Even anarchists create communities for themselves (like co-ops and hippie communes). Rick and Morty knows that one person can’t do everything for themselves, and each person having their own farm out in the country just isn’t practical. I like the idea of cities and states being able to have their own laws for things as long as you’re not denying someone their medicine or something. But to be able to choose moratoriums (for the death penalty...California has one) or euthanasia (or to be anti-euthanasia for religious or other purposes) should be voted upon because the constitution (including the bill of rights) doesn’t say anything about these laws, and they don’t have good reasons to support the law one way or another even if it’s debated upon professionally...some issues go beyond just ethics to what is practical given the current circumstances, not just idealistic. We might one day discover that we save more lives in states with the death penalty. However. it’s my opinion that the death penalty, like torture, is something a country shouldn’t do if we are allowed to rewrite laws or create laws from scratch, as we can in our real, current society.

I do not believe in torture, and I believe that we believe (partly because of our education in literature) that an ideal or utopian society would not have torture. I believe it is fundamentally wrong and the mark of an oppressive government. We’ve read books like 1984 that teach us that certain marks of a government, like total control and torture, are undesirable and so insane that to think that our government is currently like that would earn you a therapist’s diagnosis of paranoia. We recently learned that the NSA collects information on everything we do (just in case the information can one day be used to stop a terrorist attack). Some people on Reddit discuss interacting (or attempting to interact) with their FBI agents through memes and discussion of those memes), but that’s basically the limit. Anymore and you’re paranoid.

How much money do we have to spend to save a life? Why is that persons life any less important than say, the presidents? There are practices in place for if the president gets shot. It’ll affect the economy, but that's not a good reason why the president’s life should be worth more. If it’s a small tax to fix roads and keep one less drunk driver from killing someone or dying themselves, I don’t see how you can out-debate saving lives.

The only “conservative” thing I like is the constitutional right to bear arms. If there’s an emergency, like an intruder or a city-wide riot, you’re going to want some sort of weapon. Right now people are allowed to own weapons and the constitution says that you can’t take that right away. Certain states have their own laws regarding guns, and those “gun control” (reminds me of the “war on drugs,” since guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and the war on drugs was a huge failure, like abstinence-only education ((I’m writing a book and screenplay on how to safely take drugs. Don’t copy me)) and Watergate. Anyways, if something goes down, you’re going to be in a situation where the bad guy has a gun and you don’t. Riots. Break-ins. Whatever. You could be in your car getting or at home or walking to your car from the grocery store when someone attacks you. If you’re lucky enough to have been in a bad situation before and come out alive (remember that it’s more time in jail if you actually murder them as opposed to picking them clean and maybe scaring them a little bit), you might get a concealed carry permit, but otherwise, you’re on your own against thugs breaking in and street gangs trying to steal your TV. 

The government shouldn’t ask you to risk your life unless you’re going to war. Having a baby risks your life. Therefore it’s not the government’s decision whether you have to have your baby or not. It’d be great if you did and gave it up for adoption. You can leave a baby at certain places like hospitals or fire stations without breaking the law. So you don’t have to decide right away if you want to raise it or not.

That being said, if any of you need help or support during a difficult time, feel free to call me. My number’s available online my Facebook profile to my friends. It’s an American number. I also text.

<3

I used to be against imposing harsher restrictions on the oil and gas companies because so many people work for them. Now I believe in doing the ethical thing for people all around the world, overheating in tents and shaded areas. We have air-conditioning and harsh summers already here in California and it just seems like we were pre-conditioned in school not to take the global-warming argument as seriously as we should have. One of my classes (circa 1995?) taught us that global warming was so severe that, without any intervention, we were going to have another ice age (!), but that wasn’t the norm. The norm was accepting that there were two sides to every argument and some people just didn’t believe in global warming. I’m glad that Biden is advanced enough in his knowledge of green energy and global warming that him and the UN have a plan to help ease the consequences of global warming in countries all over the world.

I’m surprised that the Democrats (during the Biden campaign and during the Georgia Senate runoffs) haven’t been reaching Hispanic voters. They even tried to put BLM in the background a bit with their not supporting defunding the police (neither do I), and it seems like they didn’t really market to them and the social media buzz around Black Lives Matter had fizzled out around the time of the election. A lot of different audiences that could have been marketed to weren’t, including people from states other than the swing-states. If more of the same people who turned out for Black Lives Matter turn out for the Georgia election, we’d be home-free.

Market to Women - Reproductive Rights - Could have partnered with women’s magazines, tampon conglomerates, instagram viral marketing ads (same with Facebook? I know they don’t allow political ads but a “street team” with a good imagination can accomplish wonders)

Market to Hispanics/Latinos - Could have put up street flyers, flyers at Hispanic food markets, could have brought up that Trump was trying to take away food stamps before the pandemic.

Could have done more marketing the free college education in Georgia that I read about on the candidates’ political policy page.

Could have marketed to last-minute voters even as the votes were coming in...people waited out in the cold (and probably caught Corona because they knew they were saving lives and doing the ethical thing by voting for a candidate more likely to save them and do the ethical thing than let them get sick and be forgotten about). Biden, by being elected, probably saved the South from half of the pandemic’s deaths (taking into account when the first of the public vaccines will arrive and the fact that two shots are needed). They could have been cheering them on the whole time, rooting for the people who were on the fence about whether they should wait in line after they got off work or relax at home. Thank you for bearing it. Thank you for your service to your country.

I used to believe in universal healthcare, then I stopped believing, and now I believe again. I think the part I hated most was the $600 penalty for not buying insurance. Of course, I later realized that the ethical (and safe bet) way of doing things was to provide healthcare to everyone, not just emergency services. I would be horrified to hear about the suffering that third-world country citizens go through just to get their basic medical needs met. Emergency-room only? As someone with lifelong anxiety, I can tell you that this is not proper medication management. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And at the rate Americans are dying of heart attacks, car crashes, and Covid, you’ll probably end up saving tons of lives by voting for a healthcare mandate. The $600 penalty ended up being added because Republicans wouldn’t allow the original plan to go through. I didn’t realize that at the time (and I think Pelosi made a mistake by blocking a bunch of stuff in the new stimulus package...she’ll probably realize the error of her ways one day) and I’m ashamed now that I think about how often Republicans put a dollar over a life. By saving your $600, some people might end up eating and that could save lives, but we have food banks and food stamps, and universal healthcare, especially during a pandemic, is a pretty basic need (not want). A lot of people put off going to the hospital if they think they’ll have to pay a lot of money, and universal healthcare is the best way to ensure people are able to take care of themselves because they can’t manage their own money (like ensuring that social security stays intact because people don’t save enough money when left to their own devices). You can equate a life to a certain number of dollars, if you really had to, but I bet that if you used this logic in every political proposition, you’d realize that Republicans aren’t really about ethics or values as much as they are about trickle-down economics and maintaining the status quo. Which is fine sometimes, and I’m glad that states and cities have some wiggle room there to enact more progressive policies...but in reality you might be able to run a semi self-sustaining economy but you’ll be doing it at the expense of the middle, working, and poorer classes (and you’ll literally be costing some—more likely a lot, if anyone wants to do the math—their actual human lives. We have a country that’s basically willing to go to war if their Republican president gets a scratch on him abroad, but doesn’t care about the millions of people who die in car crashes, some of them from poorly maintained roads or other problems with easy solutions.

I believe (now) in a universal basic income…and once it’s there, I think it would be unethical and unwise to take it away. Even if you think the economy has recovered, it’s better to overprepare than to underprepare. We’re setting the stage for a future where America is still the main superpower with a bustling economy and happy, employed (or otherwise not impoverished) citizens. A UBI would help immensely to prepare us for a future where technology, illegal immigration (sorry to say, but it’s true) and college graduates unable to get a job have contributed. In a post-Corona world, with companies realizing how few workers they need and that they can cut costs by getting rid of the office and hiring part-timers, we need a good,stable economic plan and almost everyone agrees it would fix things basically immediately. They’re just not willing, fiscally, to take the risk. It’s a shame because other countries are giving their citizens a monthly stipend so their economies don’t tank. It’s definitely a good investment for a country’s future (and it’s not like a third-world country where they can’t afford it), and it’s the ethical thing to do, just like universal healthcare, in order to use whatever taxpayer money we get (hopefully mostly from the rich, and since we have a new Democratic president being sworn into office soon, I’m not worried about the middle and lower classes) as efficiently as possible. Ethically, that means saving lives and ending suffering. Realistically, we can’t use all of our money for third-world countries’ healthcare, but once we get our economy back on track, we’ll be able to contribute more time and money to the effort. In a world economy rampant with sweatshops and outsourced jobs, there will definitely be a small trickle-down effect that could grow if taken care of properly, without legislation being blocked or a Republican president selfishly and unethically trying to get votes or hurriedly fix his past mistakes.

I’d like to see a future where people are so well-off and kind due to post-Corona legislation and a sense that we’re all in this together that they contribute enough to charity that we no longer need to give the UN money to take care of them. Although some people may be angry at the idea of using taxpayer money to save lives, and you can’t save everyone or allocate too high of a percentage to it, saving lives should be a high priority in thinking of how to ethically, efficiently, and in a way people can more or less agree upon, distribute tax revenue. However, like most Libertarian ideals, this is unrealistic and should be considered a point to eventually work your way to and reach (probably by taking risks with your money like by investing in a UBI and infrastructure and by thinking both long-term and short-term like President Trump did when he tried to create more American jobs by ending NAFTA). We’re currently working on green legislation as a long-term project and I’d like to see everyone able to afford an air conditioner before people in Denver are able to go swimming in December. Once healthcare legislation is enacted and we are able to come back from the pandemic I’d like to see more emphasis on saving lives and ending suffering. Everyone knows that maintaining roads saves lives, yet people still selfishly vote against it all the time. They’re more concerned about things that special-interest groups can advertise and lobby for, which means that you have to have a certain number of people (like the difference between a church and a cult) and those interests have to have gained traction with time, passion, or both. I see lots of stuff against drunk driving but not much on road maintenance even though they’re both similar issues. If they collaborated (teaching people about improper road maintenance killing people, etc.) maybe more lives would be saved. I think the country has just grown up a little bit selfish and competitive, and almost half of it is against using taxpayer money to save lives with a healthcare package, even as Corona claims hundreds of thousands of lives. And the divide is more obvious than ever— across states, political affiliations, lines of work, socioeconomic status, ethnic background. And not wearing a mask because it’s a semi-political statement is just dumb. Besides people who don’t wear masks, there are people who think we shouldn’t have a police force to protect people who can’t protect themselves. I wrote previously that I thought we might eventually come to see things like unethical political affiliations as symptomatic of a mental disorder. I thought about it, and now I think that we’ll eventually come to see ourselves as too stupid to take care of ourselves (essentially meriting legislation like Social Security and healthcare insurance regulation), yet too smart to have any kind of mental disorder. We’re just selfish babies when it comes to our priorities in decision-making, and there are all sorts of reasons why. I hope that whoever reads this and agrees with me decides to take action and write a letter or sign a petition. We are smart, yet stupid, and we need not only good politicians but good role models and leaders. Please take time on MLK Jr. Day (the National Day of Service) to think about your effect in the world, past, present, and future, and how you can help, whether it be in a little way or with all your heart and spirit. Thank you for your time.

“World Peace, Entertainment, Psychology, Beauty, and Humor.” To see my resume, go to my LinkedIn, accessible through my social media accounts.

Going to use this to post when I do things that are good for society. Stuff that could actually inspire someone someday just ends up getting lost in news (world peace is the top goal of my facebook account, and that involves educating people so they can get involved) and music (my Twitter is used mostly for posting a music playlist publicly...and possibly getting involved in the entertainment industry one day). 

I should add that I’m ACLU-friendly, which means that keeping people out of jail for stupid reasons like marijuana is part of what I consider to be useful in predicting (and shaping? I don’t know who reads this except for my NSA agent...since they collect information on absolutely everything just in case) a utopian/realistically achievable society. I’m also Black Lives Matter-friendly.