Today begins the new policy about not needing to mask up in public transportation (which includes taxis). I had my mask on and had gotten into a cab this morning when I suddenly remembered this fact, but I checked with the cabbie to be sure. The cabbie wasn't wearing a mask, and when he affirmed that today was the first day of the new policy, I expressed relief and ripped my mask off. It'll be nice to go on the subway this evening without needing to mask up inside the station. Normally, when you tap your farecard on the turnstile sensor, a computer vice reminds you to mask up. In theory, there should be no such announcement anymore. We'll see.
Of course, I see plenty of people still unnecessarily wearing masks outside on the street and inside buildings. Suckers. I don't normally like using terms like "sheeple" or "libtard," but yeah, these folks are sheeple to be sure.
When I first moved to Korea in 2005, one of the things that stood out was seeing a significant number of people (+/- 10%) wearing facemasks, especially on the subway. So, even without a mandate, you are going to see that, I suppose. But yeah, when I see people wearing masks in illogical ways (alone in their car, wearing them on the street, then removing them indoors, etc.) I just assume they are stupid, indoctrinated, or both.
ReplyDeleteEast Asians wear masks for any number of reasons, many of which have probably been debunked by what we've learned from this pandemic. So many East Asian cities are big and polluted, so one reason to mask up is air quality. East Asians who are sick will also mask up in the belief that they are preventing their illness from spreading. Recent studies have shown that masks did nothing to stop the spread of COVID, which to me means that a lot of the problem was the microfine particles that most masks can't screen out, anyway. Apply that logic backward, pre-pandemic, to things like microfine yellow dust and people's generic sickness, and you begin to see how masking has been a charade for a long, long time. I do agree that masks help with the larger droplets we emit when coughing and sneezing, but if masks have proven ineffective, then stopping the larger droplets has been statistically irrelevant all this time.
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