Mask or Muzzle?
The effects of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic are redefining life for Americans, but none of the virus’ effects are more surprising than how it’s transforming surgical masks into muzzles.
A tool designed to prevent the spread of infection has instead become one used to silence free speech. A surgical mask is not designed to interfere with the translation of thoughts into speech. When their use is required by liberal-progressive “stay home, stay healthy” restrictions they become a tool to silence dissent.
By mindlessly donning a mask we are signaling our allegiance to the nanny state.
According to the Centers for Disease Control website they now recommend the following,
• Cover your mouth and nose with a cloth face cover when around others.
• You could spread COVID-19 to others even if you do not feel sick.
• Everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public, for example to the grocery store or to pick up other necessities.
• Cloth face coverings should not be placed on young children under the age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance.
• The cloth face cover is meant to protect other people in case you are infected.
• Do NOT use a face mask meant for a healthcare worker.
• Continue to keep about 6 feet between yourself and others. The cloth face cover is not a substitute for social distancing.
In this the CDC is making a recommendation, not a law. As the scientific understanding of the coronavirus changes, so too does the guidance from the CDC and other public health officials. While the CDC’s perspective today is to recommend masks, this was not the case at the outset of the epidemic and may not be a month from now.
Notice that the guidelines make no specific recommendation about whether healthy Americans should be wearing face masks. In the second bulleted point the CDC says you can spread COVID-19 “even if you don’t feel sick”. That may be true, but you can’t spread it if you are not sick. In the third bulleted point the CDC states “Everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they go out in public,” but doesn’t explain why a healthy person should do so. If the face mask is “meant to protect other people” from you, then by extension if you are not sick you do not need to wear a face mask.
A raging pandemic is not a suitable reason for forbidding thoughtful, or thoughtless, disagreement. In a recent memo US Justice Department attorneys Attorney General William Barr wrote that the constitution is “not suspended in times of crisis.”
The mask has become a symbol of lock-step obedience to the left and their onerous stay-at-home policies.
When the Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, says in reference to lock down protesters, “I do think the fact of the matter is these protesters in a perverse way make it likelier we’re going to have to stay in a stay-at-home posture,” what she is doing is warning those with whom she disagrees. The governor’s statement is chilling. She is threatening those who disagree with her restrictions with further governmental oppression.
When a doctor expresses his or her confidence in hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus no government agent nor citizen should demand the doctor be silenced. The doctor’s medical opinion on the efficacy of that drug as a treatment for the virus is based on their experience and training. The doctor is acting from a scientific or medical perspective, not a political one.
If we want politicians, the press, or non-medically educated pundits to give approval for medical treatments, we will go to our local newspaper or state legislature when we are sick. I doubt if you would trust Governor Andrew Cuomo or the editorial board of the Seattle Times to prescribe a treatment plan if you had cancer. Why then would anyone care what their opinion is on hydroxycholorquine to treat COVID-19?
Digital trolls hiding beneath virtual bridges in the vastness of the internet wait to pounce on any post, statement, or video that rejects the official restrictions orthodoxy. Once they locate a post or statement of dissent they demand those contributions be removed. Free speech is now controlled by social media companies that prohibit content that violates their “community guidelines”. These “guidelines” are restrictions on independent thought and speech.
Censuring the speech of those whose views are different from official government propaganda, or those of the majority, is a fundamental violation of the right to free speech. We cannot allow “groupspeak” to replace free speech.
Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State, as with other “blue state” leaders, implements restrictive policies on the COVID-19 epidemic. These restrictions force American citizens to live in a manner they consider proper to this crisis. To usurp the rights of the people to speak, to assemble, and to worship freely the governor and others like him assert it must occur because of a public health crisis. Except, no “public health” exceptions exist to any of the rights enumerated in our constitution.
Wearing a mask should occur in those circumstances where it’s necessary to protect others. The CDC’s mask guidelines are indicated to prevent you from making others sick, not to protect you from getting sick. No mask is needed if you are not sick.
If you are healthy, not asymptomatic, and you wear a mask you may as well wear a football helmet while watching the NFL on TV. In both cases the benefits of the protections are imagined, not real.
The wearing of masks by healthy people during this pandemic has become the way the meek and compliant signal their submission to their leftist overlords. Those same citizens will not question or reject restrictions that infringe on their constitutional rights because their fear of the illness is greater than their love of freedom.
By submitting to unnecessary and illegitimate restrictions out of fear we embolden those who seek to control our behavior, violate our rights, and will seek greater restrictions of our liberties during the next crisis.
2020 © North American Rights
07/07/20
S. Piccirillo
