Backlash = Zero

The story a few weeks ago called the Great Mask Debate brought in record amounts of emails so there was a good possibility that last week's story on the Tulsa cop shootings were going to be epic. Yet not a single email was sent, not a single person objected. There is the fact that the American character has a soft spot for reasonable men doing unreasonable things once they have been pushed beyond their boundaries.

A good example is Marvin Heemeyer, the famous kill dozer operator from Granby Colorado. Marvin had bought some land that had a septic tank but in purchasing the land at auction from a failed savings and loan, Marvin earned the ire of fellow bidder that was from the most wealthy families in the small town. Marvin set up a muffler shop and made the shop a success despite being an outsider in the small town. But before long Marvin was being fined hundreds of dollars a day by the city council for not hooking onto a septic line, which he was willing to do if the cost was reasonable, but the city wanted $80,000 to run a line about sixty feet to the main line. You see the man Marvin offended by outbidding him on the land was a member of the city council. Next the offended city official built a cement batch plant right next to Marvin, further antagonizing the situation after the zoning change was rammed through over the neighbors objections. The new batch plant also blocked access to his muffler shop. Marvin sued but used a local shyster that did little but take his money and refuse to appeal after a local judge threw the lawsuit out of court.

The Great Mask Debate, Part II

Boy were there some irrational people sending in emails on that last story a few weeks ago. The dominant theme seemed to be that the masks don't do a proper job at filtering and are thus useless. A university did some testing and video taped the results showing no mask, a single layer cloth mask, a double layer cloth mask and a hospital type non woven procedure mask. The non woven procedure mask did quite well actually and watching that video makes me want to wear one around people even if this Chinese virus goes away.

And yeah, one irresponsible nut job not wearing a mask while harboring the virus doesn't help the responsible people that do. That is the thing about the mask, it isn't about filtering out inhaled virus, it is about keeping the virus from spreading from the fools not wearing a mask while they are carriers. And dang it, we do not know who the carriers are! What else can we do other than lock everything down to slow down the spread? No one wants that, so wear the dang mask.