Okay, the libertarian side of me, and that is the most prominent part generally feels like people can do whatever they want and make their own judgments on risk and safety. But the problem during the epidemic has been that the worrywarts, who vastly overestimate their and others risk, are trying to force the rest of us to behave in a certain manner and are working to persuade government to make us obey their safety-obsessed delusions. I continue to see people wearing masks driving in cars alone. I see people with their children masked outdoors in parks. That is not just stupid, it is child abuse. And the more you try to help people understand the facts about risk, the more they cling to their delusions. I have given up. It isn’t rational so rational arguments won’t work.
I have discovered a new law of human behavior as a result of observing the epidemic. The less real meaning there is in your life, the more desperately you cling to it and avoid anything you believe might threaten your existence. And there are a lot of people who know their lives have little real meaning, no matter how much time they spend on social media. Get a life and you might not be so worried about it ending. And stop trying to make the rest of life by your absurd and irrational delusions.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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Kevin, when I see people masked alone in cars, when I knock on my administrator’s door from 8 feet away and she quickly dons her mask, when i see people walking in the park alone, fully masked, it occurs to me that the mask provides meaning for them – meaning that is more important (to them) than liberty, science, or as you have exhausted, common sense,
““Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
…In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a [perceived] sacrifice.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
A wonderful book, everyone should read it, probably banned in most public schools now.
Dear Kevin:
I see the worst of this irrational behavior being foisted on us by the CDC and by organized medicine, i.e. Fairview, HealthPartners and Allina, etc. The CDC has joined the teacher’s union in declaring that children under the age of 12 have to wear the completely useless and psychologically harmful masks when they return to school in the fall. Based on what evidence? How many more huge studies do they have to ignore to see what an incredibly stupid decision this is? The hospitals, following the CDC edicts, continue to force everyone, whether immunized or not, to continue to wear masks in all “health care entities.” The doctors and nurses are sick to death of this but they have NO say whatsoever in these decisions. I talked to one physician the other day in my clinic who said he’s certain that Fairview won’t give up on masks for at least another year. He cannot even get them to let him stop putting on a plastic visor which restricts his ability to interact with patients. And he’s a sports medicine doc! At my own clinic I put up a sign 6 weeks ago saying masks were not needed for young children or the vaccinated only to have my front desk staff protest vehemently because this was counter to the CDC! I was furious with them and my clinic manager who backed them up. But that very night, one of the mothers in the clinic, who had seen the sign, took to Facebook to ask her medical friends how I could do such a horrible thing? The reply from these people (a “Medical Moms” group) was scathing to the tune of “how DARE Dr. Gobel go against the CDC??!!!!! I took the sign down the next day as I cannot afford to be blackballed by the Facebook Nazis. Nowadays I have parents who are confused about why they have to wear masks when they can go everywhere without them. I have them take them off in the exam rooms.
The mask clingers, and this includes teens and children indoctrinated by their parents, are primarily highly anxious people. Many have told me outright that they don’t want to give up their masks. One mentally ill teen told me. “I don’t want people to see my face. I feel safer this way.” One mom trembled as she wore her mask outside, fully vaccinated, “I don’t think I can give up my mask.” And she had on a double cloth mask. Poor souls who have been terrorized by the medical establishment, the hysterical media and the absolute morons at the CDC and our idiotic governor and his know-nothing minions at the department of health.
There’s my rant for the day. Keep up the excellent work and don’t give up the fight, Kevin!
everyone should read this comment to understand how off the rails some people have become and how indoctrinated by governments. When did people stop thinking for themselves and using some common sense
Climate change, socialism, and masks are all paganism. They create a fairh based system for “redemption” premised upon sacrifice.
“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.”
— Bertrand Russell
Masks were never about safety, they were about vanity, the “look how much I care” attitude. The few who are donning masks out of fear are doing so because they are consuming news fear-porn like gluttons.
Fear and worry are normal, but when they are this persistent they are driven by sin not virtue.
I think you are not taking into account the fact that these people literally believe everything the government (ie. CDC, WHO, MDH, Walz, Biden, etc) and media feed them. These are the same type of people that believe Trump colluded with the Russians and Biden cares about the average American because the media repeats it over and over and over and . . .
Amen
People complain that their glasses fog up when wearing a mask, so I say, “That tells you how well the mask is sealing doesn’t it?” They get it, and they chuckle.
I’m living in a regional town that has not had a single Covid case in 18 months, and I see people driving cars, own their own, wearing a mask. Truly, this is the Stanley Milgram experiment escaped from the laboratory. (Milgram, in a now infamous experiment, was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying instructions from an authority figure.)
A man can live as a slave shackled by chains, today we live amongst slaves shackled by ignorance and apathy.