NO MAM: NO MARCH AGAINST MASKS

‘No Mam’ was my first thought watching people march against masks.

Young and old alike ignored mask science on their journey to stupid. No mask for them is the conclusion of their mask debate.

I’m a fan of exercise, walking it out, lifting weights, but an anti-science march? No Mam.

I asked WebMD for clarification.

It started in China:

In 1910, 10,000 hunters rushed into a region in northeast China that sits on the border with Russia. 

They were after fur animals to sell to the European markets like Oregon beaver pelts before them.

We called it Soft Gold.

Instead of following traditional methods used by skilled marmot hunters, the inexperienced newcomers dug the animals out of their underground burrows.

They also dug up the plague bacteria.

Soon the hunters began dying in droves, vomiting blood and turning purple.

Would seeing people vomit blood and turn purple make a difference in the mask debate? Are the deaths from covid in the ICU too clean to move the mask question toward a better answer?

China sent their version of Dr. Fauci to investigate.

32-year-old doctor named Wu Lien Teh to intervene. Wu had recently graduated from The University of Cambridge England. He was the first Chinese man to attend its prestigious school of medicine. 

Wu arrived on Christmas Eve, 1910. 

The good doctor brought western science to the case.

He also found the plague bacteria in the lungs. It was the first time anyone had seen pneumonic plague, or plague of the lungs.

Unlike previous plague epidemics, which had been transmitted to humans by the bites of infected fleas, this disease was spreading from person to person. Wu realized it was being carried through the air, in respiratory droplets from breath. He wrapped the faces of health workers and grave diggers in layers of cotton and gauze to filter out the bacteria, creating the ancestor of the modern n95 respirator mask. He urged people to cover their faces.

The people who contracted the Manchurian Plague died fast and ugly. Their stacked up bodies were the evidence others witnessed. Still, not everyone agreed with the mask idea.

A well-known French doctor and experienced plague fighter who had arrived in Harbin shortly after Wu ignored his young colleague’s warnings to cover his face when treating patients. His death, a few days later, grabbed international attention.

Anti-mask sentiments were nothing new from the get go, just like now.

Asian countries never forgot the lessons of the Manchurian Plague. In Asia, wearing masks in public is considered a part of good hygiene. 

Be better than you think you need to be and wear a mask.

Look good to the mask doubters and wear a mask.

Try and ignore the sound of ignorance with No Mam.

A vigorous debate between science people and science deniers? Turn the channel and wear a mask. There’s nothing there to hear, nothing to see but people who need to feel better about themselves.

Feel better and wear a mask.

Taiwan, which has a population of nearly 24 million, has officially logged fewer than 500 COVID-19 cases and seven deaths.

To date, Hong Kong, which is densely populated with 7.5 million people, has had 4,700 cases and 78 deaths.

Wear a mask, dear readers. Yes, your nose will run, glasses fog, and breathing will change, but that’s the drill. Work around it instead of melting down.

Act like your life matters and wear a mask; show other lives matter with wearing a mask. This pandemic isn’t a TV show with annoying commercials to wait through.

A mask isn’t some kind of badge to control you, it’s there to save lives. Put it on.

You can do that and say it was hard, uncomfortable, but you did it.

Thank you for reading No Mam.

From Willamette Week:

I hope you will consider, as December rolls in, that you are not an island in this country. Your actions impact me and my well-being. Your actions impact whether there will be enough staff, hospital beds and ventilators available, maybe even for you. Please don’t put my life at risk any more than it already is. Please choose all of us instead of just yourself, even if that makes you uncomfortable. I do not want to be looking into your eyes filled with terror and tears in the months ahead, nor the eyes of the person you love the most. I do not want to be asking your family to call you now, because tomorrow may be too late. I wish I wasn’t using fear to scare you into being a responsible citizen. But I am. I am standing inside a burning building on the edge of a burning country, and I don’t know what else to do.

Rose, 42, has been a nurse for eight years in Portland, all of that time in an intensive care unit. Two weeks ago, Heather Rose emailed us this letter. It is the message that spurred the reporting and interviews in this story.