11 Responses to “Masks are…socialist?”

• #1

  twiliter

  April 28, 2020 at 12:22 pm

  I use them for work sometimes, the N95 masks. They are hot, uncomfortable, restrictive, compromise my peripheral vision, and smell like the bowels of a textile factory. I wear the damned things when I go shopping though, because it’s the right thing to do. Pence is obviously immune to things like personal responsibility and following safety recommendations, like every other entitletard.
• #2

  Your Name's not Bruce?

  April 28, 2020 at 12:26 pm

  “My mask protects you, your mask protects me.”

  This tells you all you need to know about Pence. It also says that the Mayo Clinic defers to power and status, rather than the wellbeing of patients and staff. Had I been the patient in the picture, I would have insited that Pence wear a mask, and told him to stay the fuck out until he dooned one.
• #3

  Claire

  April 28, 2020 at 12:26 pm

  You have to admit that Pence is kind of invisible to begin with. Put a mask on him and he’d disappear, like a miracle.
• #4

  What a Maroon

  April 28, 2020 at 12:36 pm

  Here’s a longish article in the New Yorker contrasting the reaction to the virus in Washington state to the reaction in New York (city and state) and the federal government. The relevant point:

  Whereas the C.D.C. protocol encourages politicians to practice restraint, it invites the lead scientific spokesperson to demonstrate his or her advice ostentatiously, and to be a living example of the importance of, say, wearing a mask or getting a shot. When polio inoculations began, in the nineteen-fifties, many people worried that they were unsafe, so New York City’s commissioner of health—who happened to be married to the E.I.S.’s founder—invited reporters to watch schoolchildren getting injections. She also enlisted Elvis to publicly get his shot.

  E.I.S. personnel in the field have carried boxes of masks and gloves to distribute to pilots, flight attendants, journalists, and health workers—supplies that may not be needed by the recipients but emphasize how important universal compliance is. When Besser gave briefings during the H1N1 pandemic, he sometimes started by describing how he had recently soaped up his fingers, or pointedly waited until everyone was away from the microphone before taking the stage. At the time, there was almost no chance that Besser and his colleagues were at immediate risk of contracting H1N1. “To maintain trust, you have to be as honest as possible, and make damn sure that everyone walks the walk,” Besser told me. “If we order people to wear masks, then every C.D.C. official must wear a mask in public. If we order hand washing, then we let the cameras see us washing our hands. We’re trying to do something nearly impossible, which is get people to take an outbreak seriously when, for most Americans, they don’t know anyone who’s sick and, if the plan works, they’ll never meet anyone who’s sick.”

  De Blasio and Cuomo come off pretty bad in the article, at least in their initial reactions. And of course the Trump maladministration comes off horribly. (Also, you know it’s the New Yorker when you see “coöperate”.)
• #5

  Your Name's not Bruce?

  April 28, 2020 at 12:55 pm

  Maybe Pence thinks that God is protecting him* (and if he’s fortunate enough to not get it, this will be the story he rolls out). I need to know, though, who’s protecting all these people from Pence? Seems like God’s been doing a pretty piss-poor job of protecting everyone else.

  *Then again, maybe he’d already been cleansed by his daily gargle of bleach
• #6

  Claire

  April 28, 2020 at 1:04 pm

  @YNNB Any God that protects Pence over the masses who have died does not deserve worship.
• #7

  twiliter

  April 28, 2020 at 1:32 pm

  Not sure the 25th would help us much. Trump obviously chose a VP who is just as stupid as he is.
• #8

  twiliter

  April 28, 2020 at 1:35 pm

  Remember this?

  https://time.com/4848951/mike-pence-nasa-do-not-touch/

  Moron.
• #9

  Ophelia Benson

  April 28, 2020 at 4:30 pm

  I had in fact forgotten that. Oy.
• #10

  loren russell

  April 28, 2020 at 5:01 pm

  They couldn’t have forced the mask on him. But too bad no one had the cojones to deny him photo-op access to the clinical area.

  [And is this where we get the “bare-faced liar” meme?]
• #11

  Ophelia Benson

  April 28, 2020 at 5:03 pm

  Of course they couldn’t have forced the mask on him but they could have denied him entry without it. All entry, entry past whatever point it is that the Mayo Clinic says face masks required.