Yesterday I asked if mask mandates were coming back. As I noted, an HBCU in Atlanta has reinstituted a mask mandate on its campus, and I wondered if this would be the first of many such mandates.

Apparently and unsurprisingly it is.

Major movie studio reinstates mask mandates 'effective immediately'

🦇 💩 😜

These lunatics are addicted to covid fear

That’s the only explanation https://t.co/cyxZ8MhFcJ

— Phil Holloway ✈️ (@PhilHollowayEsq) August 22, 2023

Why are they doing this? Because a few cases of COVID-19 have popped up and the media hysteria machine is back in full swing.

In the email provided to Fox News Digital, Sommer McElroy, Response Manager for Lionsgate/Starz, stated that “effective immediately” masks will be required on certain floors in their Santa Monica offices “until further notice.” According to Deadline Hollywood, this encompasses “nearly half of the company’s employees at its flagship office at 2700 Colorado Ave. in Santa Monica.”

“Employees must wear a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95) when indoors except when alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating, actively drinking at their desk or workstation, or if they are the only individual present in a large open workspace,” McElroy said.

In addition, Lionsgate will maintain a “building entry policy” where each employee is “required to perform a daily self-screening prior to coming to the office each day” and must notify McElroy if there are “new or worsening symptoms” or if they “travelled internationally in the last 10 days.” Lionsgate will also conduct contact tracing and notify “all individuals who have been in close contact with employees who have tested positive for COVID-19.”

This policy is, of course, totally insane. Not because COVID-19 is no longer a particularly dangerous virus for most people. After all, even a cold sucks to get and employees with a cold should be encouraged to stay home.

No, the reason is simpler: mask mandates do nothing to slow or stop the spread of respiratory viruses and never will. All mask mandates do is up the fear quotient for people freaked out about COVID and ramp up the anger of those who are well and truly done with this BS.

Mike Osterhome, a noted epidemiologist and COVID worrier, secretly sent a letter to the CDC criticizing it for spreading misinformation about masks back in 2021. Even he understood that the “masks work” propaganda was just that.

“We believe the information and recommendations as provided may actually put an individual at increased risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 and for them to experience a serious or even life-threatening infection,” Mr. Osterhom wrote.
https://t.co/JCbaFQt1ya

— Brian Tyson, MD 🇺🇸 (@btysonmd) August 22, 2023

Mask mandates are and always have been about training people to be compliant with authority.

A quick refresher here for why even using the best masks the right way will inevitably fail over time may be in order. Assume that N95 masks are effective as a preventative tool. The masks themselves advertise only 95% effectiveness in preventing particles larger than viruses from penetrating but assume 100% effectiveness for our purposes. (Surgical masks are essentially worthless–look at the wide gaps).

In any one exposure, then, the mask will be effective that one time, mostly. Mostly because the nose and mouth are not the only routes to infection, with the eyes being the most notable other route.

Now iterate. Not one exposure event, but thousands. You are taking the mask off, putting it back on. Putting it in your pocket. Not sealing it. Touching it with unwashed hands.

Even doctors over less than a week fail in compliance, often at high rates. Because wearing masks properly again and again is time-consuming and inconvenient. For the same reason, medical researchers only get really sealed up in suits while working on deadly viruses. It is pointless to try for 100% effectiveness over any extended period of time with anything but the worst pathogens. You simply could never get anything done.

So over any period of months, the people doing the most rigorous masking will eventually get COVID not because they can’t reduce the chance of exposure any one time–with the most effective masks you can (although practically speaking almost nobody wears them or uses them properly)–you simply can’t reduce the chance much once you get beyond a few exposures. All your precautions will fail.

Now add to this the fact that 99.9% of the population is less educated than doctors on how to use masks and what they can and can’t do and you see the problem. Population-level mandates, even using the best masks ever made, are worthless. 100% worthless. This is why every doctor, politician, actor, and COVID fanatic still contracted COVID. It is inevitable with a respiratory virus.

And does it matter if you get COVID today vs. 8 days from now? Not a bit. You still got it.

The inevitable conclusion is that this is theater–getting people worked up. Nothing more.