Ask the Gulch!

I wont wear a mask one just to satisfy some bureaucrat. I am old enough to make my own health decisions and pay the price or enjoy the benefits

I will still vote for Trump, but I think he got hoodwinked into shutting down a perfectly good economy by deep stater democrats. It will probably cost him the election.

I wouldnt deliberately sneeze in the face of someone else if I knew I was infected. That said- I agree with you that it should be up to the other people to protect themselves from infection, and not up to me to prevent them from getting infected.

As always, take it to it's logical conclusion...

Do you wash your hands? Do you wipe with toilet paper? And if you didn't do either, would you shake someones hand with an unclean hand?

Would you consider washing your hands "living for the sake of another?"

I wear a Mask for the same reason I wear clothing... To save the lives of those around me in case I didn't!! Now, I don't dress "pretty", nor should you ask me to. Just ask my wife. LOL.

But if you were invited to my house, when my daughter was young, and constantly sick (thanks vaccines), and getting a cold could hospitalize her...
Are you saying, if you WERE sick, you would ignore my wishes and come on over and let me assume the risks of your actions, BECAUSE some quote, which is supposed to be more about living in an indebted way, than in a polite and educated society???? (really curious). Because when I am not feeling 100% (because of our experiences), I will call a host and say "Hey, I woke up with a slight sore throat, I think I was just run down, but it's up to YOU if we come over, or you still want to come over!

Respectfully think that "Wearing a mask" to protect the weakest in society, for a specific time/event... Is NOT living for the sake of another.
BTW, if you KNEW you were contagious but without symptoms and wouldn't get caught, would you go visiting a Rest home? (of course not)

"I saw a photo of a guy in line at the grocery store wearing scuba gear."

That's hilarious!

Good point. It's just like sneezing into your arm rather than into the air. I do value the lives of my fellow humans.

This is the point.

An old coworker used to sneeze the most disgusting liquid sneezes, and NOT TRY to catch them.
You could see stuff hitting the wall in his office... He needed a catchers mitt!

Sorry, we need etiquette!

So you wear one based on peer pressure? and based on the incorrect belief that the mask (when in public) does not help anything since the virus is not transmitted by casual contact.

The common courtesy is to stay home when sick, sneezing, coughing etc. Always has been.

I am not sick, am not a spreader and respect other people's distance. The mask is a symbol of control.

One point- If you need a mask to protect yourself from getting infected upon going somewhere- maybe you should just NOT go there in the first place !!

Randy,
Lookup the definition of "Carrier" and then "Super Spreader".
The problem is that you could be a carrier, and unbeknownst to you, become a super spreader.
THIS is the problem with this virus. When you track that one lady who went to church and ended up infecting 1,200 people... WOW.
But she WAS at the hospital, waiting for test results, but was feeling "okay"...

Obviously, you do you. But this is an interesting topic.
For the 30-60 minutes a WEEK I might need to wear a mask... Not a problem. It's not that hard. And the protection for others is way higher than you realize. Even a homemade mask reduces like 90% of the particulate that stays in the air behind you.

Whether AR wrote AS to be a warning, or a prediction of what was going to happen in the usa, it DOES read like a newspaper. The proclamations made by our governor (Nevada) read a bit to much like directive 10-289.

"I just stay away from places where others are sick, or I am squashed in close proximity to others (nightclubs, large crowds, subways, buses, planes)."

I like to tell people I've been practicing for this most of my life. :P The media talks about practicing it, but I think I'm pretty close to having perfected it. ;)

Or so my wife says about me.

"Is there any value in recycling your exhaled carbon monoxide?"

It is dioxode, but otherwise, absolutely, yes! CO2 is a natural relaxant. If you're old enough you might remember the common "breathe into a paper bag" to stop hyperventilating thing. It worked (and still does) because the hyperventilation is an over-excitement of the lungs; and in the case of an asthma attack or similar it is the bronchi vibrating too fast that causes the shortness of breath and panting. Re-breathing your exhale increases the CO2 level in the lungs which acts directly as a relaxant.

Incidentally, this basic mechanism is why I am alive to type about it today. Years ago I was having a terrible Easter due to allergies and a form of COPD. I was sitting alone by my fireplace late one night and my breathing was getting worse and worse. I couldn't get enough air to stand up and didn't have my phone. All I did have was the (generation 1) iPad with me. Despite having been deployed, at no point in my life had I ever thought "well, that is that I am about to die" until that moment.

In sheer desperation I hit up Google for a Hail Mary of finding some technique I could try in my increasingly light headed state. I came across some old Soviet research - the kind you could NOT do in the West then or now - that was heavily about breathing and the many ways it ties in with illnesses. They were able to induce asthma attacks in otherwise healthy people at will by breathing patterns and to reverse them. With nothing to lose, I tried them with what I could makeshift within reach. It was functionally all about CO2 breathing.

Within moments I could breath better, and a few more moments had me breathing better than I had in weeks. To this day if I get wheezy from anything I go there. I go there sometimes to try to calm my body down and even to aid sleep onset. CO2 is arguably the most potent bronchodilator we know of (it is also a vasodilator so that helps). Well, short of an axe or something. ;)


It may sound like "woo-woo science" due to it being breath based, but it is rock solid science underneath it. It certainly sounds counter-intuitive to hold your breath during such an attack, but the biochemistry supports it (an asthma attack is technically hyperventilation - it just FEELS like the opposite).

That said, the masks people are wearing or making are not going to cause you to be re-breathing an appreciable amount of your own CO2.

Maybe the scarves Dr Birx wears to look cool have some anti-corona benefits she isnt sharing with us?

Also, the darned things fog up my glasses every time I exhale.