I got into the elevator on the tenth floor. It stopped on the eighth and a masked woman stood there. Only two people are allowed in an elevator at a time. So, she could enter. But would she? I wasn’t wearing a mask. I never do in the condominium.
It’s a huge building, a landmark in the city, with a population of about one thousand, like a village. However, with the exception of a handicapped man, I’m the only person who doesn’t wear a mask. Even children are masked. Regulations require that masks be worn in common areas. There are also the social-distancing rules, no vistors, etc. The poor security guards and maintenance people, who are always in the common areas, have to wear masks throughout their shifts.
It’s been almost a year since the city imposed a mask mandate. The condominium immediately imposed regulations even more onerous than required by that by-law. I challenged the city by-law publicly in 2020. No city councillor, including the mayor, has been able to answer my arguments.
The masked woman entered, going all the way down to the recreation concourse, like me. Going facially naked has allowed me some insights into my neighbours’ attitudes. Some will not enter when they see me. (At first, some were hostile and demanded that I mask up. They had silly ignorant rhetorical zingers, like, “Do you wear a seat belt?” But I soon learned to ignore them, since they were probably incapable of critical analysis, but definitely uninterested – by their own admissions – in discussion or debate. I know that they complained to management, but must have been told to lay off, because they no longer try to bully me.) Some even make a big show of it, putting their hands over their masks for extra protection from the toxins and pathogens that I exhale. However, a good proportion cheerfully join me and my dog on the elevator. Many take their masks off as soon as the doors close, as though happy to be in the land of the sane for a minute or two.
Anyway, yesterday, this masked woman entered. I’ll try now to reproduce the conversation as faithfully as I can.
“You don’t wear a mask?” she asked me. Not aggressively. Neutral.
“Why do you ask?” I responded, equally neutral. I used to get my back up right away, but I’m well past that. In fact, the city by-law prohibits people, other than those defined as operators, from even asking the unmasked about their non-compliance. At the same time, the city encourages bullying, as I showed last year in one of my open letters to the city councillors and mayor.
“Just curious,” she said. She was still being civil. However, her question was fundamentally uncivil and, moreover, prohibitted. The only legitimate answer I could have offered (from her perspective, not mine) was the admission of some medical condition that was none of her business. In fact, I am – and probably look – very fit and healthy.
I ventured further than I normally do these days, since she had gone to the trouble of evoking curiosity. At the same time, she kept her mask firmly in place, even lifting up the top end well over her nose. Still, I responded in such a way as to leave the door open, “If you know that wearing a mask is bad for your health, you’re exempt. I’m exempt.”
“Do you never wear a mask?” she now asked. Inside, I started to boil. Immediately, I saw through her little trap. This was all rehearsed. Like a good prosecuting attorney, she was trying to draw out answers that she would then use to build an argument against me. She thought she had me, since we both knew that it was almost impossible to live in Mississauga now and never put on a mask. The game was on.
I forced myself from erupting, although I could hear the anger in my words and feel it in my body. I didn’t want to blow it by ranting like a madman. I wanted to see this to the end. “Are you asking whether or not I can be blackmailed into putting on a mask for a couple of minutes in order to buy necessities of life? Even if that were the case, what would it prove? There are no benefits to wearing a mask and at least twenty known mechanisms of harm. Everyone is exempt, even according to the by-law.”
“I ask because I’m a nurse and I worry about covid transmission.” She sounded sincere, earnest. A responsible health professional trying to educate ignorant people. However, this tactic only set me off more. I remained coherent.
We had arrived at the destination and the door opened as I asked her, “What is your evidence that masks have any effect on infection or transmission?”
“Doctor Fauci has said so,” she said. It was the sincerity in her voice that was infuriating me.
“Doctor Fauci!” I said. “He changes his advice all the time.” I had to calm down. Have you ever thought about a conversation after the fact and chastised yourself for the things you didn’t say? Maybe it’s a bit childish, because at its core is the desire to win, rather than communicate. However, this was one of those conversations that was about winning. And, it wasn’t me who had chosen that frame. It was my nurse neighbour whose identity I didn’t even know, since she was hiding behind a mask. Anyway, what I did say was this, “I’m asking about the science. I don’t care what Fauci says or doesn’t say. What are your reasons for claiming that masks stop transmission of any virus?” What I could have reminded her is that she was offering me an appeal to authority as though it were an argument. It’s a logical fallacy.
She didn’t answer right away, so I filled in the silence, “You’re a nurse? Are you an RN?”
“Yes,” she said. I sensed some pride, as though she was standing on that qualification, much as she had appealed to Doctor Fauci. (Fauci! for God’s sake! Of all the authorities to appeal to!)
We were now standing in the wide hallway. She was on her way to the underground car park. I was going in the same direction, but to the exit.
“I’m a doctor,” I said matter-of-factly, without giving it any weight. A fact. However, if you want to start throwing qualifications around, I have some of my own, most of which I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass for at this point of my life.
She was a little crestfallen. But I ploughed forward relentlessly. “Are you a member of the ONA?” That’s the Ontario Nurses Association, 65,000 members strong.
“Yes.”
“Well then you are aware that your Association won two arbitration hearings against the Ontario Hospital Association, in 2013 and again in 2018.”
“No,” he said. You know when you smell blood. Somebody has attacked you who isn’t up to the fight.
“No?” I ridiculed. “The OHA was trying to force unvaccinated nurses in Ontario to wear face masks during flu season. The nurses proved, in court, over years of hearings, that there was no science behind the supposed asymptomatic transmission of viruses. Unequivocally. No question. The big doctors of the OHA and all their funding had no science to back up their case. And, as I wrote to every city councillor and the mayor last year in open letters, the only science that has appeared since then strengthens the case of the nurses. You are one of those nurses!” I was getting carried away with the delicious irony of this encounter. “And you don’t even know your own history. Instead, you’re doing the work of the doctors of the OHA and the pharmaceuticals that they work for. The same doctors you beat in court!”
She clearly wanted out of this conversation now. But I wasn’t finished. “Here you are, all masked up, chiding random people for not wearing masks when you don’t have a bit of science or medicine to back up your position. Moreover, there are now twenty published mechanisms of harm from wearing masks. At least twenty! I can’t understand what you’re doing!”
She stood there with nothing to say. It was time to leave her to ponder her position. “You can look up my letters to the city and learn something of your history as a nurse … as well as the science you should know before you act publicly to the detriment of the health of your neighbours. They’re all published on covidmakebelieve.com.”
“I will,” she said.
What was the significance of that encounter?
I think that she lives her life in a bubble that empowers her to act unscientifically, tyrannically. She probably believes she’s acting morally. She works in the health sector, for the medical cartel. Maybe she’s one of those nurses who defers to doctors. There are others who are more critical. Her mistake is that she takes her workplace home with her. She sees herself as representing science and healthcare. But, the media cartel supports her completely. Most people who are still viewing the world through the eyes of the media cartel would applaud her ignorance. That’s another discussion. But, someone like me who doesn’t assume the assumptions and take the givens of her world must throw a wrench in her gears.
I think we should all be ready to challenge these people when we get them out of their safe space. We can’t challenge them through the media, because the predators have that locked up. We can’t ask the politicians, because the media and police are protecting them. But we should do all we can to destabilize them when we get them out of their element.