Is it really so stupid to wear masks in the car while alone?
People often state that they think it’s especially ridiculous when they see people driving their cars, all alone, and wearing their masks. And on the face of it (ha!) it would indeed seem to be. After all, who’s the driver protecting?
But I think there’s a simple explanation in many cases, and it’s not mass stupidity. Or, maybe I’d just like to believe it’s not mass stupidity. But I think a lot of them are probably just going from errand to errand, on fairly short trips. After all, longer road trips are somewhat curtailed these days.
So on short trips there’s an argument for not taking your mask off in the car. After all, you’d have to handle it each time (perhaps after touching things and interacting with people in stores), find a clean place in the car to put it, and then handle it again to put it on for the next store. If you have a comfortable mask and are just driving a short hop, why bother?
As for walking or jogging alone in a park or on a beach and wearing a mask – you might be alone at a certain moment, but someone can come close to you, and again you’d then have to put the mask on again, off and on, off and on, with no good place to put it in-between and handling it every single time. And if you don’t wear the mask and someone walks along a path and comes close to you, that person might reprimand you. So I think many people might just elect to keep the mask on to avoid the hassle.
I don’t wear a mask when outside at all, unless I’m visiting someone who has asked me to. Almost every day, I do a fast walk outside for nearly an hour, without a mask. But it’s not on a narrow path. I haven’t yet encountered any SJWs, at least not any vocal ones who give me a tongue-lashing about it. I do wear a mask in stores (it’s required for the most part), and I take it off in the car because I hate wearing it. But I think I understand why someone else might have good reasons to keep it on.
[ADDENDUM: In response to some comments in the thread, I want to add that we don’t have to wear masks while outside in order to avoid giving offense. That’s our decision, to do it or not to do it. I don’t do it.
And you may think that those who give into it and do wear masks under circumstances such as jogging or bicycling in order to avoid a hassle are cowardly. But I don’t think they are stupid. There is a logical reason for it.
As far as how long the COVID-induced madness will last, I think a long time, unfortunately. I think if a vaccine comes along the majority of people will abandon it, but some will persist. And I think many young children in particular will be permanently harmed by the idea that the world is such a dangerous place and they must avoid contact with others in order to be safe.]
But you might meet a Karen carrying a can of mace, that’s why you must never walk, run, bicycle, or skydive without wearing your mask. 😉
Yes, it’s silly and stupid. Stupid, because the mask doesn’t filter out the COVID-19 virus and what droplets it can filter out are your own and trapped inside for your to re-breathe. Silly because you’re using the mask’s useful life up by breathing through it when you’re not only alone but in a close vehicle and thereby reducing its useful life in circumstances when it might – though likely does not – filter out some disease-causing micro-critter. (If you’re lucky you have a washable one and so you’re only increasing your laundry work.)
om: that’s a good reason not to leave home without your handgun, preferably the one you’re most practiced with. Karens are more deadly than the virus – you see – and crazy people are dangerous, to quote the author of “The Other McClain” blog.
Wearing a mask outdoors is stupid (there I said it 🙂 ), and so is wearing one in a car by yourself. Outside the aerosol which is leaking from around and through all these masks disperses rapidly rendering it very dilute. The only danger outside is if someone literally got in your face yelling. The whole “justification” for wearing masks now is “to protect the other person”. So who are these people protecting wearing a mask alone in a car?? As far as the guidelines of not touching the mask, or changing masks, etc; I see literally no one following those rules. And that includes about 150 people I see at the museum I volunteer at every Saturday. People put them on because they have to. The vast majority wear them around their chin or expose their nose and immediately take them off if no one is close by. It’s all such a friggin’ waste.
You’re too kind Neo, they are being stupid. I take it as a symptom of the population becoming sheep.
Well, we know from Montage that the beach is especially dangerous and so it must follow that you must also wear your mask when swimming, either above or below the water. Just trying to help.
what exactly is so stupid about saving yourself from the hassle of having to take the facecover on and off so many times in a day while having pretty much nothing to lose?
No, it’s stupidity. I’ve seen people on bikes wear them…really?
Not everyone who wears a mask is a Karen.
But every Karen wears a mask.
I won’t go so far as to say “stupid,” but only because I try to be nice! I hate masks. How about silly?
I put one on the second before I step into a store, and take it off the second I’m out the door. It would not matter one bit if I were going to multiple places, I still wouldn’t leave it on in the car. Nor will I wear one outside. Even if King Jay were to demand it.
I use the same mask over and over again, no matter how many times I’ve touched it. Except I do have a cloth one that I wash periodically because it gets lipstick on the inside!
Most masks are very easy to remove. Mine have the rubber band that slip around my ears. Just takes a second or two put on or take off. Don’t even have to take it all the way off, just off one ear.
Put your mask on the car dashboard in the sun. That helps to disinfect it.
Wearing a car or outside when not in immediate proximity to someone is ridiculous.
I’m equally depressed by the ferocity with which some people oppose/support masks and others oppose/support hydroxchloroquine. It’s 99% politically motivated. That last 1% is factual evidence providing the thinnest of cover for an otherwise naked bias.
As a small-government conservative, I’ve consistently hoped for the depoliticization of life beyond the legitimately narrow sphere of politics itself. Let me now stand as living proof that hope does not spring eternal. Bring on the totalitarians.
tina:
I’m talking primarily about people in cars on short hops and people on trails outside, or places where even if they’re not passing other people every moment they could do so quite often.
And it depends where one is riding a bike. If a person is riding a bike right near the sidewalk, he or she will be passing very close to other people continually.
I can easily see why it might make sense in certain circumstances to avoid the hassle and wear the thing, even on a bike, if you’re passing very near pedestrians. I’ve had unmasked bikers whiz past me when I’m walking on the sidewalk, and they are less than a foot from me – for a very short while, of course. I don’t think there’s danger in that, actually, but if the biker is going to be doing that, I can see that the biker might decide to wear a mask to avoid upsetting other people.
Yeah it’s stupid. Maybe for very brief moments but I’ve seen people driving down freeway alone and all outside is dumb. I’ve also noticed it’s mostly younger people wearing them outside all by themselves in a park. Partly trendy fashion statement mixed with a big dose of fear caused by too much social media and too little understanding of math and probability.
Well you need to sustained exposure to someone so walking or riding by someone is very, very low risk.
And the avoiding upsetting other people is giving in to madness. How long do we have to worry about upsetting these people?
Griffin:
I’m puzzled by this blanket assertion that “it’s stupid,” when you then limit the “stupid” to certain circumstances. Yes, if someone is on the highway for more than a few minutes or so (sometimes people are on highways for short hops, but that’s probably not the majority) and you see a person there with a mask on, alone in the car, that seems quite stupid. But that’s hardly the usual case. The usual case is someone driving around in a small town or a city, doing errand. And that is not necessarily stupid for the reason I mentioned.
And again, when you say “all by themselves in a park,” what do you mean? Are they on a trail where other people run or walk? If they’re walking fast or running, it doesn’t take long to cover territory and then encounter another person also walking fast or running. So that’s not stupid, either, if a person wants to avoid being hassled by the other person. You may think it’s unnecessary or even cowardly, but it’s not necessarily stupid. I don’t have to agree with it or do it to find reasons to say it’s not stupid.
Of course, if a person is really far far away from people then it really IS stupid. But then, how is it that you’re seeing them, if they’re far away from other people?
gwynmir,
Hear, hear! That is me minus the lipstick. Thankfully I don’t have to wear one all day so when I do it’s for the briefest time possible. Other than medical settings it is all ridiculous. The countless studies from before the hysteria downplaying all of this stuff are very revealing because they were produced in clearer times.
Griffin:
As I said, you and I don’t have to wear masks in order to avoid giving offense. That’s our decision, to do it or not to do it.
And you may think those who give into it and do wear masks to avoid a hassle are cowardly, but they are not stupid. There is a logical reason for it.
As far as how long the madness will last, I think a long time, unfortunately. I think if a vaccine comes along the majority of people will abandon it, but some will persist. And I think many children in particular will be permanently harmed by the idea that the world is such a dangerous place and they must avoid contact with others in order to be safe.
Joe Biden wears his mask when he showers.
“But I think there’s a simple explanation in many cases, and it’s not mass stupidity.”
Oh so very very very very very pretty to think so.
neo,
Ok, you used ‘stupid’ in your title but I can go with silly just fine and I never said cowardly I just think it is feeding into troubled people’s irrational fears.
Anywhere outside is pretty much unnecessary unless in very crowded conditions. It just is. Virtually no one was ever advocating for that before this.
I just refuse to accept that this will go on as a requirement. It makes no sense. Why are we catering to the most irrational among us?
Wanna wear a mask forever fine have at it but I refuse to accept this.
A Miami-Dade commissioner actually said it’s not about whether masks are effective but about SIGNALLLY OBEDIENCE and that about says it all.
om,
Well we haven’t heard from Montage lately on whether he is still walking a block or two over from the beach while keeping a weary eye on that dangerous beach because science and government of course.
Wearing a mask while running? Fools who do this must have respiration rates that pretty low (as is their pace). It’s fun (not) running when it is below zero and your face mask is iced over, so based on that experience I know better than to run wearing a mask or respirator. But I’ve only been running for 50+ years so what would I know?
Griffin:
Obviously I’m not accepting it. As I said, I don’t wear masks outside. I only wear them in stores where required, or when I’m visiting a friend who has asked me to.
But there is no limit to the desire of many officials to control us, and many people will accept that. In addition, a lot of people have become very very frightened.
One of the things I said to friends when this whole thing began is that we are going to become a society of people with OCD. And that’s what’s happened. I don’t know how permanent it will be, but as I wrote earlier I am especially concerned about young children being raised this way.
neo,
Yes, the children in masks and being inundated with this stuff and being incapable of processing risk is a big issue we are going to be facing. This was a problem before all this with a ‘safety uber alles’ attitude in a lot of people.
There are businesses in some sort of weird co dependent relationship with these over fearful people too. Trader Joe’s is the most infuriating place I’ve been in they walk around scolding customers about proper mask etiquette while other employees walk around obsessively wiping stuff down.
It’s absolute craziness and I can’t stand it and will never accept it.
I’ve been wearing a mask outside when running outside for months now, because I was sick of having women pointing and screaming “Murderer! Murderer!” at me from 50 feet away.
I have to bring multiple masks with me to run, because they inevitably become too soaked and stick to my nose, making it really difficult to breathe.
Griifin, many businesses, and the museum I volunteer at, specifically target people’s fear: “Look at how safe our establishment is! Look at what we are doing to protect you!”
I said many months ago about this covid fear being mass hysteria, and businesses must play to that to survive. It’s disgusting to me, but it seems to be the reality. In the back room when it’s just the paid museum staff and us volunteers, everyone pretty much acknowledges that it’s all BS. But we get visitor statements like “we feel so safe coming here and also bringing the kids.” Of course this is CT, I suspect in South Dakota the attitudes might be different.
And before someone calls me a coward for doing so, all it takes is one of these Karens to snap a picture of me and post it on social media. If someone where I worked, especially one of my bosses, notices that picture, it would lead to my immediate firing.
physicsguy,
Yes, and many businesses are flat out lying. They say they are limiting hours for safety reasons when really it’s to lower costs (which I totally get). Some hotels make a big deal about how no one has entered your room for 24 hours and no one will enter during your stay for safety when it is more likely because they have reduced housekeeping staff for cost reasons.
We care about you works better than we have laid off 75% of our staff.
kantak:
That’s the sort of thing I mean.
kantak:
The social media mau mauing (racist) aspect of enforced compliance is not surprising. I suspect it is why the malleable youth don’t want to be seen not complying with the group think.
It isn’t a factor where I live and work and most everyone I see when running in the parks or on the trails do not wear masks. Sorry to hear you live in such a repressive environment.
Back in the day you had to be wary of random red-necks that would try to run you off the road (shoulder). Hence you always ran facing traffic. We didn’t have sidewalks or many running trails where I grew up. Red-necks were not always nice people.
Neo, you’re usually on the ball, but you muffed this one. Mask wearing for the most part is pure virtue signaling, often coupled with mind crippling fear induced by total credulousness about obvious propaganda. Practiced passionately by sheeple who live in fear of peer pressure.
I wear a mask in Costco, below my nose. If asked to cover my nose I say no, I don’t have to, and they back off.
I don’t ever wear one elsewhere.
I see friends walk from their car or homes to our tennis courts, wearing a mask with nobody near them until they get to the courts, where multiple people are gathered , enough to fill 2-3 courts. Whereupon they remove the mask.
I think to myself: “moron!”
Mass wearing of masks serves to reinforce the fear that has been instilled by the politicians, Fauci, Birx, and media. As more people start thinking and exercising independent thought, mask wearing will dwindle and those Mask Nazis wearing them will finally realize how stupid they look and quit.
From what I’ve seen, the young and ignorant will be the last to abandon them.
Bill:
I think you are misunderstanding this post and my meaning.
I am not talking about what mask-wearing is, or whether it’s valid or not, or why people wear or don’t wear masks, or whether they should. I’ve already written on that in other posts and comments.
This is about one thing: whether people who already wear masks for various reasons are stupid if they wear them in cars while alone, or when on trails outside. I am giving alternate and un-stupid possible reasons why they might do so.
It’s not just mask issues. What happens when they find a vaccination for COVID-19. Will it be mandatory that people get a shot? Will Costco/Lowe’s/Walmart mandate that you verify the inoculation before you can enter their stores? It starting with mandatory masks and may end up with people being forced to wear stars on their clothes or having a number tattooed on their forearm if they haven’t complied..We’re headed down a very dark road
I read one article near the beginning of all this about a man who was wearing a mask while driving and ended up passing out at the wheel due to oxygen deprivation. That’s what I think of when I see people in cars with masks, though I don’t think it’s a likely problem for people without preexisting health problems. I know I’ve just forgotten about it on my face more than once on a short drive–I work in a place that has stayed open this whole time and that required masks of its employees early, so I am unfortunately almost used to the awful little things. (Not completely, because I don’t think I’ll ever get USED to not being able to breathe easily. I swear all the politicians putting these mandates into effect have NOT tried a 40 hour work week while wearing a mask the whole time, or else there would be far fewer mandates.)
On the other hand, I have no desire to upset anyone who has been genuinely frightened by their own health issues or the media’s scare tactics, and I also know that businesses could be fined if they don’t enforce the mandates. So I wear them wherever they’re required or if I’m talking to someone who wants masks to be on, and I don’t fuss at anyone about it, because it’s not THEIR fault and if I don’t like it then I can be the one to go elsewhere.
John Dough:
You can find an article here about whether masks will be mandated.
The Australian PM has said they will be mandatory in his country, by the way.
kantak on August 24, 2020 at 6:00 pm said:
The 3m 7500 half respirator is much better for air quality and oxygen. It makes you officially part of the apocalypse too, as facial recognition will have an even more difficult time.
having a number tattooed on their forearm if they haven’t complied
Microsoft and Alphabet have a holographic tattoo dot that is scannable and allows you to show your waxxine papers.
It is pretty obvious that Yammer has never worn his 3M 7500 air-purifying respirator or any other air purifying respirator when doing any physically demanding activity.
Without a good seal to your own face it won’t protect you, if it it has an exhalation valve or has an ineffective seal to your face it doesn’t protect anyone else, so wear whatever is lightest and least expensive to placate and calm the Karens,
By my reckoning, this is Week 25. I’ve been saying since Week 3 at the very latest that this is all over WHEN WE ALL AGREE THAT IT IS.
The fact that people near me — in a nowhere town — are driving around in closed cars with the Sock of Submission on their faces for no obvious purpose at all tells me that the country is probably fractured beyond repair.
I don’t always wear a mask, but when I do — I make sure it’s worth the trouble.
https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/08/Screen-Shot-2020-08-17-at-7.52.28-PM.png?w=1004&ssl=1
LYNN HARGROVE on August 24, 2020 at 4:30 pm said:
“Put your mask on the car dashboard in the sun. That helps to disinfect it.”
Do you (or anyone else here) have a reference supporting this assertion? I would like it to be true but I believe it is not (directly) valid. My brief search indicates ultraviolet (UV) comes in three bands, UV-A, B, and C. UV-C is the most effective at disinfecting viruses and microbes but the UV-C in sunlight is blocked by the ozone layer. Using special lamps to generate UV-C for disinfection purposes is now common but requires protecting people from exposure to avoid skin cancers, etc. Buying one for personal home use to disinfect a room might cost around $500 (up to much more). Devices to treat smaller objects may be less.
The UV-A,B bands that might penetrate your windshield get converted to infrared and cause the interior of your car to heat up (i.e., greenhouse effect). This temperature rise (to maybe 120 degrees or so?) might kill/disable the virus by itself. I sure hope so as I now typically leave my N95 mask in the car in the Florida sun, but not on the dashboard. I have put my mask out in direct sunlight for 20 minutes or so hoping it would be beneficial – but I was probably fooling myself.
I forget to put a mask on when I get to the store, then I forget to take it off on the drive home. Otherwise I don’t wear one outside. It never occurs to me.
AesopFan aka “Bluebeard” LOL! I like the mask, lower-right. Bluebeard.
There was a guy who crashed because he wore his mask for too long in the car and its interference with breathing made him pass out.
Driving around here in the California South Bay Area, with the smoke (cough) from the fires over the hills to the north, and the smoke (cough, cough) from the fires over the hills to the west, and the smoke (cough, cough, cough) from the fires just barely over the hills to the east, makes me wish that I had something more effective than a fabric mask to wear in the car.
(Thank God the fires are still over the hills from the bay, but a number of the outlying communities have been evacuated.)
Personally, I feel that we have all been bullied into this fear-inducing, masked madness.
I do go along with it in places that require it by policy. They are private businesses, and have the right to set the rules as they see fit.
Nevertheless, I have extreme doubts regarding it’s efficacy in preventing transmission. Furthermore, I believe that it is doing a great deal of psychological damage by isolating us and preventing the casual social interactions that help remind us that we live within a social matrix.
Roy, I agree about the psychological damage imposed. It’s the removal of much of the range of facial expressions that I think about. This is why I’ve not gone to some restaurants or things like that where I might otherwise spend time, because so much of the experience at a bar or something is in the social interaction, which depends to a considerable degree on seeing someone’s face.
I was just thinking… I wonder how the Asian societies that have more of a habit of public mask-wearing cope with this aspect. I imagine that because their modes of expression of emotion and so on in public are habitually more restrained anyway, maybe they don’t feel as much of this type of social handicap from this.
This post is evidence on why conservatives are merely the shadow of radicals, meekly accepting their commands, albeit a bit slower then the radicals themselves. Your ideological enemies stake out a position and use ancient human persuasion methods (namely: shame, normalcy-enforcement, guilt) to obtain and maintain power, and here you are giving cover to them.
I like your stuff and prefer nice people being nice in a vacuum, but politics is war and you’re offering an olive branch to the enemy. We can and should use shame, guilt, and normalcy-enforcement for our own ends, including calling out certain behaviors (nearly all of which are “well-meaning”) as “stupid”. I mean, that’s the damned LEAST we could do. Or we could split hairs between “stupid” and “ill-advised” or “counter-productive” but frankly none of that matters in the least. Tone policing will not win this thing.
Sam:
You are ignoring what this post is about.
It’s not about whether mask-wearing is stupid, right or wrong, or whether people should comply with it or not.
It is about whether people already complying are stupid for wearing masks in their car while alone. I am explaining a non-stupid reason that those people might do so.
The post has nothing to do with the merits of mask-wearing or whether it is advisable to rebel against it.
Wearing a mask inside the car is just as ineffective as outside, but may be worse because of the greenhouse effect, which limits circulation inside the car cabin that acts as a collector.
2020 08 24 Still Right
2% is the magic number. Which we’re still NOT admitting. And which is still in evidence. Find the exception if you wish to argue otherwise; command on my forum where it is. And by the way, masks not only don’t work in a controlled trial in an operating room NOT wearing them cut infection rates IN HALF. The belief in them is VOODOO.
Statistics. It probably depends on the pathogen and transmission mode, the particulate and the environment. The mask mandate was ordered based on intuitive evidence and emotional suppression. So far, the paths in each jurisdiction follow the same curves, and the peaks precede the mitigation methods, with exception for Planned Parent and similar bad choices.
Got out the N 95 mask to walk today, in the San Jose area. It did reduce some smoke. Normally wear a torn mask that covers my beard when we walk. It makes my wife happy. She watches MSNBC. We haven’t killed each other yet.
The organization I work for does work for the CDC. They sent us some cloth masks, pointing out they were not to be used when near those infected by the virus. Also, an email told us”for your safety, employees should remove their face covering while driving between assignments.”
So the mask is theater. One way it endangers us is that it creates a false sense of security, so people wearing masks think the mask is a magic protection, and walk right next to you. I have a cane that I have used to ward off someone entering my cone.
Back early in the year, since I went to medical offices as part of my job, I needed to learn about masks. Since the CDC said they didn’t help, I researched them. There wasn’t much info available that said they were useful.
I figured it was like the flu shot, even if it wasn’t very effective, at least it would help. So I started wearing them in stores before almost everyone, since we had a supply of masks. Now I am on the other side, still wear them inside, and to please my wife. They may help a little, but separation is much more important, also having a disposable glove to touch any surface when I am in a store of bank. Wash hands when you return home!
“Devices to treat smaller objects may be less.” – R2L
I just got a hand-held UV light at Ace for $22.
No way to test if it is actually doing anything, but I’m not going to depend on it as a universal panacea.
Just a possible addition to the viral-load-reducing protocol.