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[ChairmanPoo]

It might explain the slight discomfort, if CO2 is higher than usual your brain might quickly interprete that it's worse than it actually is.

CO2 wont be higher than usual. Its bullshit

[kaijyuu]

Osmotic pressure is far too strong for a little cloth mask to get in the way of the chemical balance of air.

[Starver]

But the CO₂ levels are getting bad anyway, and we don't want to make things worse. After all, the same people who have problems with masks also are completely on top of the science and actively support...  *whisper whisper* ...what was that?  *whisper whisler whisper*  Oh. Right. Never mind, then.

...

When walking out and about and crossing paths with others at the side of the road, if I can't easily step off into the road as (self-serving?) courtesy because of a vehicle - and odds are that I am alone and they are multiple, so it is always the lesser fuss that I do this - then I find myself holding my breath as I give the habitual smile and nod that passes for the absolute minimum greeting I'm prepared to give such a random encounter.

I do this consciously but not deliberately, and I thought about it enough already to benchmark it.  It starts about 10 quick paces from the crossing (so ~20 paces or so of initial separation as we converge), and if sufficient reason arises to advance past smile[1] and nod, and furthermore also some gesture of the hand (though that'd be more for cross-street greetings).

I am left untroubled in releasing my held breath to utter a few words, nor does it trouble my conscience to go against my prior precautions. Though if I do speak, I then do not continue and re-inhale until beyond the encounter, and if I do not I cycle my whole lungs only at that point.

In doing so, I'm doubtless subjecting myself to a degree of anoxia far greater than anything any cloth or other particulate-filtering mask does, for the same amount of time. I have reason to believe I've got good lungs on me, though maybe not as good as in my prime, so perhaps I'm just more resilient to transitory events[2]. Or maybe someone is confusing masks with plastic bags.


[1] Not wearing a mask at all in the open air, as I think I explained before.

[2] As I type this, no effort like walking involved, or even standing up, just tap, tap tapping away, I can use the clock in the corner of the screen and easily hold a deep breath from one minute changing until well after the next one does. Longer if I start to let loose a measured exhale as it 'feels' bad, and beginning with a more sensible preparation than on the spur of the moment gives me beyond double the original time.

[misko27]

What gets me about this is that human bodies are already really good detectors of CO2 build up. But this whole "debate" acts like C02 is gonna be building up in your body like lead or whatever.

Only C02 connection here is that it is indeed really fucking hot, and masks are pretty damn warm.

[ChairmanPoo]

Very good detectors and very good shedding it. I dont like to use the word "impossible" in medicine because odds are if you look you'll find  weird exceptions for everything, but it's highly unlikely to find someone with normal oxygen levels and high CO2.

[Reelya]

Clickbait headline today locally: they're saying a discount pharmacy is selling face masks for $249. The actual headline is "Priceline sells face mask for $249 amid Victoria restrictions".
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/face-masks-priceline-sells-face-mask-for-249-amid-victoria-restrictions/news-story/41c76152f2231857472d44c181b3325c

However, what they omit to mention though you can see it in the pictures is that it's for a box of 50 KN95 type masks. Because they wrote "face mask" as singular in the headline they can't really say here that it was an interpretation issue.

EDIT: it looks like they actually changed the headline since that story was posted. I guess they got complaints about how clickbaity it was. but notice that they added the 50 in but didn't actually pluralize the word masks. Now the headline is "Priceline sells 50 face mask for $249 amid Victoria restrictions", which still hints back to the original headline.

[Starver]

I'd love to see the timeline where Trump signs an EO to wear masks though. That would be fascinating.

Surprisingly close: https://mobile.twitter.com/James78141017/status/1285407125989031936

(Link is typical Trumpite responder, shocked to see a mask 'recomendation' but generously "still supportive". No parody involved, SFAICT, though maybe some bottedness. Plenty of other examples of this, and denialists even accusing him of selling out to the 'common cold'/etc, if you go back up to Trump's level and look for other replies.)

[Zangi]

Huh, Kevin Sorbo(Hercules) is deep red conspiracist.

[Iduno]

Huh, Kevin Sorbo(Hercules) is deep red conspiracist.

Yeah, he was a sexist shitbag back when Hercules and Xena were on TV. No real surprise he still is.

[nenjin]

God I'm so sick of all the misinformation....

Friend sends me a video. It's some chick saying the following:

"We're being scammed by the hospitals and the media. Go to Google and type in any random 3 digit number + new cases. You'll find a result for every number no matter what."

Let's break this down:

The implication is that it's a conspiracy between Google and the media to generate false stories about covid. In order for that work, Google would have to create pages, dynamically, on hundreds of websites, with a byline and a contributor's name.

It couldn't POSSIBLY be that over a 5 month time frame, with hundred and hundreds of counties in every state reporting cases, that conceivably most numbers will show up in a google search. Most telling was that this bitch didn't READ anything other than the results, she just kept googling more crap.

Every news agency and county health department, hospital administrator, hospital staff recording data, would have to be on it.

It's like....when 9/11 happened and people asserted it was a conspiracy, the skeptics rightly laid out aalllllll the things that would have to happen, how many people would have to be involved in said conspiracy for it to actually work.

And that's just the fucking US! No, now it's a GLOBAL CONSPIRASERZ, they'll all in on it. Everyone, everywhere. You know what they call that in medicine? Paranoid delusions.

What's most galling is the people who claim they're being manipulated ARE being manipulated...just not be the people they think or in the method they think it's happening, or for the reasons they think it's happening.

Where the fuck did people's critical thinking skills go? Goddamnit, social media and the internet have completely neutered the average person's ability to actually use their brains.

And yet when the White House tries to centralize all this data so it can be manipulated.....oh, suddenly, that's acceptable. We go from this completely unrealistic global conspiracy that can't even survive under its own proposed weight.....to a small handful of people manipulating the data, and that is somehow less suspicious.

[MrRoboto75]

Where the fuck did people's critical thinking skills go?

The same place school budgets and curriculum went.  The garbage.

[Telgin]

I think conspiracy theories must tickle a similar part of the brain as cocaine for those who are susceptible to them.  Like being on the inside and knowing something that "they" don't want you to know and that the populace doesn't know gives them some feeling of superiority and accomplishment while driving them to seek ever more.

Much like those around here who think the government cannot do anything right, so why do we give it any power to do anything, yet think it's able to keep these grand and intricate conspiracies in check somehow.

And some are so bizarre.  Why did Bill Gates suddenly start showing up in conspiracies about injecting people with The Mark of the Beast through COVID-19 vaccines?  Or that the government is going to institute socialism by reclaiming all of our coins, which is the current cause of the coin shortage?

[nenjin]

My basic take these days: "if you think you're woke, get the fuck out of my face." I don't care what side of the spectrum you hail from. Progressive wokeness was already on my nerves, but this new rash of "conspiracy wokeness" from the other side is arguably even more obnoxious.

[Starver]

I can tell you about the Bill Gates one. There was suggestion that an 'invisible tattoo' could be made alongside vital vaccine injections to help maintain an accurate personal record of healthcare, where central records are not easy to maintain. There would be no way of tracking people with this method, it'd just be like stamps on documents you already take with you (and can never lose).

Separate talk was had of Digital Certificates to handle such logistics, where there's already a central infrastructure that they can be integrated with. And I think China implemented this, QR codes you could present on your smartphone at checkpoints, ostensibly less privacy-destroying than any other method of 'passporting' individuals, especially for China.

I believe it was a (typically) spurious remark by Alex Jones or someone of his ilk that first claimed "injectable microchips", formed out of whole-cloth from his own disconnected-from-reality imagination, which then of course became "RFID nanochips floating in your bloodstream... You know, like the metal strips in banknotes that can be scanned from a block away..." or similar.

[McTraveller]

I learned a new phrase recently: "Unfounded certainty."

It's not causal, just descriptive, but it fits.