The Oddness Of Not Listening To Your Common Sense.

 The lure of a fashionable mask proves too great.

Most of winter and spring all of us had to wear masks when out in public. In supermarkets, pharmacies, doctor's rooms etc and of course while walking among people. Not just any mask, but the illustrious N95 or FFP2 mask.

It took a while before they mandated that only those masks could be worn and only after they found out ( scientifically of course ) that ordinary masks, bandannas, cloths or surgical masks aren't effective enough. Or rather, not as effective as the N95/FFP2 ones, which are said to keep out in the order of 95% of the possible viral load and also keep it in. Don't want to infect others!

Fair enough and good show that they admitted being wrong on earlier mask policies and I for one felt and still feel safe wearing these effective masks. Why on earth would I want to downgrade and start wearing pieces of material over my face when it hardly keeps out the bugs?

Well, Austria relaxed their mask policies and now only the essential shops need to be entered wearing a mask. Any mask because they dropped the FFP2 requirement! What on earth? Why on earth? And even more baffling, why are so many suddenly sporting any mask but the most effective one? Doesn't make any sense unless there is a shortage of them.

Today at the supermarket I was surrounded by folks wearing trendy face coverings again. One or two FFP2 maskers but honestly, I think they wore it out of convenience because they had them dangling off their rear view mirror in their car.

This shift in mask wearing policy is baffling considering that the number of new cases has shot up again and winter is already beckoning from the distance. Today's number of new cases was 850, which is up over 300 from yesterday. A lot of those new cases are from holiday makers returning home.

 Don't get me started on the stupidity of going on a holiday abroad when the pandemic isn't over yet. 

It doesn't mean that a lot of infection happens while we are out shopping but if one set of masks has proven to be the most effective in keeping out tiny particles that do want to infect us, why change to a less efficient model?

Biggi