7 January

I’m the only person at work still wearing a mask, and probably the only person among my immediate friends who still does as well. Even before Covid, mask-wearing was common in Asia. They were hit by the original SARS virus in the early 2000s, and the practice then became mainstream and ongoing. That could have been here too, except politicians and popular influencers decided to make that into a team sport. I haven’t been sick in over 5 years. I hate wearing a mask, but in the absence of meaningful action on control of Covid spread and attention to public building ventilation, I’m with Asia on this. The more you learn about infection, the more determined you are to avoid all infections. There are no harmless infections. Common cold virus has been found in the cerebro-spinal fluid of people with conditions like Parkinsons. Infection fucks you up. It’s easiest to go with what everybody else is doing, but infection doesn’t care what everybody is doing. It just likes to kill. And it particularly likes to take its time doing it, after you think it’s gone. You feeling ‘sick‘ is just its on-ramp into your body. Only then does it really get to work, often over a period of years. Once inside you there’s virtually no chance of removing it. Politicians rely upon our everyday experience of recovering from many infections to say they’re even healthy for us and build up our immune systems! Morons. For those who say ’but you have to live your life’, that’s why humans invented public health. To let us live our lives, WITHOUT infections. Public health controls the spread of infection, and usually engineers are brought in to do the heavy lifting. All diseases can be controlled. Public health has now been sidelined by politicians and social media influencers. We’re rushing back to the Middle Ages.