masks are coming back

because we are led by preposterous clowns and cravens

masks have become a disease, and the disease looks increasingly chronic.

because anxious people, once addled and conditioned, are incredibly difficult to return to anything like an even keel.

they revert and “fall off the wagon” back into their performative addictions.

as many of you have likely heard me describe over the last couple of years, puerto rico has been one of the worst covid policy disasters around and arguably the flat out worst in the entire united states.

we had full lockdowns for months. police would swarm you if you went out of the street alone and ask where you were going. they closed the beaches. we had over 18 months of curfews, business closures, capacity limitations, and all manner of ridiculous performative mitigation mandates including vaccine passports to enter any bar or restaurant or business apart from grocery and drugs stores.

i watched police pull a surfer out of the water where he was surfing alone, 100 yards offshore.

we really lost it down here, and most of it made zero sense.

some examples:

• no alcohol to be sold on sunday and all restaurants to be closed

• driven only permitted on even or odd days depending on your license plate number

• mandated hand sanitizing to enter any business

• mandated temperature checks with gear so absurd it generally reads about 94 degrees

• and, of course, everyone’s favorite: masks fricking everywhere

the isla del encanto went absolutely nut for masks. that mandate was dropped only about 6 weeks ago.

and still, people wear them.

25% of folks you see on the street do. 95% in the grocery store. many put them on to enter restaurants then take them off when they sit. (one of the stupider habits)

many restaurants still require staff to mask because so much of this whole thing is deeply classist.

kids in schools have NEVER been allowed out of masks and still are not.

when i go to the gym (only mask free for 6 weeks) people are still walking around with chin masks on. they cannot seem to quite bear to stop the “team mask” signaling despite not covering their nose or mouth.

that’s not being conscientious. that’s damage. it’s psychological harm.

masks are completely useless vs covid. this has been proven 1,000 times and has been manifestly clear since before covid even began.

your mask protects me

and masks are TOXIC. people hate them. they disrupt human contact and empathy. they dehumanize. they make you absolutely crazy.

the outbreak of airplane violence and its sudden cessation speak volumes.

The New York Times @nytimes

The number of unruly air passenger incidents reached its lowest level in the U.S. since 2020, a week after a federal judge in Florida struck down a government mask mandate on public transportation, according to FAA data.

nyti.msUnruly air passenger rates declined in the U.S. after mask mandates were suspended.The F.A.A. also introduced a “zero tolerance” policy against poor passenger behavior earlier this year.

anyone seen an airplane super-spread event yet? yeah, me either.

but puerto rico being puerto rico, we were ALWAYS going to do the wrong thing.

and so here we go, doing it again:

our governor, too craven to hold the hatchet himself, has punted this power and prerogative to our lunatic health minister carlos lopez, a man whose ignorance is surpassed only by his arrogance and who lacks even a basic grasp of outcomes studies or statistics, much less cost/benefit analysis or a sense of individual rights.

and he gets to make policy all on his own.

his decree:

(translation)

ARTICLE 7. MANDATORY PREVENTIVE MEASURES
a) Every natural person must comply with the following:
1. Cover your nose and mouth at all times by wearing a mask while
is outside your home, whether in closed spaces or in open areas,
even if they are partially or completely inoculated against COVID-19. The use
mask will not be required while traveling in your car alone or when
is accompanied only by members of his family unit.
2. Disinfect your hands before entering and leaving closed spaces

and, fwiw, this mandatory hand sanitizing is incredibly annoying. it means a guard at every door or every business creating lines and making you spray nasty crap on your hands. it’s stupid, invasive, inconvenient, and pointless.

we did it for two years. apparently, that’s coming back too probably because someone figured out how to get a kickback on the sanitizer sales.

bizarrely, this new imposition is not to commence until may 30th, over 3 weeks from now.

and this is how you know it’s both complete BS and complete opportunism.

the reason PR “cases” are so high is that they are testing 20% of school kids daily in many schools. they use rapid tests and only report positives, so this looks like a sky high positivity rate, but it’s really just massive statistical salting.

lopez likely knows this and just does not care. he’s timing this to the end of the school term so that it will look like it worked.

the shamans have finally figured out how to time their sun dances to just before sunrise.

ugh.

perhaps more provocative, the rage this has kicked off all over the island may be tactical.

there is a massive scandal going on here right now with numerous mayors getting swept up in FBI raids over corruption and bribery.

the mayor of guaynabo went down in december.

this week, 2 more dropped.

there are only 78 mayors on this whole island. 6 arrests in 2 years is an 8% takedown rate. only the most gullible would presume this trend was about to end.

so you drop a distraction bomb like this to get everyone off onto another topic.

they’ve done it before. ousted governor (corruption, generally being a badmouthing bad guy) ricky rossello was all about this. in the infamous telegram chats that exposed him, he spoke of it directly. they were in trouble on corruption, so they leaked the news on the warehouse full of bottled water that was never distributed during hurricane maria and moved the news cycle. they called it “throwing red meat to the reporters.”

are they doing it again?

because ricky sure jumped in.

(also note, despite some bioengineering education, his whole career in science appears to be having claimed to have invented some drugs at a chinese fraudco called beijing prosperous biopharm he “co-founded.” none ever went anywhere, including into trials.)

fraud really seems to follow this guy around. i wonder if he’s nervous about something again and eliciting aid to toss out tinsel?

he and pierluisi share a political party (PNP). it’s all the same gang, so expecting to see the same bag of tricks does not seem outlandish.

is this just another media stunt? is that why there is such a long delay on implementation?

will perdro come back in 2 weeks and play “mr reasonable” and talk this down or reduce its scope?

or is it just a sincere return to stupidity?

alas, it’s puerto rico so the bet between corruption and manipulation vs stupidity is always a “3 to 2 the field” and pick ‘em sort of wager.

guess we’ll see, but i can promise this: a return to masking here will be met with enormous anger. even here, most people are done with this.