Contact

5102134378

support@sensobjj.com

FREE SHIPPING to the U.S. on ALL ORDERS!

Mask Wearing and the Culture War During Pandemics in the USA

If you’ve followed me at all these last 6 months you’ll know that I was early to speak to the BJJ community about taking Covid-19 seriously, helped publish guidelines for safely re-opening academies during and after the pandemic, and have continued to try and engage people about this topic on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

As a trained biologist with 2 degrees and 15 years of experience, and a firefighter who has specialised in hazmat for the last 14 years, I’ve been deep into the research about how masks may protect you and, more importantly, protect other people.

The potential upside of wearing a mask is so high and the downside is so low that it’s a total no-brainer to me that we should wear them in affected areas, especially when indoors or in close proximity to others. (If you think wearing a mask is a hardship and you’re not an end-stage emphysema patient then you’ve never really known hardship.)

So I am VERY confused by the resistance to wearing masks in public settings, especially indoors.

To understand this resistance I talked to Mitch Lerner, a professor of American history at Ohio State University, about the history of the US response to pandemics in the 20th century.

We start out by talking about the anti-mask organisations that formed during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, and then went on to other topics including the differing opinions about how much government control is acceptable in our lives.

The video of this chat is immediately below, and I include links to the audio-only format below that…

Option 1: My Conversation with Mitch Lerner in Video Form

Option 2: Stream the Audio of The Strenuous Life Podcast Episode 275 on this Page

This version might be good if you’ve got limited bandwidth and don’t want to watch the video…

Option 3: Listen to the Podcast using any Major Podcast Player or App

You can also listen to every episode of The Strenuous Life Podcast (including this one) on phone-based podcast player apps, some of which you already have on your phone!

Here are the links to find the podcast on various players – today’s episode with Mitch Lerner is number 275…

My Frequently Answered Objections

Predictably the comments section of this youtube video immediately became a conspiratorial s***show.  In fact I got the same objections so many times I added a gigantic sticky post right at the top of the comments section.

I hope it addresses some of the more frequently encountered objections

“COVID ISN’T A SERIOUS ILLNESS AND/OR THE PANDEMIC IS FAKE!!!”

Given the politicisation of this virus (especially in the United States) it’s easy to see how someone could come to this conclusion. But it’s almost certainly not true.
The reality is that there is almost certainly an undercounting of deaths, and the way we know this is because of the spikes in excess deaths, especially in areas where testing was initially poor. Please read this article for a better idea of how scientists are analyzing excess deaths and what they’re finding.  Long story short: it looks like we undercounted WAY more covid deaths than we might have OVERCOUNTED.
Also I would say look to countries other than the USA, including recent studies out of Belgium (for example this one), Spain (like this one), or international studies like this one.
All of them show an Infection fatality rate somewhere close to 1%, which is a gigantic number of bodies. There are about 330 million people in the USA, and for a virus this infectious you’re need something like a 70% infection rate to achieve herd immunity.  So that’s potentially 231 million people infected, and a 1% fatality rate would be 2.31 million people.

“MASKS DON’T WORK”

There is both excellent epidemiological data and mechanistic studies that strongly suggest that masks DO work.
Countries that made mask wearing mandatory early on (or at least strongly encouraged it) did MUCH better than countries that didn’t. Places like Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan did MUCH better than England, Italy or the USA, despite being right next door to China.
Even homemade masks give some protection to the wearer but the main function of cotton and surgical masks is to limit the size and concentration of the aerosol plume produced when you breath/laugh/talk/sneeze/cough.
So you wear your mask to protect me, and I wear my mask to protect you.
N95 masks are more uncomfortable but provide great protection for both the wearer and other people because the electrostatic charge within the mask pulls even tiny particles out of the air. Here’s an excellent review about the status of the science around masks with regards to covid. It’s very readable so please check it out:

“MASKS MAKE YOU SICK”

No, mask don’t make you sick (unless you’re an end stage emphysema patient maybe).
There’s a TON of bad information going around on the internet about the evils of masks, but almost all of it is a lie or at least a distortion. If masks made you sick or unhealthy then doctors and nurses would be dropping like flies (and people sanding drywall for a living, and welders, etc.), but they don’t.  For example wearing a heavy duty N95 mask while walking on a treadmill has been shown to have NO effect on blood oxygen.

“WHY IS STEPHAN KESTING DOING THIS?”

I have an MSc in biology, have been a firefighter specialising in hazmat for 21 years, and have practised grappling for 4 decades. Finding myself at the junction of these 3 areas, willing and able to look at the primary scientific documentation, it would be unethical not to speak out.
By speaking out I’m doing what I think is right, not what I think is smart.

The post Mask Wearing and the Culture War During Pandemics in the USA appeared first on Grapplearts.

Stephan Kesting

Older Post
Newer Post
Close (esc)

Popup

Use this popup to embed a mailing list sign up form. Alternatively use it as a simple call to action with a link to a product or a page.

Age verification

By clicking enter you are verifying that you are old enough to consume alcohol.

Enter

Search

Main Menu

Shopping Cart

Your cart is currently empty.
Shop now