“ Perhaps the greatest harm from universal masking is its use as an instrument to promote fear. Mask mandates are compelled speech—mandatorily displayed and ubiquitous government propaganda designed to instill panic amid a virus that is, for most people, no more deadly than the seasonal flu.
In this way, masks are not substitutes for more draconian mitigation measures like lockdowns. They are a necessary prerequisite. ”
And the bystanders cheer. “ It is remarkable that governments relying so heavily on masks as policy have been so uninterested in developing data showing whether they actually work. In the absence of such evidence, masks are effectively a government-mandated security blanket.
Compulsory masking, though, is an extraordinary demonstration of government power over the individual. As Peter Hitchens astutely points out, “[t]he Covid Muzzle demands an extraordinary act of personal self-cancellation. At a recent anti-lockdown demonstration in Melbourne, police were observed forcibly placing these muzzles on the faces of arrested protesters already in handcuffs and powerless to resist. The officers involved, many of them in heavy body armour, unwittingly illustrated their real purpose — to turn us into mouthless, voiceless servants of power.”