Leeches, Not Masks

     While your humble author has fisked Mrs. Hoyt’s anti-mask rants before, it is only fair to give voice to the other side, so in the spirit of balance, the following scientific missive from famed physician barber Theodoric of York is presented.

Theodoric of York, COVID-19 Health Specialist

I am please that Sarah A. Hoyt wishes to save people from the dangers of masks and bring us back to the historically proven methods of medicine such as leeches. Rather than test our assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a “scientific method” , she recognizes that we should blindly folow the medical traditions and superstitions of past centuries! As she notes:

“Our ancestors might not have had the germ theory or a precise understanding of how disease was passed on. However, they were practical people, by and large. Had to be, since they lived on the cutting edge between nature and civilization. They lost more babies to disease (and famine) than they reared and their healthy productive lives were maybe 20 years.”

I am in complete agreement with her that that masks are not magic and ought to be avoided just as much as the so-called “anti-bacterial lotions”. Instead, bloodletting and leeches ought to be used, as she also notes:

“A lot of things from bleeding to leeches to honey on wounds have been found to work. Our ancestors, it turns out, were not stupid. Only our presentism, from the safety of a society with near-magic antibiotics, allows us to sneer at them and imagine ourselves superior.”

Reject these “magical” masks and antibiotics, just as she has! You can’t trust these doctors of the 20^th Century!

“Okay, then. So, let’s talk about the closest thing we have to this – though the mortality of Winnie-the-flu is nowhere near the same as that of the 1918 flu – the epidemic of 1918.

“Masks for everyone, women, children (and cats?) were tried. They had no appreciable effect. [Note the comments on that blog about how coronavirus was going to decimate the Third World. It didn’t. It also failed to decimate the homeless. It is a nothingburger. The Y2K of viral infections.]

“So, if they worked in 1920, why didn’t this pre-antibiotic world keep using them to deal with flus and colds?

“Well, because they didn’t.”

I am a scientific man who understands that people from even 50 years ago do not become sick from demonic possession or witchcraft, or that a mask will ward off magical viruses.   In fact, Sarah A. Hoyt astutely notices that viruses being transmitted from mask to mask is much more dangerous than getting COVID-19 and spreading it to unmasked persons!

“Masks aren’t magic. If you wear them on that grocery store trip, you might get virus ON the mask. And then breathe it out over everything, for instance.”

Truly wise words.

     I guess that Caladrius Bird I got will come in handy after all.

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