The Bizarro-World of the Forever Maskers

The Telegraph has a story about the ‘Zero Covid’ zealots refusing to re-enter society. Not only that, but these forever maskers want everyone else masked up in perpetuity too. It’s a remarkable instance of the emergence of a new form of cult based on a surreal new ritual. And just for good measure, it seems that those leaning Left are most likely to be on board:

The claims of links to Covid circulating online amid the deadly chaos were not always proved beyond doubt, but in this climate of fear and confusion, a determined ‘Zero Covid’ community emerged. Co-opting a phrase that was originally an official public health policy, the ‘Zero Coviders’ believed they were watching a massacre in real time, and the maskless – especially those who were unvaccinated – were to blame. As governments relaxed the restrictions, they felt they needed to step up.

“I was like, ‘Okay, this is not right. This is f—–,'” says [Alyson] Hardwick, a second-year university student who does not have any underlying health conditions. The last time she ate indoors at a restaurant was in October 2022 for her 31st birthday. “I felt sketched out [uneasy],” she recalls. “I was leaving every place I was going inside without a mask, wondering, ‘Did I get it?’”

Hardwick began wearing a respirator mask – specialised, disposable facepieces called N95s or N99s which offer more comprehensive protection than a surgical mask – and spending most of her time alone.

She’s ostracised herself from other people and posts thousands of clips online and argues that it’s everyone else, not her, who is living in fear. “Denial is a fear response,” she insists.

Hardwick’s stance exemplifies the increasingly fraught Zero Covid movement – a citizen-led campaign across the Western world to keep the air clean. She is just one of thousands of geographically disparate people, many of whom are not immunocompromised, who are still living in their own self-imposed lockdowns, fearful of becoming one of the millions to suffer with serious long Covid symptoms, or anxious about transmitting the virus to someone less fortunate. Zero Covid has adherents across North America and Europe, including some in the UK, but followers from the US and Canada are the most visible online.

The charged movement to end ‘pandemic denialism’ has some high-profile advocates, including Left-wing US journalist Taylor Lorenz. “If ur [sic] not masking ur absolutely facilitating eugenics,” Lorenz posted to her 350,000 followers on X on December 6th.

“Refusing to mask during an ongoing pandemic is absolutely violent and it’s undeniably participating in social murder,” she said in another recent post, as well as calling out Leftist “super spreader” events. “You are actively *killing* and maiming people around you by intentionally spreading airborne disease during an active pandemic.” (Separately, she pilloried non-maskers for “raw-dogging the air and spewing ur disease laden breath all over ur elderly neighbours”.)

By 2022, the pandemic and the panicked measures were retreating into the past:

But the cautious, despite getting vaccinated and then boosted, couldn’t move on. Online communities became lifelines as in-person social circles frayed. Campaigners pushed ‘clean air’ as the next public-health frontier, and offered seatbelt analogies for masking: mildly inconvenient, obviously protective.

Masking was increasingly framed as an act of love, and it was overwhelmingly Left-wing groups which encouraged – even mandated – their continued use. Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac encouraged continued mask wearing. “I f—— hate the masks, but I wear them,” she said. “People give you dirty looks. I dare anybody to give me a dirty look. I would just say, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m Stevie Nicks.'”

That would presumably be the same Stevie Nicks who reportedly blew a hole through her nose from snorting cocaine. By 2023 mask use was largely discredited, but the Telegraph quotes a Mayo Clinic source:

“People who rebuilt their entire lives and recast their identities around reducing the risk of catching Covid to zero couldn’t deal with this,” one former ardent Zero Covider recalls, speaking to me on condition of anonymity. “The movement devolved into a massive online circle-jerk where members blindly validate each other on taking disproportionate precautions.

One ardent proponent of masking says that’s the way he’ll spend the rest of his life:

“I don’t just, like, go out the way I used to,” says Evan Sachs, who is in his early 30s and lives in New York with his three cats. He always wears a mask outdoors.

“Sometimes it’s a bummer.” Not because masking is keeping him from living his life, he adds, “but because other people [selfishly] aren’t doing the ‘wearing your pants’ levels of easy things” to keep everyone safe. He runs a ‘bloc’ in the Washington Heights area of New York which distributes personal protective equipment (PPE) to less well-off communities. “I do not have Long Covid, thank goodness,” Sachs adds. “I am very, very lucky on that front.”

He doesn’t want to get it either. “I honestly think I would [mask forever],” he says.’

An Austrian doctor called Spela Salomon has no time for non-maskers:

Outside work, she does not spend time with people who do not take equal precautions. “I just don’t feel like I get anything out of hanging around the maskless masses,” she says. “It’s sad and isolating.” In an article published by the World Health Network earlier this year, Salomon predicted that a rising toll of Covid complications would lead to a societal shift in which air quality is recognised as an essential public health priority like potable water. “It is those who persist in denial who are truly living in fear,” she wrote, echoing Hardwick’s sentiment in her social media video.

It appears that the forever maskers have become so dedicated to the cause that they are even fetishizing masks:

US college student Bela waxes lyrical about her powered air-purifying respirator, certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “It blows air out so that no outside air can get in through the edges from a poor fit or seal,” she told campaign group MaskTogetherAmerica.

Meanwhile, Alyson Hardwick is increasingly focused on her “new passion for Covid”:

Getting a booster jab at least every six months is, for her, a necessary response to what she calls a “mass disability event in slow motion” that has completely transformed her life. “I’m rarely ever sharing air with people,” she says. If she does meet up with anyone, it will be other Covid-safe people, outdoors. “I feel safe around them, because they’re also masking everywhere.”

Worth reading in full if only to explore the infinite capacity of human beings to turn any cause into a cult, however bizarre the rituals and customs devised to pursue their beliefs.