“We do not know why we
are born into the world,
but we can try to find out
what sort of world it is.”
Astronomer Edwin Hubble,
quoted in BrainPickings.org
“Falsehood flies, and the
truth comes limping after it.”
Jonathan Swift, quoted in the
Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch
“We are not what we
know but what we are
willing to learn.”
Anthropologist Mary
Catherine Bateson, quoted in
the Financial Times
“Hope, like faith, is
nothing if it is not coura-
geous; it is nothing
if it is not ridiculous.”
Novelist and playwright
Thornton Wilder, quoted in
ArtsJournal.com
“Absence is to love as
wind is to fire; it extin-
guishes the small and
kindles the great.”
Author Roger de Bussy-
Rabutin, quoted in
Cosmopolitan
“If I had to live my life
again, I’d make the same
mistakes, only sooner.”
Actress Tallulah Bankhead,
quoted in Forbes.com
“After I’m dead I’d rather
have people ask why I
have no monument than
why I have one.”
Roman historian Cato the
Elder, quoted in INews.co.ukTalking points
Wit &
Wisdom
Ge
tty
NEWS 17
Poll watch
QAmericans feel safer
about getting vaccinated,
with 66% expressing will-
ingness to get a shot, up
from 51% in October.
CNN/SSRS
QOn a 10-point scale where
10 means the highest level
of stress, Americans aver-
aged 5.6 points. 84% said
they felt emotions indicative
of prolonged stress, includ-
ing anxiety (47%), sadness
(44%), and anger (39%). Top
sources of concern include
the country’s future (81%),
the pandemic (80%), and
political unrest (74%).
American Psychological
AssociationMasks: Why cloth no longer cuts it
Facing a looming threat from
the more infectious new coro-
navirus variants, Americans
need to up their masking
game, said Joseph Allen in
The Washington Post. Until
we achieve mass vaccination,
better masks “could be the
key to slowing the pandemic
and limiting spread.” Early in
the pandemic, health officials
said that “any cloth mask
will do.” But we now know a typical cloth mask
captures, at best, only half the aerosols we emit
or are exposed to from other people. Surgical
masks are a big improvement, blocking 70 or 80
percent. But there’s no reason we shouldn’t all be
using the gold standard: N95 masks that achieve
95 percent filtration with multiple layers and an
electrostatic charge that captures tiny, virus-carry-
ing droplets. Experts say it’d be a game changer,
said Keri Enriquez in CNN.com. If every Ameri-
can wore N95s in indoor settings for four weeks,
said Harvard Medical School physician Abraar
Karan, it “would stop the pandemic.”Double masking is a good alternative, said Shan-
non Palus in Slate.com. The best practice is to use
a surgical mask topped with a cloth mask, which
both adds a layer of filtration and “can pin the
surgical mask down,” keeping aerosolized virusfrom coming in around the
nose or sides—a key factor
in mask efficacy. KN95s
from China are another good
high-protection option—the
difference between them and
N95s “is mostly a matter of
certification.” I’m partial to
KF94s from South Korea,
worn under a cloth mask,
said Tara Parker-Pope in The
New York Times. They’re
easily found online and use a nonwoven material
that “blocks 94 percent of the hardest-to-trap
viral particles.”We need a national “mask initiative,” said Abraar
Karan in StatNews.com. President Biden’s new
rules mandating masks on public transportation
and in federal buildings are “a good start.” But
the administration should go much further, by
invoking the Defense Production Act to ramp up
production of tens of millions of high-filtration
masks. Asian nations including Taiwan, South
Korea, and Singapore achieved dramatic success
in limiting infections and deaths by distributing
high-filtration masks to citizens for free—and the
U.S. should do likewise. The cost of mailing a
set of masks to each U.S. household every month
would “pale in comparison to the pandemic’s toll
on lives and the economy.”Cancel culture has come for any conservative who
supported Donald Trump, said Rachel Bucchino
in NationalInterest.com. After Twitter, Facebook,
and YouTube “booted” the former president, lib-
erals saw an opportunity to establish a “blacklist”
and “expunge the Right” from the public square.
They convinced Google and Amazon to banish
Parler, the alternative to Twitter for conservatives,
and dozens of blue-chip companies—including
AT&T, Amazon, Disney, and American Express—
announced they were ending donations to 147
Republican lawmakers who voted to decertify last
year’s Electoral College vote count. Liberals are
demanding that book publishers “blacklist” for-
mer Trump officials, and a Forbes editor said any
company that hires a Trump administration offi-
cial will lose all credibility. The Left is exploiting
last month’s Capitol riot to smear all conservatives
as “terrorists” whose voices must be silenced.Have any of the conservatives “squealing” about
cancel culture actually been “silenced”? asked
Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post.
“Hardly.” Josh Hawley, the GOP senator from
Missouri who famously raised his fist to “fire up”
the Capitol insurrectionists, whined about the
“muzzling of America” on the front page of the
New York Post after Simon & Schuster canceledhis book deal. Hawley got a new deal days later.
Every night, Fox News hosts complain about
cancel culture while addressing cable news’ largest
audience. All this “babyish yowling” is a form of
gaslighting, said Tim Teeman in TheDailyBeast
.com. By claiming victimhood, conservative snow-
flakes want to divert attention from the fact that
their support for Trump’s Big Lie—that the elec-
tion was “stolen”—ignited a violent insurrection
that killed five, badly injured dozens of Capitol
police, and desecrated democracy itself. The back-
lash they face is perfectly legal—it’s not govern-
ment censorship—and is richly deserved.But how far will this muzzling of conservatives
go? asked Rich Lowry in NationalReview.com.
CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy urged cable
companies to stop carrying pro-Trump channels
such as Fox News. Washington Post columnist
Max Boot suggested right-wing media outlets be
treated like terrorist groups, saying they “radical-
ize people and set them on the path toward vio-
lence and sedition.” Democrats currently control
Congress and the White House, plus “virtually
every elite cultural institution,” said The Wall
Street Journal in an editorial. Given that power,
the Left’s quest to silence the opposition marks
“an extraordinary and ominous turn.”Cancel culture: Are conservatives being silenced?
High-filtration masks are much safer.