I don’t know about you and where you live, but here in Kansas City it seems like people have accepted wearing masks and lately I haven’t seen anyone in a public place without one. But I’m not going to make the mistake of assuming everybody thinks the same and since they don’t and some people might still be refusing to mask up, I thought this was worth writing and posting.
And away we go…
Despite the fact that doctors have been wearing masks for 100 years, a number of self-appointed medical experts – without the opinion-hindering obstacle of actual medical training – decided masks don’t work.
Which immediately brings us to one of the Less-Endearing Qualities of our species:
Lack of knowledge seems to lead to more opinions instead of fewer opinions because when you don’t know what you’re saying is dumb and completely untrue, there’s absolutely nothing to hold you back.
Unicorns might exist, the Earth might be flat and Donald Trump might have been sent by Jesus Christ himself to fight the cannibalistic pedophiles that currently run the government and are hell-bent on turning our country into a Communist Paradise when they’re not sharing a slab of baby-back ribs (actual baby included) with Hannibal Lecter.
Having an opinion becomes much less burdensome when you don’t have to back it up with facts.
As one of my more intelligent siblings once pointed out, actually “knowing stuff” is a disadvantage in an argument when your opponent is completely knowledge-free and feels OK about employing the classic debate tactic known as: “making shit up.”
A little knowledge might be dangerous, but a complete lack of knowledge is like getting a 007 License to Lie and if it helps you win an argument, go ahead and talk about the time Neil Diamond was elected president and the Canadian Royal Mounted Police invaded downtown Dallas.
If facts aren’t required, feel free to say anything.
Swear to God I was having an argument with a friend when he said, “Ohio is not a state.” Turns out he was quoting another friend of his, but whoever said it I thought Ohio’s lack of statehood might come as a big surprise to the 11.7 million Ohio residents who think Ohio was admitted to the Union in 1803.
Anyway…
When it came to the COVID-19 virus, people could say masks don’t work and maybe get away with it because it’s the first time we’ve dealt with that particular virus, so we didn’t have anything to compare it to.
But, we do have some experience with the flu.
Due to COVID-19 concerns, the flu season may have been cancelled
According to a recent Associated Press article, the flu has “virtually disappeared” from the United States this flu season.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported the lowest flu season on record, hospitals say the usual stream of flu patients hasn’t materialized and the Maine Medical Center in Portland – the state’s largest hospital – has seen “zero documented cases flu cases this winter.”
The same thing happened in Salem, Oregon: no confirmed flu cases, which is pretty amazing considering (according to the AP article) the flu usually racks up 600,000 to 800,000 hospitalizations each year and 50,000 to 60,000 deaths annually.
All around the globe, levels of flu cases are low, and medical experts – those know-it-alls who actually studied medicine – say wearing masks may be part of the reason. The overly-informed won’t go any farther out on that particular limb because they know enough not to make declarative statements that might turn out to be wrong as new evidence comes to light.
So you’ve got one side without training saying masks definitely don’t work and the other side with training saying maybe they do.
Who should you believe?
Perhaps Bertrand Russell can help because according to Wikipedia Bert was a “polymath” which (unlike my first guess) is not a parrot who knows the multiplication tables. Basically, Bertie was an all-around real smart guy and said the following:
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Turns out Mr. Polly-Wants-A-Square Root may have gotten the inspiration for that thought from poet W.B. Yeats who wrote:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
One the other hand, in the same poem “The Second Coming” Yeats also wrote: “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned” so maybe you should take anything Dubya had to say with a grain of salt or a tab of acid because maybe then the rest of that poem would make sense to you, although I’m full of doubt and lack all conviction, so I got that going for me.
In conclusion and I’m trying to think what that might be
OK, got it.
As with most of Life’s Problems, the answer lies in Baseball.
I was having trouble managing baseball games because I over-thought situations and could imagine all kinds of negative outcomes whether I decided to change pitchers or decided not to change pitchers and Clint Hurdle, who played for the Kansas City Royals and later managed the Colorado Rockies and Pittsburgh Pirates, told me I was thinking about it all wrong.
I wanted to be perfect and have each and every decision work out and that wasn’t possible.
Instead, I needed to think of what my options were and their chances of success. So if Option A. worked 70 percent of the time and Option B. worked 50 percent of the time the clear choice was Option A. even though it wasn’t going to work three times out of ten.
For instance (and I’m actually simplifying this instance a lot because the odds would change with the people involved, but let’s not get into all that or we’ll be here forever):
Let’s say you’ve got a runner on first base and two outs and you need two singles to score him (in my league home runs were pretty rare because hardly anybody threw hard enough or swung hard enough to produce one). So you a have a .300 hitter at the plate and a .280 hitter on deck and the guy on first base steals second base successfully 75 percent of the time.
Steal the base.
Because a 75 percent chance combined with a 30 percent chance (a stolen base attempt plus the hitter swinging away) give you better odds than a 30 percent chance combined with a 28 percent chance (two hitters swinging away). If you run into the 1-out-of-four times your base stealer gets thrown out, live with it. You played the best odds available, so don’t beat yourself up when it doesn’t work.
The same thought process can be used to make a lot of decisions and if you’re still on the fence about wearing masks (and nobody argues they work 100 percent of the time) you should still wear one because it definitely gives you a better chance than not wearing one.
And you might not catch the flu either.
Also; they played the first spring training game yesterday so I guess Life is going to continue on Earth although if you don’t wear a mask you might not be around to enjoy it.
OK, that’s it. Have a nice day and I’ll be talking at you soon.