The anti-mask protest was of course held in a public place, Westfield Bondi. The mask-less suburbanites and their signs waddled about for a while trying to make contact with media beating drums and singing.
The protesters cited their “belief systems” and “human rights”. It didn’t go down well. The media and political response was that religious nut jobs were protesting masks and undermining public safety.
Sydney, meanwhile, is about as fond of lockdowns as anywhere else. We don’t like it, but nobody’s really arguing except the brainwashed and the ever-tedious “Look at me!” brigade. Twitter users called them selfish wankers.
Much less impressive was their theory that they had the right to wear or not to wear masks.
That didn’t go down at all well:
• It’s the law.
• It’s not an optional thing.
• You don’t have, and never have had, the “right” to spread diseases.
Meanwhile, the local political game on Twitter is much the same here as elsewhere. It’s useless and distracting from the critical issues. People are talking politics, not safety, most of the time. The point-scoring, if you can call it that, is trivial. Who’s going to remember a word a month from now, let alone next election? That’s not stopping anyone wasting time and space making useless noises, apparently.
The no-mask myth
What is the story with the anti-maskers? It’s media-driven. For people who call everything fake news, they’re fast enough to spread their own baseless propaganda crap far and wide. This is no huge intellectual dynamic. After the pandemic started, it took months for someone in the US to decide that masks were even an issue. Then the idea was for people to be “liberated” from basic protection. Great move, nut jobs.
It didn’t work at all on one side of politics. Nobody’s paying attention to unqualified political spruikers. These are the same people who think unaffordable health is a good move. Credibility is zero. It’s mainly rednecks and those embalmed in far right-wing ideologies who give any traction to this ignorant drivel. In Australia so far, out of about 25 million people, less than 1000 have protested nationwide in the last few months. Nobody believes in this garbage.
The bottom line:
Wear a mask. You’re not being asked, you’re being told for your own good. Respect the right of others to make their own decisions and not to catch an avoidable disease.
