Posted on 05/10/2021 8:29:22 PM PDT by lightman
There once was a time when leftists at least pretended to care about the environment. Remember the brouhaha over how plastic straws were going to destroy the planet and we had to replace them with those crappy paper straws that literally melt in your mouth? You know, for the sea turtles, or something?
Well, all that was sooo pre-COVID. Get with the program, covidiot! Now, it's hip, trendy, and oh-so-woke to mass-produce non-biodegradable plastic "disposable' face masks" that litter the landscape (and the seascape) because pencil-necked leftists in power have decided that trying to stop the spread of a highly contagious respiratory virus that both can't be stopped and isn't nearly as deadly as advertised is more important than saving the planet. Great Pacific Garbage Patch and innocent seals be damned.
From National Geographic:
"A year ago, the idea that disposable face masks, gloves, and wipes could become global environmental pollutants was not a pressing concern. Personal protective equipment, PPE for short, was seen as essential for preventing the spread of COVID-19. No one imagined just how much of it would be needed, for so long. Then production exploded—and now the litter is inescapable.
In the time since, scientists have built a library of more than 40 studies that document the use and disposal of PPE and model what that looks like on a global scale. Numbers not known then tell the tale now.
Globally, 65 billion gloves are used every month. The tally for face masks is nearly twice that—129 billion a month. That translates into 3 million face masks used per minute.
A separate study reports that 3.4 billion face masks or face shields are discarded every day. Asia is projected to throw away 1.8 billion face masks daily, the highest quantity of any continent globally. China, with the world’s largest population (1.4 billion) discards nearly 702 million face masks daily.
All may be called disposable, because they’re cheap enough to be used once and then thrown away. But here’s the hitch: They don’t actually go away."
Thankfully, more outlets are speaking out.
Sure, anti-litter campaigns can't hurt:
Or better yet, since litterbugs will always litter, maybe we should just stop mass-producing the damned things altogether and reserve them for what they were doing for decades in the medical profession: stopping spit from flying into open wounds.
It's not so much that leftists aren't keen on using environmental issues as a tool for control. It's just that their neuroticism far outweighs their 'concern' for the earth. Pit the fate of the planet against hypochondriac leftists who believe that possibly, maybe, conceivably, they can lower their odds of catching a virus with a 99.7+% survival rate, and our galactic home will lose out every single time.
Even worse, this chart shows non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) yield no significant impact on mortality due to COVID-19, so apparently all of it was and is for naught. Now, who's going to tell THAT to the baby seals?
“They are laying in the streets here. “
Discarded masks are in streets and parking lots all over the country.
Oh, logic and reason again, you White Supremacist, homophobe!/sarc😉
“I recently saw a few hikers wearing two masks and disposable gloves. Is the tree gonna give you Rona if you touch it?”
Did they sleep through all their science classes? They obviously think that the fresh outdoors air is saturated with Covid-19 viruses. Was this out in the woods? Then they are 100x stupider.
The trash cans at hospitals overflow with them regularly. No, they are not biohazardous.. as evidenced by the painstaking process to collect, store and transport them just so they will replicate. Of course di6some ridiculous network say they were detected on carboard 99 years later.
Maybe if enough masks are dumped in the ocean and on the streets, they’ll insist that the mask mandate be dropped.
I’d contribute to that.
Yup! Even in the wealthiest of suburbs where I walk dogs, one can find masks strewn around. Disposable and cloth.
states banned plastic bags in stores such as grocery stores, because they were ending up al over the place- but now they demand that people wear masks which also end up all over the place-
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One of my first ‘observations’ to this mask phenomena was that ‘they’ told us we couldn’t use paper or plastic so they went ahead and made up ‘permanent’ tote bags which WE bought and used (although I didn’t think one should take a tote from one store into another (that is just me though)).
Then some wag said the totes were too dangerous to carry from YOUR car to their store so they were ‘banned’.
Once they saw we didn’t rebel and demand a refund on the ‘permanent’ totes, enforcing the mask policy was a piece of cake - for most that is....
If masks were truly effective in catching China-cooties they would be treated as hazmat and collected in red biohazard bags.
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Another argument against mask was when the pro maskers were saying Drs and nurses wear them etc and the counter argument was
‘Yes, they do but usually only once and when finished with one patient and on to the next the mask and gloves went into ‘burn bags’ to be properly disposed with.’
Naturally after a dumb look the old ‘Well, that is different’ was thrown in...
Those masks with their stretchable ear straps do indeed threaten the very lives of birds all over the world. They get themselves covered over their necks and are unable to dislodge them thereby trapping themselves potentially on branches or other obstacles or projections of man made structures.
There is some good news. Fish now have access to masks.
***A separate study reports that 3.4 billion face masks or face shields are discarded every day.***
Can’t stop the panic now! Too many people depend on jobs making those masks! WE can’t put them out of work now can we?
Shouldn’t these masks be considered a hazardous biological waste and disposed as such? Even if dumped in the trash couldn’t they pose a health hazard? However in our zeal to force everyone to wear a mask they are being discarded without regard to any biological hazard.
This was indeed in the woods in a not so popular hiking area during off-peak hours. I saw them from probably 200 feet away and no one ever got any closer to them than that. However, they still kept the masks and gloves on.
Are they bio-degradable ?
The mask manipulators are strangely silent on this phenomenon.
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The article says not. However, everything is biodegradable.
It’s a matter of time.
One year, ten years? Ten billion years?
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