Two amazing side-effects of wearing facemasks that have every GP worried
Have facemasks eradicated both common and severe colds? Just like that?
For the last 40+ years, I have had 4 or 5 severe colds each year. EACH YEAR! Often resulting in bronchitis, sometimes even pneumonia. Common to severe colds were just something I used to live with because I was among people all my life. Be it in sales positions or, like during the last 25 years, organizing community tennis events.
Doctors loved me. Seeing me, subscribing antibiotics, and pointing me to over-the-counter meds kept the medical-pharma money machine going for decades when it came to my health. I can only imagine how that cash cow cold made doctors happy all over the world for a long time.
And then there was Covid-19. Just like that things had changed in March of 2020. While I was just coming off a “normal” cold, I did what most people did. I put on a facemask. Over the following months, I went through several types of masks and basically stayed away from people. Even when tennis was declared relatively safe as an outdoor sport and we had begun playing again, I continued to use the facemask except during match play.
Today is January 2, 2022. I haven’t had any form of cold in 22 months.
Despite having no medical background whatsoever, I dare to predict two use cases for facemasks: 1. to prevent getting colds and 2. to avoid spreading colds.
Facemasks prevent you from getting colds
Here, I said it. If you are prone to getting colds, use a facemask when in a crowd. It helps you when you’re being sneezed and coughed at. It also prevents you from touching your lips and nose with hands that were exposed to viruses.
When an infected individual coughs or sneezes, droplets can land on surfaces that we touch with our hands. Here is an excerpt from an article originally written in regards to Coronavirus but it’s obviously applicable to cold viruses, as well: “Some pathogens can last for about nine days on surfaces, so we are constantly coming in contact with potential pathogens that can cause an infection,” said Jennifer Hanrahan, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Toledo Medical Center.
So, it obviously makes sense to avoid touching your face. Facemasks help with that task and you don’t even notice it too much.
I have my facemask always in my pocket when I don’t need it like walking the dog or playing tennis. However, going shopping, standing in line, meeting with people I don’t know, out comes the precious life saver.
Facemasks prevent the spread of colds
In my opinion, everyone with a cold of any kind should have to wear a facemask. It would limit the spray from sneezing and coughing tremendously. I am going one step further and suggest that people in certain professions should be mandated to wear facemasks. Foremost cooks, waiters, and staff handling food in delis, sandwich shops, cafeterias, grocery stores. Also doctors and nurses. No one can probably say for sure but those professions alone are in my estimation responsible for at least half of all the colds in our country.
Can you imagine a life without sneezing, coughing, bronchitis? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
And the doctors? Yes, I think every GP should be worried about a part of their income going away that was for decades a reliable money maker. Big Pharma stands to lose billions of vulnerable adults and children would not be dependent on cold medicines anymore. It is for that reason that I expect they do whatever they can to discredit the use of facemasks and tell us the mandate to wear them was a hoax all along.
What do you think? Post your comments, please.
