A recent blog comment claimed masks, especially cloth masks, were only “theatre.” That’s simply not true, and you can prove it yourself… but first a few basics.

A cough can travel as fast as 50 mph and expel almost 3,000 droplets in just one go. Sneezes can travel up to 100 mph and create upwards of 100,000 droplets. Several studies found that larger droplets [from someone not wearing a mask] easily carried for more than two meters and as far as six meters. Those droplets and aerosols can hang around for hours, and longer in poorly ventilated areas.

The British medical journal The Lancet recently released a meta-analysis on studies dealing with “person-to-person virus transmission.” Among the many findings was one that masks were an effective way to reduce transmission, since they function as an effective “source control” restricting the flow of droplets and aerosols.

This past July 16th, the CDC released a statement specifically addressing cloth face coverings, stating that they should be used, and that studies showed that they were effective in reducing the spread of Covid-19. Masks block direct airflow, which reduces the amount of virus expelled and the distance it can travel… and that reduces contagion.

And if you’re still skeptical… look at the world map. Places with high masking rates and social distancing are doing MUCH better than we are.

By themselves, masks aren’t a cure-all. They are rated at reducing the risk of virus transmission by roughly 70%, but many flu vaccines don’t do much better. Masks also have one other problem. My mask protects you twice as well as it protects me. In effect, my fate lies more in your hands than mine. Now, that’s always been true in every functioning society, but most people don’t see it or like to admit it. We are indeed our brother, or sister’s keeper.

And that’s a problem in a country where some 40% of the population believes a President whose operating maxim is effectively, “Me first, screw you.”

Now…for that personal proof. Hold your hand fully extended in front of your mouth. Cough, hard. If you’re reasonably healthy, you should be able to feel the airflow from your cough on your fingers. For most people that’s a distance of a little less than three feet. Put on a mask, and do it again. When I do it, and I have fairly strong lungs, I can’t feel any airflow through the mask [mine is cloth, with HEPA filter inserts]. Some airflow will escape through the edges of the mask, but any aerosols or droplets emitted will stay close to the body, and combined with social distancing and adequate ventilation, will effectively protect others.

As for masks being theatre… that’s not quite true. Wearing a mask isn’t theatre, but not wearing one is… and it’s called tragedy.

Sehr geehrter Herr Walter,

wieder lese ich nun, dass Sie in unserem Verlag „auf den Teppich scheißen“ möchten. Trolle und Pöbler gibt es viele, und man tut gut daran, Typen wie Sie nicht einmal zu ignorieren. Die meisten sind anonym und verstecken sich. Sie machen es ganz offen, mit echtem Namen und der Gedanke, dass Sie als Anästhesist über das Schicksal von Menschen mitbestimmen, ist beunruhigend.

Sie haben Grenzen überschritten, und nicht erst, seit Sie schrieben, dass ich ein „Charakterschwein“ sei, ein „Arschloch“, „miese Type“ und dass es für meine Kinder, also „meine Brut“, schade sei, dass sie genetisch nach mir kommen. Irgendwann werde ich bekommen, „was ich verdiene“.

Der Facebook-Pöbler und der Parkplatz

Neuerdings beschimpfen Sie mich. Vorher war Kapitän Schwandt Ihr Ziel, den Sie mit Schimpfworten bedachten und wüsten Unterstellungen. Einen Blog, in dem es um eine Krankheit des alten Seemanns geht, kommentierten Sie mit den Worten: „Manchmal bin ich auch als Arzt auf der Seite der Krankheit.“ Was wir ungeheuerlich fanden und einer unserer Admins ohne Nennung Ihres Namens postete, als einen Tiefpunkt der Hetze, der wir ausgesetzt sind. Sie riefen daraufhin im Verlag an und drohten einer Mitarbeiterin: Sollte der Eintrag nicht gelöscht werden, wollten Sie das „Kommando Kümmerle“ vorbeischicken oder sich gleich selbst aus Borken auf den Weg machen, um mich auf dem Parkplatz zusammenzuschlagen.

Wir kennen uns nicht und sind uns noch nie begegnet. Ich frage mich, was Ihre Motivation ist. Wollen Sie mir Angst machen? Ist es das: Wollen Sie mich einschüchtern? In meinem alten Leben als Reporter hatte ich es u.a. mit Hooligans, Organhändlern, Mördern und Kindersoldaten zu tun. Ein Facharzt für Anästesiologie aus dem Münsterland, der sich mit Vollbart und wirrem Profilbild auf Facebook präsentiert, macht mir keine Angst.

Wie ich sehe, waren Sie von 2003 bis 2010 als Funktionsoberarzt am St.-Marien-Hospital in Borken tätig. Seit 2010 dann in freier Honorartä̈tigkeit für eine in Berlin ansässige Agentur. Wie geht das zusammen mit dem, wie Sie sich in den Sozialen Medien präsentieren? Wissen die Mitglieder Ihrer Herzsportgruppe, dass Sie davon träumen, anderen Menschen auf den Teppich zu kacken? Ahnt man, wenn man als Patient mit diesem Mediziner zu tun hat, dass er Menschen mit einer anderen politischen Meinung zusammenschlagen möchte?

Bei uns haben sich zwei Arbeitskollegen gemeldet, die meinen, dass Sie seit einiger Zeit „auf einem ganz komischen Weg“ seien und „seit einem Jahr ständig vom Ankerherz Verlag reden“, den Sie als „Hort von Gutmenschen“ verstehen und „abgrundtief hassen“.

Karsten Walter, was ist nur los mit Ihnen?

Sie sind ein studierter Mann, der sich in einer Hasser Gruppe bewegt. Ein illustrer Haufen aus Rechtsextremen, Trump-Fans und Spinnern, geeint in einer seltsamen Wut auf Kapitän Schwandt, Kapitän Schmidt und Ankerherz. Da gibt es eine Frau Weidlich, die mich mit meinem „linken Betonkopf in die Pflastersteine hauen“ möchte, was sie dann „entartete Kunst“ nennt. Da gibt es eine Frau Püschel, die so ihre Probleme mit der Rechtschreibung hat, aber immer wieder innovative Schimpfworte herausbringt. Da gibt es Menschen, die meinen, Kapitäne seien keine Kapitäne und der Zuwanderungsbeauftragte von Schleswig-Holstein ein ehemaliger „Menschenhändler“. Ein „Bürger-Reporter“ ist darunter, der einer Verschwörungstheorie auf der Spur ist, meine Frau mit Nachrichten belästigt und unseren Blogger „Dominik Bloh“ regelrecht verfolgt, aus welchen Gründen auch immer.

Mit Ihrem Anruf, Ihrer Drohung, Ihrer Ankündigung, Ihren Kommentaren gegen meine Familie aber haben Sie Grenzen überschritten. Eine Strafanzeige ist längst gestellt. Sie nennen sich selber das „Cool kid in town“ und finden es witzig, andere in der Öffentlichkeit zu diffamieren und zu beleidigen. Was Sie dabei vergessen haben, Herr Walter: Es gibt Leute, die sich gegen Schulhofschläger wehren.

Mit Grüßen.

STEFAN KRUECKEN, JAHRGANG 1975, LEITET MIT SEINER FRAU JULIA DEN VON IHNEN GEGRÜNDETEN ANKERHERZ VERLAG. VOR DER VERLAGSGRÜNDUNG BERICHTETE ER ALS REPORTER FÜR MAGAZINE WIE MAX, STERN ODER GQ WELTWEIT, VON HOOLIGANS IN SCHOTTLAND, KINDERSOLDATEN IN UGANDA ODER EXPEDITIONSREISEN NACH GRÖNLAND.

Nachtrag, 22. Februar, 22:00 Uhr. 

In der ersten Fassung war von der Mitarbeit bei den Maltesern die Rede. Der Kreisverband Borken distanziert sich hiermit – und dies geben wir selbstverständlich weiter.

Stellungnahme vom 22.02.2017

“Im Netz schlägt heute eine geschmacklose Geschichte hohe Wellen, in deren Mittelpunkt ein Arzt steht, der sich bis vor einigen Jahren ehrenamtlich als Kreisarzt für uns engagiert hat. Auf der Facebookseite des Ankerherzverlages wird er im Zusammenhang mit einem offenen Brief an ihn immer noch als Kreisarzt und Malteser angesprochen. Wir Malteser distanzieren uns ausdrücklich von den von ihm offensichtlich verbreiteten Beiträgen gegen den Verlag und die Menschen, die für den Verlag arbeiten. Diese Beiträge stehen unseren Malteserwerten entgegen und sind durch nichts zu rechtfertigen.” 

The post Der schmerzbefreite Narkose-Arzt: Brief an einen Facebook-Pöbler appeared first on Ankerherz Verlag.

At this point there is no doubt that Donald Trump is the single worst major party presidential candidate in living memory, almost certainly the worst since the Civil War, and arguably the worst in the history of this nation. He is boastful and ignorant and petty, disdainful of the Constitution, a racist and a sexist, the enabler of the worst elements of society, either the willing tool of, or the useful idiot for, Vladimir Putin, an admirer of despots, an insecure braggart, a sexual assaulter, a man who refuses to honor contracts, and a bore.

He is, in sum, just about the biggest asshole in all of the United States of America. He’s lucky that Syrian dictator Bashar Hafez al-Assad is out there keeping him from taking the global title, not that he wouldn’t try for that, too, should be become president. It’s appalling that he is the standard bearer for one of the two major political parties in the United States. It’s appalling that he is a candidate for the presidency at all.

But note well:Donald Trump is not a black swan, an unforeseen event erupting upon an unsuspecting Republican Party. He is the end result of conscious and deliberate choices by the GOP, going back decades, to demonize its opponents, to polarize and obstruct, to pursue policies that enfeeble the political weal and to yoke the bigot and the ignorant to their wagon and to drive them by dangling carrots that they only ever intended to feed to the rich. Trump’s road to the candidacy was laid down and paved by the Southern Strategy, by Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, by Fox News and the Tea Party, and by the smirking cynicism of three generations of GOP operatives, who have been fracking the a white middle and working classes for years, crushing their fortunes with class whose fortunes their social and economic policies, policies have been crushing for years, never imagining it would wouldn’t cause an earthquake.

Well, surprise! Here’s Donald Trump. He is the actual and physical embodiment of every single thing the GOP has trained its base to want and to be over the last forty years — ignorant, bigoted and money-grubbing, disdainful of facts and frightened of everything because of it, an angry drunk buzzed off of wood-grain patriotism, threatening brown people and leering at women. He was planned. He was intended. He was expected. He was wanted.

But not, I think, in the exact form of Donald Trump. The GOP were busily genetically engineering the perfect host for their message, someone smooth and telegenic and possibly just ethnic enough to make people hesitant to point out the latent but real racism inherent in its social policies, while making the GOP’s white base feel like they were making a progressive choice, and with that person installed, further pursuing its agenda of slouching toward oligarchy, with just enough anti-abortion and pro-gun glitter tossed into the sky to distract the religious and the paranoid. Someone the GOP made. Someone they could control.

But they don’t control Trump, which they are currently learning to their great misery. And the reason the GOP doesn’t control Trump is that they no longer control their base. The GOP trained their base election cycle after election cycle to be disdainful of government and to mistrust authority, which ultimately is an odd thing for a political party whose very rationale for existence is rooted in the concept of governmental authority to do. The GOP created a monster, but the monster isn’t Trump. The monster is the GOP’s base. Trump is the guy whole stole their monster from them, for his own purposes.

And this is why the GOP deserves the chaos that’s happening to it now, with its appalling and parasitic standard bearer, who will never be president, driving his GOP host body toward the cliff. If it accepts the parasite, it will be driven off the cliff. If it resists, the parasite Trump will rip himself from it, leaving bloody marks as it does so, and then shove the dazed and wounded GOP from the precipice. That there is a fall in the GOP’s future is inevitable; all that is left is which plunge to take.

I feel sorry for many of my individual friends who are Republicans and/or conservatives, who have to deal with the damage Trump is doing to their party and to their movement, even if I belong to neither. But I don’t feel sorry for the GOP at all. It deserves Trump. It fostered an environment of ignorance and fear and bigotry, assumed it could control the mob those elements created, and was utterly stunned when a huckster from outside claimed the mob as his own and forced the party along for the ride. It was hubris, plain and simple, and Trump is the GOP’s vulgar, orange nemesis.

Trump will do the GOP long and lasting damage, and moreover, Trump doesn’t care that he will do the GOP long and lasting damage. Trump was never about being a Republican; he was just looking to expand his brand. As it turns out, like apparently so many things Trump does, he’s done an awful job of it — the name Trump, formerly merely associated with garish ostentation and bankruptcy, is now synonymous with white nationalism, sexual battery and failure — but the point is on November 9th Trump is going to move on and leave the wreckage of the GOP in his wake, off to his next thing (everyone assumes “Trump TV,” in which Trump combines with Breitbart to make white pride propaganda for the kind of millennial racist who thinks a Pepe the Frog Twitter icon is the height of wit — and I hope he does, because the Trump touch will drive that enterprise into the ground, and little would warm my heart more than a bankrupt Breitbart).

Trump is the party guest who sets fire to your house, gropes your spouse and drives over your neighbor’s cat when he leaves; the GOP is left to deal with the police and the angry neighbors. It’s almost piteous, except when you scrub back to five hours earlier to hear the GOP say “What, Trump wants to come to the party? Well, he’s an asshole who drove Fred Jones’ car into the pool the other weekend, but he’s always good for a laugh, isn’t he? Surely it will be fine,” and then tells him to bring his bad boy self right on over.

There is no good way for the GOP or its members to extricate itself from this mess. Trump has doomed them for this election cycle. But there is a moral way, and they should take it. When a grifter and a con man has suckered you into a shitshow, you have two options: bail out early and admit you got shit all over yourself, or stick with the con and affirmatively choose to drown in the shit. No GOP politician should ever have endorsed him; the moral hazard he presented was obvious and clear and became clearer the further he went along. But if they were foolish enough to have endorsed him, it’s not too late to bail out. He’s going to lose either way and drag the GOP down with him; these politicians might as well come out of it with their souls, besmirched but still their own.

And obviously to me, no one with sense should cast a vote for Trump. He’s not just a candidate, he is an active repudiation of what we should expect from the United States and those who lead it. A candidate who can’t open his mouth without a lie falling out — a lie that everyone including him knows is a lie — doesn’t deserve to be president. A candidate who threatens millions because of their religion does not deserve to be president. A candidate who promises to extralegally throw his political opponent into jail does not deserve to be president. A candidate who fosters white nationalism, racism and anti-semitism does not deserve to be president. A candidate who brags about sexual assault and then tries to dismiss it as mere talk does not deserve to be president.

These are not merely Democratic or Republican issues. These are American issues, human issues and moral issues. You can’t vote for Donald Trump and say you don’t know what you’re voting for. You’re voting for hate, and chaos, and the deluge. Anything else that you think you get from voting for him will be washed away in the flood.

Trump is the single worst major party presidential candidate in living memory, but he’s there because the GOP spent decades making him possible, and its base, trained for decades to look for someone like him, made him its standard bearer. He needs to lose and the GOP needs to be punished for him. Conservatism and classical Republican ideas won’t go away, nor should they. But if the GOP can’t break itself from its addiction to the bigoted and the ignorant, then it certainly deserves to die. It’s brought the country to the edge. Shame is only the beginning of what it should feel for it.

So, yesterday, after engaging on Twitter with some particularly low-wattage racists who were exercised about, you know, jackass racist things, I made the following observation:

Which these fellows, because they are, as previously mentioned, low-wattage racists, who also apparently don’t understand how language works, took to mean that I was fully endorsing the idea of white genocide.

Well, this was news to me — as a general rule, I don’t endorse genocide of any sort, it just seems rude — but on the other hand I didn’t want to disappoint. So, today I thought I’d give white genocide a try. Here’s how it went (some of these are in reply to others’ others questions about the white genocide; click on the tweet for the question).

Having scheduled the white genocide, I went off to attend the rest of the day.

And then it was time!

Seriously, I’m the worst white genocider ever. Sorry.

A man goes into an immigration services center in Binghamton New York, blocks the exit in the back with his car, goes through the front door with handguns, body armor and ammunition. He shoots the receptionists and opens fire on a citizenship class. He murders thirteen. This is horrific. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

A psychiatrist trained to help others with the stress of combat goes to Ft. Hood, the army base at which he is stationed, and opens fire on his fellow soldiers and some civilians, too. Another thirteen people are murdered there. Three are killed charging the shooter. Words cannot express my sorrow. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

A professor is denied tenure at the University of Alabama. She goes to a department faculty meeting and in that conference room pulls out a nine-millimeter handgun and shoots six people, three of whom she manages to murder. Those people were just doing their jobs and what happened to them is terrible. I don’t want to have to think about it any further. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

A truck driver in Manchester, Connecticut comes out of a company disciplinary hearing for allegedly stealing beer and starts shooting up his place of work. He murders eight people, calls his mother and tells her about it, and then shoots himself. Gun control discussions are a mess in this country and they never go anywhere productive, there’s no middle ground, and they make me tired thinking about them. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

In Tucson, Arizona, a member of Congress is meeting with her constituents in the parking lot of a supermarket, and a 22-year-old man comes up and shoots her straight in the head. A representative to Congress, can you believe that! She somehow survives, but he murders six others, ranging in age from nine to 79. That’s quite a range. Surely the attempted assassination of a US Representative will start a substantive discussion by someone. In the meantime, I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Seal Beach, California, where a man and a woman are having a custody dispute. His solution: Enter his wife’s place of work, a hair salon, and open fire on anyone there. He murders his ex-wife and seven other people, including one man not even in the salon. He is  was in his car in the parking lot outside the salon. Bad luck. Here’s an interesting thing: there is a sort of magical power to saying that you offer your thoughts and prayers.

Oakland, California, and at a small Christian college, a man who had been expelled for behavioral and anger management problems decides that he’s going to find an administrator he has issues with. He doesn’t find her, so instead grabs a secretary, enters a classroom and orders the students there to line against a wall. Some refuse. He shoots, reloads and shoots some more. Seven people are murdered. The shooter later says he’s sorry. The magical power of saying that you offer your thoughts and prayers is that once you do it, you’re not required to do anything other than to offer your thoughts and prayers.

In Aurora, Colorado, a midnight audience of Batman fans are half an hour into the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s superhero trilogy when a man enters the theater, clad in protective armor, sets off two gas canisters and starts shooting. Some audience members think this is a stunt tied into the film. It’s not a stunt, and the shooter, armed with an assault rife, a shotgun and a glock, murders a dozen people, ten of whom die right there in the theater. When police visit the shooter’s home, they find it rigged with explosives. The shooter placed a camera to record what happens if the police just barge in. Saying “thoughts and prayers” is performative, which is to say that just in saying it, you’ve performed an action. Prayers leave your mind and go to God. It is a blessed, holy and as such apparently sufficient thing, to offer your thoughts and prayers.

Sunday morning, and in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, members of the Sikh temple there have gathered for services and meditation and are preparing a communal meal when a white supremacist and Army veteran starts shooting, murdering six and wounding a police officer before killing himself. Did you know that Sikhs are often confused by the unknowing and possibly uncaring for being Muslim, and that the excuse of “I thought they were Muslims” is itself a sign of racial hatred? Mind you, there are people who will say to you that it’s not enough, only to offer your thoughts and prayers.

In Minneapolis, a man is called into an office by his supervisor and told he is losing his job. The man replies, “Oh, really?” and pulls out a handgun, shooting the supervisor after a struggle for the weapon, eventually murdering five others before killing himself. Indeed, people particularly particular expect more from lawmakers, who have the ability to call hearings and allow government studies and even change laws, rather than only to offer their thoughts and prayers.

Brookfield, Wisconsin, another hair salon, another estranged couple. The wife seeks  sought a restraining order when the husband threatens threatened to burn her with acid and set her on fire with gasoline. He does neither. He does, however, murder her, along with two other women. Witnesses say the wife tried to protect the others before she died. But again, even if you’re a lawmaker, with the ability to do things that could have concrete impact, you might argue that your responsibility to women being murdered by husbands, workers co-workers murdered by co-workers, religious minorities murdered by bigots, soldiers murdered by other soldiers, innocents murdered by those who are not, ends when you, in a tweet, Facebook post or press release, offer your thoughts and prayers.

A man enters an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and with a Bushmaster XM15-E2S carbine rifle, murders twenty children, all of whom are either six or seven years old.

We pause here a moment to think about that.

Twenty children. Ages six, or seven.

And here maybe you think to yourself, this is it. it. This is the place and time where thoughts and prayers in fact aren’t enough, where those who only offer their thoughts and prayers recognize that others see them in their inaction, see that the convenient self-absolution of thoughts and prayers, that the magical abnegation thoughts and prayers  offer, offer is no longer sufficient, is no longer proper, is no longer just or moral, or even offers the appearance of morality.

We pause here a moment, and we wait to see what happens next.

And then they come. One after another.

I offer my thoughts and prayers.

And it keeps going.

Five murdered in Santa Monica, California by a gunman. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

12 murdered in a running firefight through the Washington Navy Yard in DC. Like a ritual, I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Ft. Hood, Texas again, for another three murdered. Like a litany, I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Six murdered in Isla Vista, California. Violence against women is horrible, and I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Nine murdered in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s unspeakable that violence against black Americans has happened like this, and I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Five murdered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Muslims should answer for the crimes of this person, even if they do not know him or would in any way condone the action, and I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Nine murdered in Roseburg, Oregon. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Three murdered in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Thoughts and prayers.

Fourteen murdered in San Bernadino. Thoughts. Prayers.

Fifty murdered in Orlando.

Fifty people, in a gay club, by a shooter who his father says was disgusted by the sight of two men kissing, and who news reports now tell us had pledged allegiance to ISIS.

And what do we do now, I wonder, when the victims are who they are and the perpetrator is who he is, the situation is ripe for posturing, and there’s a phrase to be used that allows one to assert maximum public virtue with minimum personal effort or responsibility?

What do we do now, when thoughts and prayers are easy, and everything else is hard?

Here is the thing: In the aftermath of terrible violence, offer thoughts, and prayers, if it is your desire to do so.

Then offer more than thoughts and prayers. Ask for more than thoughts and prayers. Vote for more than thoughts and prayers. Help those for whom thoughts and prayers are the  a start of their responsibilities, not the  an abdication of them. And as for the others, you may politely remind them of Matthew 6:5-6, 6:5-7, and perhaps also Matthew 7:21-23. 7:21-23. Perhaps they will see themselves in the words there. Perhaps not. They’re worth thinking on regardless.

“I offer my thoughts and prayers.”

Thank you.

It’s not enough.

It never was.

What more do you have to offer?

Drone wars in Tokyo