How a Bizarre Claim About Masks Has Lived on for Months
When I first waded into the latest mask conspiracy theory, I was literally wading.
About a month ago, I was in my local pool when I overheard a middle-aged woman in the next lane whisper it to her friend, in the way you vaguely assert something that you’re pretty sure is true but don’t fully understand. “Masks don’t even do anything,” she said. “In fact, they can make you sicker. Because you’re breathing in all the ... stuff ... you breathe out.”
“OK Boomer,” I thought. I dismissed her as a random neighborhood conspiracist and swam my laps.
But then I started to see this false notion appear more frequently on Facebook. It wasn’t the typical argument anti-maskers use, that mask mandates infringe on people’s freedoms. It was that the masks themselves are causing illness. The horror of the idea was apparent even to me: the feds, in their hall-monitor stupidity, forcing you to do something that’s
