Security theater is a difficult dance to master, especially when it comes to COVID.
Regardless of what society-wide precautions we should take against a 99% survivable virus that doesn't threaten young healthy people, the consequences of such security theater are real:
"Researchers in the U.S. and Denmark estimated in a study in Frontiers in Environmental Science that 'an astounding 129 billion face masks [are] being used globally every month,' a number that works out to three million every minute. 'Most are disposable face masks made from plastic microfibers,' the researchers note."
This photo is a good visual representation of the problem:
Over 1.5 BILLION masks ended up in the oceans alone this last year.
Two biologists from the Netherlands published a study on the effects of disposable masks on environments all over the world and launched a website to raise awareness:
"Biologists Auke-Florian Hiemstra from Naturalis Biodiversity Center and Liselotte Rambonnet from Leiden University started a quest to determine how often and where interactions between corona waste and animals occur. They collected observations from Brazil to Malaysia and from social media to local newspapers and international news websites. A fox in the United Kingdom, birds in Canada, hedgehogs, seagulls, crabs, and bats—it transpired that all sorts of animals, everywhere, become entangled in face masks.
They found reports about apes chewing on face masks, and about a penguin with a face mask in its stomach. Pets too, especially dogs, were found to swallow face masks."
The duo's paper says "vertebrates and invertebrates on land, in freshwater, and in seawater become entangled or trapped in corona waste."
In other words, pretty much every dang creature you can think of is being affected.
Here are a few photos from a website the researchers launched to raise awareness.
First, there's sea critters that get caught in gloves and masks:
And birds:
Then there's animals using PPE materials to make nests:
Even hedgehogs:
Now, to be clear: I'm not one to buy into the climate alarmist narrative every dang time there's an oil spill or some turtle gets plastic wrapped around its body.
With that being said, I'm also not a mask alarmist and I find the totalitarian edicts forcing people to wear them everywhere to be insane.
What I've noticed, however, is that people who are climate alarmists tend to also be mask alarmists.
Presented with evidence like this, what's it going to be? Save the planet, or save yourself from the Rona?
SciEnCe comes at ya fast, doesn't it??
