MannLab, 330 Dundas Street West
(previously the pink worm place)

Wizard Market, 346 Dundas Street West

The Toronto Star ran an article yesterday about going to the dentist while pandemicking.

I’d very recently gone myself with a chipped tooth so I can confirm everything that I read as being entirely accurate. I wasn’t asked “a lot” of questions but that’s an entirely subjective measure so I’ll leave it at that.

There wasn’t anything really exceptional about the write-up except for a brief line about halfway through:

Many dentists are now using a [pre-procedural] hydrogen peroxide-based rinse, which is thought to also help with viruses.

It wasn’t the insertion of a link to a name-brand mouth rinse product in this sentence that I found curious, even though it came across as a sort of stealth advertisement, it was the statement that hydrogen peroxide was in the rinse.

Ah, I thought, so that’s why the mouthwash tasted a little different. Dentist never bothered to tell me what was in it. I can’t say that I’m bothered by the chemical’s presence but it would still have been nice for the dentist to let me know what I was swishing with.

Whatevs.

But it got me wondering just how effective hydrogen peroxide is in dealing with viruses like Covid. So I did some research and it turns out it’s pretty efficacious. But there’s a catch.

According to information provided by the city, achieving the “high-level of disinfection” that actually kills bacteria and viruses requires that the chemical be kept in the mouth anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes depending on the variety used. I sure as hell didn’t swish for that long and I doubt most patients do.

Even “low-level disinfection” that kills “some” bacteria and viruses needs you to rinse for a minimum of 10 minutes, which I also wasn’t anywhere close to achieving.

As far I know, hydrogen peroxide is generally safe so it’s highly unlikely that rinsing with it will cause any problems. But at the same time, it seems that the way it’s being used also doesn’t offer many benefits in terms of virus protection.

I’ll readily admit that my familiarity with this topic is pretty shallow but it does seem that this particular portion of a dental visit is more wishful thinking than a proven solution, at least in the way that it’s being used presently.

It makes me wonder what other things are being done for our “protection” that, although they may be entirely benign, also don’t offer the stated benefits.

University of Toronto, St. George Campus

“Crisis actors” are people who have volunteered or been hired to play victims in emergency drills and training scenarios. This is a well-known and undisputed practice.

Somewhat less undisputed are the various theories floating around on the internet about crisis actors being employed by governments and large corporations to covertly produce knowingly fake “emergency” scenarios in order to promote an (often hidden) agenda.

Are crisis actors used to promote propagandist narratives? I’m not entirely convinced but given the types of things that governments openly get up to on a daily basis I certainly wouldn’t put it above them.

This is what’s running through my mind as I read articles on people protesting the imposition of face masks here in the city. They (the protesters), are invariably presented as idiots, “mostly white”, “Karens”, and other openly derisive and overtly racist terms to show the world just how despicable (and white), it is to question popular opinions and the wisdom of our benign and loving government.

Thing is, based on some of the things I’ve seen and heard I don’t entirely disagree.

Notwithstanding the unbelievable levels of blatant anti-white rhetoric being pumped out by nearly every facet of the establishment, the people being exemplified in these articles really do come across as a little dull. In fact, my own interactions with similar protests in the past has led me to the same conclusion.

When I’ve approached such people and told them that I agree with their cause, albeit for different reasons, I would’ve expected that they would be pleased to have both an ally and additional arguments to back their position. Instead, I’m often met with stone-faced ignorance, by which I mean that they quite literally turn their back and ignore me like I didn’t exist.

I can’t help wondering, are these people disinfo actors? Are they being put out there to demonstrate how stupid and ignorant one would look if one also questions the established wisdom of the authorities? Have I challenged their mission of painting dissidents as dangerous imbeciles in a way that they don’t know how to deal with?

As I said, knowing the well-established and proven public facts of how governments operate makes these suspicions perfectly reasonable. That they would engage in covert, soft censorship certainly isn’t beyond the pale for them.

Consider, for example, that the only anti-mask arguments being “advertised” like this have to do with the efficacy of face coverings, the size of the particles involved, and the illusory “rights and freedoms” of the protesters.

Why not, for example, question the general safety of masks given that the government itself provides exemptions for people with health issues?

Doesn’t that put borderline and undiagnosed individuals at dire risk of severe medical problems, especially during this hot and humid summer we’ve been having? Is it justifiable to knowingly put certain people in harm’s way — as admitted by the government in its own directives — in order to make others feel safe, especially when Covid numbers in the city are at a historic low? And if face masks are so risk-free then why have any exemptions at all, especially for people with underlying respiratory problems?

Perhaps the truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle: masks aren’t without risks but the government has deemed those risks (to individual human lives), acceptable. Similarly, the safety and efficacy of flu vaccines seem like highly germane and timely topics but you won’t hear anything even resembling a balanced discussion about them, just like the absurd and one-sided rhetoric being promulgated to support BLM. Why would individual human lives matter when there’s a false narrative based on twisted statistical aggregates, nonsensical comparisons, and “community effects” instead?

I’ve even been accused of “tricking” people and abusing their various mental conditions (only revealed after the fact), simply by having them conclude their own thought processes through a line of fairly simple and direct questioning.

“I have ADHD you asshole! You tricked me into saying that I’m okay with censorship and state murder just because I said that the government should kill anyone who disagrees! FUCK YOOOOUUUUUU!1!!!!!” This is an actual quote from an online discussion I was involved in, obviously not on the same topic but still indicative of the types of responses I’ve received.

After being accused of “weaponizing facts” and using “magical logic” for the umpteenth time I finally gave up. Their own opinions, as expressed by them, are as nothing to how they feel, and I certainly won’t convince them that what they say is what they actually mean. And heaven forbid I should engage in “bully tactics” like quoting them to demonstrate inconsistent or self-contradictory arguments.

Yes, questions are stupid (and racist, misogynistic, white supremacist, etc.), especially when someone’s own answers might lead them to conclusions that might make them feel uncomfortable. The horror. Just stab me already.

So it’s been about a week since our betters passed a municipal bylaw requiring the imposition of mandatory indoor masks pretty much everywhere except schools and daycare, transportation (noting that the TTC has its own bylaws), medical facilities, and residential buildings.

There are some neat specifics for businesses, like bars, which can legally allow patrons indoors:

*The bylaw allows for temporary removal of a mask or face covering when receiving services (such as having a meal) or while actively engaging in an athletic or fitness activity.

How thoughtful! You’re allowed to temporarily lift your mask to shove a fry in your mouth or down a few gulps of lager.

The implied stupidity makes it really hard to take it seriously. And I suspect this is why many people doubt government so-called experts and advisors. After all, this is the same caliber of people who brought us things like the smoking bylaw that penalizes business owners if they fail to police a 9 meter (29.5 feet) radius in front of their premises, a distance that often extends well into the street if not all the way across.

I haven’t heard of anyone being rounded up into cattle cars yet so for me the mask bylaw has so far been only a mild irritant. And there are loopholes in it that are big enough to drive a truck through. Nevertheless, I sympathize with the people who see this as a slippery slope.

Developments like the increasingly indefinite emergency measures being introduced by Doug Ford’s lackeys, when compared with something like the 9/11 anti-terror laws that over the years have never really abated, tend to produce some very plausible conclusions even if those conclusions haven’t yet been borne out.

When Doug Ford claims it’s not a power grab are we to assume he’s being honest? The oxymoron doth run deep there.

So is it so surprising when we find people resisting increasingly dictatorial demands by the state even as that same state tells us that Covid infections are way down “but we have to be ready for the next wave”? Sounds an awful lot like arbitrary, indefinite lockdowns and a complete stripping of people’s rights in the name of “public health measures“.

On top of that, it seems that in their frenzied efforts to impose their controls, governments may actually be openly violating the laws of their masters, something I realized while observing an interaction at a bank between a woman refusing to wear a mask and a front-door security officer refusing her access (to her own money).

The woman was showing the rent-a-cop the bylaw and claiming she had an illness, therefore couldn’t wear a mask. The diminutive female guard asked the woman what kind of illness she had and even after she was told it was asthma there was a lot of hemming and hawing.

At first I thought, how shitty of the government to make the businesses and ultimately their employees responsible for facing people’s wrath in increasingly tense times. Besides, I doubt most of these Covid bouncers have any training in determining which illnesses may or may not qualify so putting the onus on them to make safety decisions seems quite reckless.

Moreover, aren’t there provincial health privacy laws that specifically prevent random people demanding answers to exactly these types of questions? Aren’t business owners opening themselves up to lawsuits if they follow the city bylaw? Or do municipal laws supersede provincial legislation now?

Maybe until they get their act together we should #defundthestate