The Catholic Weekly 23 August 2020

24 NEWS 23, August, 2020 T he editor of this pub- lication has asked me to write a short es- say about how things are going here in the Unit- ed States with the coronavi- rus pandemic. Are we okay, how’s it going, is it true that everybody except 11 reclus- es who live in a treehouse in Montana have the virus now, or what? The answer to all of these questions is: AUGHHHHH- HH. We are not okay. We are not okay. All manner of things shall not be okay. Some of us are still alive, it’s true; but those who are halfway wish we were not, be- cause now we have to figure out if it makes sense to send our kids back to school or not, because they really do have to learn something at some point; but on the other hand: AUGHHHHHHHH. Most countries would feel that, since the virus is fright- ening and dangerous and rel- atively new, that’s enough to handle, and we can probably find sufficient reason to be upset with that information alone. But Americans are go-get- ters. We’re never satisfied with the bare minimum. We’re always turning up the volume, cranking up the heat, amping up the juice, and putting more and more slic- es of cheese on the already enormous quadruple stacked juicy burger of AUGHHHHH- HH. So let’s say we want to leave our house to buy a loaf of bread. Let’s say we wish to venture into an office building Dying with an aughh! to get some work done. Let’s say we are considering send- ing our children into a school with dozens or hundreds or thousands of other children right when the weather is go- ing to turn cold soon, and we don’t really have any reliable information about what long- term effect the virus will have on their developing body sys- tems. Surely one easy way to mitigate some of the danger is to wear masks whenev- er possible, right? There are mountains of evidence show- ing that masks help prevent the spread of the virus. Easy peasy! Mask it up. But wait. You forget. We are Americans. Even better, we are Amer- ican Catholics, and that means we have whipped up for ourselves a bottomless vat of unnecessary suffering and stupidity, which we intend DearAustralia, thankyou for asking, but here in theUSwearedefinitelynotOK. to slather on each other for the foreseeable future, un- til everybody except eleven recluses who live in a tree- house in Montana has the virus; and in this way, we will show glory to God and to our founding fathers, because our saving Lord and our boys in blue didn’t die face down in the mud of Vietnam just so we could betray their memo- ries by not licking each other while setting off fireworks, dammit! The reason you don’t get these jokes is not because you’re Australian. It’s because they’re not funny. None of this is fun- ny. We are all going to die like Americans; which is to say, not with a bang, but an AUGHHHHHHHH. and finally . . . Mark of the beast? More like MASK of the beast, Q.E.D. Oh, and our president sup- ports a doctor who saysmasks are unnecessary and who also says that endometrio- sis is caused by accidentally having sex with demons in your sleep. Also, masks are uncom- fortable. We are not okay. Thanks for asking. We are not okay. Sincerely, Americans Simcha Fisher is the author of The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning Even better, we are American Catholics, and that means we have whipped up for ourselves a vat of unnecessary suffer- ing and stupidity which we intend to slather on each other ...” It would be sinful to cover the Imago Dei by wearing a mask; Masks are a secret ploy to hide children's identity so it's easier to traffic them; Masks are making us Muslim; Masks are just an Asian thing; Masks are part of a satanic ritual; Masks are part of a Masonic ritual; Masks are actually a fetish that's quietly turning us into a race of perverts; Masks are superstitious, and wearing them is idolatrous; Masks weaken your immune system by preventing you from snorking up every possible germ that wafts by; My faith is a mighty armour by which God will protect me, and I choose to strap that on rather than this pathetic bit of cloth: Masks concentrate germs by giving them a cozy home in your nose until they can triumphantly emerge later as superbugs that actually will kill everybody; Masks cause us to inhale our own exhaled carbon monoxide (yes, mmmmonoxide); Masks are a humiliating and degrading form of child abuse; Wearing masks is a form of humanism, that puts the welfare of the body above the welfare of the soul; You can scientifically and incontrovertibly prove masks don't work by farting; Masks are just virtue signalling, and humble and holy people would never engage in that, as they will tell you every hour on the hour; Masks are never specifically mentioned in the US Constitution, and last I heard, I woke up in a free country; Masks are a backdoor assault on your right to bear arms (I'm not even going to try to untangle this one for non-American audiences. Just trust me, it's stupid); Masks hide our smiles and smiles are how we show love and God is love so masks are anti-God devices; Masks are training us to be socialists; Masks are training us to be marxists; Masks are training us to be communists; Masks are training us to be Muslims; People with medical conditions cannot wear them (medical conditions such as chin acne or being hot); Masks are training us to be Muslims; They have never conducted a double blind study to test the effectiveness of masks. They have never conducted a double blind study to test the effectiveness of masks. (I know I wrote that one twice. I just wanted to make sure you read it and thought about it for a minute, so you, too, can suffer what I suffered while imagining a double blind study of masks.) Masks are indistinguishable from the Star of David Jews were forced to wear, and last I heard, we're anti- Holocaust around here; Masks are unfair to deaf people (and we also refuse to wear special masks with visibility windows because it's not our fault they're deaf); Masks give you Legionaire's disease; Masks are training us to be Muslims; Masks are deliberately designed to appeal to paedophiles; Masks give you a false sense of security which is exactly what the virus is counting on; Masks are dangerous because we have a breathing problem, which we will demonstrate by going off on a twelve-minute, top-volume screaming tirade in the supermarket when a 16-year-old bagger reminds us about their mask policy; Masks are like muzzles and muzzles are for dogs; Worrying about disease teaches us to doubt that Jesus conquered death; Babies will be psychologically damaged because they will never learn to understand facial cues and expressions; Masks are designed to make us feel like the virus is everywhere, but it's actually God who is everywhere, so there; Masks are training us to be Muslims; Early on in the pandemic, there was different advice about masks, so now, even though we’ve had time to compile mountains of evidence, it’s impossible to believe anything anyone says unless it happens to coincide with what we feel like doing anyway; Masks are spiritually harmful because they train us to see other people as potential enemies; Wearing a mask for forty minutes while shopping will cause dangerous hypoxia, which doctors don't get when they wear masks for hours at a time because they are doctors, duh; Viruses are in the blood but when I receive communion, I drink Christ's blood, so YOU TELL ME; Masks are face diapers (and let's not think too much about what this argument implies about what comes out of the mouth of the person who invented this phrase); Masks are softening us up for microchips that will be delivered via mandatory vaccines; God breathed his life into us but it's hard to breathe in a mask, so therefore masks are God-blockers . . . Arguments my fellow Americans have put forth to explain why we CANNOT, MUST NOT wear masks around other people: Simcha Fisher Columnist NEW