Wearing a mask can blind you, but only if you live where I live. Allow me to explain.
In previous entries, I mentioned the Texas bar owner and Kentucky shopkeepers who decided to ban people wearing masks from their establishments, despite COVID-19 task force, CDC, and state recommendations to wear masks. Well, it turns out that those anti-mask folks may have been onto something if the people they banned were wearing masks distributed by the Tennessee Department of Health.
Yes, if you dropped in for COVID-19 testing in Tennessee, you were allowed to take home some handy dandy, state-provided masks for which the Volunteer state paid $8 million. Just one small problem. The masks were treated with Silvadur, a kind of fungicide that the EPA says can "cause irreversible eye damage, cause skin burns, and is harmful if swallowed or inhaled."
Evidently this state procurement idea has the occasional drawback, eh? A friend of mine who recently had cataract surgery had been wearing one of these babies. Thankfully, I never picked some up; I would have been wearing them while jogging.
Two months ago, the state of Tennessee was ranked 49th in virus preparedness. Now we can see why, although we might not be seeing much of anything had we been wearing these health department masks.
Bob Dietz
June 5, 2020
