Welcome to "Public Health Media Club", a crossover episode of "Public Health is Dead" and "Everything is Public Health".
This is Public Health Media Club—a chatty and critical exchange about public health in the media!
Daniella (of "Public Health is Dead") & MJ (of "Everything is Public Health") do a crossover episode about COVID, people still masking, and "The Science"! First up, from the Atlantic: The Evermaskers (archived link).
*This episode pairs nicely with the previous special episode on Public Health is Dead, "But My Therapist Said"*
IMPORTANT: Let us know if you like this format! And if you want us to continue making crossover episodes like this.
Of course, there's a lot to talk about since Everything is Public Health and Public Health is Dead.
Follow MJ's show "Everything is Public Health" here.
Daniella: Hey Public Health is Dead listeners!
This is a crossover spinoff episode with the host of another public health show, Everything is Public Health. This is a pilot experiment called Public Health Media Club – the point is to take a chatty but critical look at some of the things we see about public health in the media.
If you like this format, please do tell us, we have a lot to chat about. If you don’t love it, maybe we won’t do it. Or won’t do it as often. But I think you might like it. I had a good time recording this… ok here goes.
MJ: Hi.
Daniella: Hi, MJ. How's it going?
MJ: I'm doing well. I guess we should introduce ourself. Go ahead. Who are you?
Daniella:I'm Daniella. I am the host of Public Health Is Dead and I'm very excited to be talking about public health media stuff with you. MJ.
MJ: I am MJ. I'm the host of Everything. Is Public Health, another public health podcast?
Um. We both love public health.
Daniella: I don't know if I love it
MJ:.. already. We're off to like a contentious start.
Daniella: I wanna burn my degrees.
MJ: Oh, you know what I do too. So I think, let me rephrase that. We both love the idea of public health, like we think it's a good thing, but I think both of us are very, um, furious at public health as it is practiced right now.
MJ: There we go. Or the lack thereof. Yeah. There we go. I mean, your show is literally, public health is dead, so Yeah.
Daniella: Exactly. I think people can guess how I feel about that.
MJ:Yeah. I can't believe usually I'm like by far the most pessimistic person in the friend group. I can't believe I'm the positive one.
Daniella: I know, right?
MJ: It's kind of crazy. All right. It's okay. We do new things every day. But anyway. Hello listeners. Welcome to Public Health Media Club, and as the title suggests. We are going to be reading and reacting and dissecting and analyzing. Is that too many words? Uh, some media from a public health perspective, how do we get this idea?
MJ: Do you remember? It was a long time ago.
Daniella: I actually don't remember. I think we were talking about wanting to do something that wasn't the way that both our shows were. Yes. You reached out over email and we're like, hi, we should talk.
MJ: I reached out because your show was very cool. Just the title alone is like, wow, what a great title.
Daniella: Oh, thank you.
MJ: Yeah, so go check it out. Listeners. You're already here if you're listening, so, but yeah, like both of us felt very frustrated at public health, specifically how people who don't know public health is doing public health, I guess, or the media, how they're handling it and. Over the ongoing pandemic.
It's just in a different stage. But the COVID is still here.
Daniella: Yeah. I think we're in the denial phase. I dunno.
MJ: Oh wait, we went backwards. We went back to denial.
Daniella: I think maybe, I don't know. People are always saying like, during the pandemic, back in COVID, I'm like, you mean right now?
MJ: People are getting sick still, but yeah. And. I don't know. Public health gets no respect and we want to have a space where we can openly and unabashedly talk about public health as it should be and what better place to start than just ripping some think pieces to shreds
Daniella: Love it. I'd love to be a hater. My alternate. Suggestion for this, which I don't know if I told you, was Public Health Haters Club, but I don't think that would go over very well.
MJ: Honestly, we could change it right now. Hard cut to a new intro sequence. Welcome to Public Health Haters Club for people who hate public health. No way. That's not it. Yeah, but we're gonna be dissecting some pieces of media, and when I say media, we're using that word very broadly. So there's think pieces from newspapers and journals, social media, videos.I think would qualify maybe sometimes. I mean, I don't know. Depends on how long we do this. We might even tackle like straight up movies and books, but we'll see. We're gonna start small. You picked the article for our inaugural episode.
Daniella: I did.
MJ: Here's the gimmick of this show. Neither of us has read it. Correct?
Daniella: Nope. I have not read it. I've seen other people get really mad about it, so I was like, oh, hold off. I'll wait.
MJ: Well, perfect. Um, so what we know or what I know is the title, the author and the publication source, I dunno, anything else? I feel like you know a little bit more because you've heard other people get really mad about it.
So tell me about what you know about this article without reading it.
Daniella: Okay, so this article is called The Ever Maskers. It's published in the Atlantic. It was published.
MJ: Oh yeah. When is it published? First
date on this? April 1st, 2025.
MJ: Wait, April Fools.
Daniella: I would love for this to be an April Fool's prank, but I don't know if it is.
MJ: Wait, have we confirmed that this is not an April Fool's prank?
Daniella: Yes.
MJ: Okay. Just double checking.
Daniella: So it's called the Ever Maskers. The subtitle is The Isolation of People Who Take Precautions Against COVID has only gotten more intense. So could be framed positively. Could not be, I don't know, by someone named Daniel Engber. Never heard of this person.
MJ: Okay. Neither have I.
Daniella: They probably are mad that I haven't, but, you know, so that's, that's where we are.
MJ: Okay. And you've heard a lot of buzz about this article, um, from who do you remember
Daniella: From mostly people who are still taking COVID precautions? So, my own circles.
MJ: And I'm the only one that still wears a mask of all the people that I know.
Daniella: I mean, if you like my show, I imagine, I've never actually asked you. But if you like my show, I imagine that you kind of align with the content. Sure. So I was actually, before this, I was thinking, I was like, interesting. I wonder what you actually think, what you will actually think about this article. 'cause we haven't really talked about it.
MJ: Yeah. You know what? That's for us to find out after we read it. I think we are mostly aligned. I still wear a mask not to have a tangent. Here's my hot take. So there's the N95 mask, which is the, I don't wanna say gold standard, right? But you know, it's a pretty common medical mask for dealing with airborne or droplet spread diseases. N95 mask. I prefer the ones with two straps where there's one that goes. Around the neck and the one that goes like over your head, I cannot wear the ones that goes behind the ears. They suck. That's my hot take. I don't know if that's hot. I don't know what N95 mask you prefer.
Daniella: I don't think it's a hot take. I think it makes sense. And I mean the only N95 that you can have are the head strap ones.
MJ: I've seen the ones… or are they just not N95?
Daniella: They're called KN95s. Oh yeah, there's like different gradations. I think those ones are standardized in China, like the KN 90 fives. Oh, okay. And yeah, they do offer less protection, but still much more than a cloth mask. And vastly more than nothing, surgical as well. Yeah, surgical mask for sure.
MJ: This is one of my pet peeves. I feel like your listeners will probably know this, but the point of a surgical mask is for everyone to wear it. It's mainly to like catch your stuff coming out. It's not really meant to like protect you from the air, which I don't think a lot of people know.
Daniella: Yeah. I don't think people do know, like they're kind of like splash guards almost. They are like both ways of, in surgery you're try not to get blood in your mouth
MJ: They're only effective if everyone in the room wears it. But if. No one in the room wears it. You need to wear an N95 and not like a surgical mask because the surgical mask doesn't really do it. I mean, again, better than nothing, I guess a lot of things are better than nothing, but mm-hmm. Anyway, enough tangents. But you know, this is, this article is obviously about masking. Shall we go into. Predictions before we actually read it.
Daniella Okay. Yeah, you go first because I feel like I, I've been tainted by
MJ: By the reactions.
Daniella: Yeah, by the reactions being unavoidable.
MJ: I think this is going to be an article that either makes fun of or tries to discredit people who still wear masks. This was published like what, a month plus ago? Like very recently. 2025 you said?
Mm-hmm.
MJ: And I am definitely picking up that is sort of the vibe that's going on. Like ever masker, like you, you're forever wearing a mask. I have very low hopes for this. I do think I'm gonna get angry when I read this. Um, also, you know what, I'll save this for later, but what is your prediction about this?
Daniella: I also think I'm gonna get very angry. Like, I think it's gonna feed into the way that media has so often kind of made people still taking precautions and using protections as like, there's something wrong with you.
MJ: Yeah. Or like, why are you wearing a mask?
Daniella: Yeah. I feel like it's gonna be more of the same (bleep) basically of, oh my God, this is over. Why are you living in 2020, kind of thing where, eh, how many times have you been sick?
MJ: Yeah, yeah. Also, like it does give anti-vax vibes.
Daniella: Oh, you think so?
MJ: Um, I think people who are on this line of thinking, you could very easily see how they say like, Ugh, measles is over. Like, why are we getting the measles vaccines? Right. I feel like the jump from, it's not that far if that's what you think. It's coming from a place of a fundamental misunderstanding of how risk works.
Mm.
MJ: Just 'cause you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. And I don't know, I would not be surprised if the article goes there.
Daniella: Interesting. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think it'll get anti-vax. I think it's gonna be very anti mask. Right. But I think it's gonna be that kind of liberal, I got vaccinated, therefore I don't need to do anything else. Yeah. And the vaccines are the be all, end all of everything. And vax and relax. I'm done. Kind of? That's what I think it will be. I don't know if it will go anti-vax, but who knows these days?
MJ: Who knows this? This leads to my second question, what is your impression of the Atlantic?
Daniella: Ooh, I, okay. I used to really appreciate The Atlantic for publishing Ed Yong's work.
Mm mm-hmm.
Daniella: And for people who may not know, Ed Young is
MJ: journalist, I guess author,
Daniella: an amazing science writer, journalist who really was probably the first, one of the first journalists to really take long COVID seriously and write about it and basically one of his articles sort of sparked the idea for the name of this podcast, of my podcast, actually, I think he had an article called The Demise of Public Health? I have to look it up. But it was. Pretty much like public health is dead and public health did it to itself.
Yeah.
Daniella: And yeah, so I did appreciate the Atlantic for that. But they've also published some like questionable things. Ed Yong no longer works there. I feel like it's uh, just part of the whole machinery of pushing people into believing that the pandemic is over that so many. Of the sort of mainstream liberal news outlets are.
MJ: Uh, let the record show that she rolled her eyes when she said liberal news. Hard roll from left to right. Um,
Daniella: From left to right. Exactly. Yeah. Sorry.
MJ: That was very funny. 10 outta 10. All right. I definitely think the Atlantic went down the New York Times route. Of trying so hard to be neutral that they end up being right, as in politically right. Mm. They're like, no, no, no. We have to consider both sides, and then they end up just like justifying some really, really questionable stuff. That's why I failed the Atlantic. I had a much better impression of them prior to the pandemic. They released one of my favorite podcast series called The Experiment.
Daniella: Oh, I've not heard of that.
MJ: It's good. It's in collaboration with WNYC, I believe. But the experiment is a very solid. Podcast series, one of my favorites.Probably not top 10, but maybe like top 50 for sure. And ever since the pandemic things have changed a little and I no longer take them as seriously as I do before. Okay. So here's what's gonna happen. We are going to take our time to read it. This article ever maskers,
Daniella: I'm gonna print it and I'm gonna scribble on it.
MJ: Oh yeah, you do have a printer? I don't have a printer.
Daniella: I have a printer right behind me. Yeah,
MJ: I don't have a printer, so I'm gonna have to scribble digitally. So we're gonna print it. We're going to read it, we're gonna digest it, and we're gonna write down our thoughts in the margins and we will be back.
Daniella: Thoughts on the margins. That could be a podcast title.
MJ: Ooh. Anyway, wait, should we re-shoot this? That is a good podcast. Oh, dang it. I kind of want, mm.
Daniella: Maybe that can be the segment that's like what we call the conversation.
MJ: Okay. Lemme write this down. Thoughts on the margins. It's too good not to use is what I'm saying.So yeah, we will digest it. And we will, I'm sure, write a bunch of our thoughts down about it and we will be back in… for the listeners, a few seconds for us, potentially weeks. And we will discuss our thoughts.
MJ: Okay. We're back.
We are
MJ: through the power of editing. That was just a few seconds, but it's been a few days. Both of us have. Read it and digested, although talking
Daniella: Dunno about digested, but I read it. Yeah.
MJ: Digested poorly because this thing sucks.
Daniella: Pour us the Pepto-Bismol, I don't know. Not sponsored.
MJ: Not sponsored. My God. Like what did you make me read?
Daniella: Oh, it was my choice actually.
MJ: It was your choice. You can't blame me for this.
Daniella: Uh, wow. It was wild. I can't believe that this. Like got published,
MJ: right?
Daniella: But I guess it was written by a senior editor and they publish what they want. So
MJ: I have no idea how magazines and newspaper publishing work, but this article sucked from beginning to end, like just such a wet paper bag of an article like your podcast is Public health is dead. If public health is dead. Mainstream journalism is a rotting corpse animated purely by the hunger for the American dollar. That's what I put down. This thing is so bad, so bad to the point that I actually don't know where to start.
Daniella: Yeah, I don't know. Like the whole tone I got from it was this sort of underlying like, “look at those people over there. So ridiculous. Like they're just like kind of lumping people who still consider COVID to be like a serious public health issue, lumping those people in with anti-vaxxers?
MJ: Yes. Oh my God,
Daniella: There's so much weird conflation and sarcasm and just like derision. Mm-hmm. That I got from this.
Yeah.
MJ: Even though at the same time he was like, Hmm. But they probably have a point like, hello. That's a very classic mainstream journalism tactic is that they always leave. A little bit so that if they do face enough pressure that they need a backpedal, they could point to that one thing that they left in and be like, no, no, no, actually I was being very reasonable.
Look at this thing that I left in the same strategy. You can see with, um, I just did an episode about the CDC has an injury center. That got absolutely gutted. It went from like 200 something staff to 12 staff.
Daneilla: Oh my God.
MJ: And we talked about how they left 12 for a reason, was a strategic decision for them to be able to say, actually it's still there.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: The injury center is still there, but with 12 people, what are you gonna do?
Daniella: What's that called? Plausible deniability.
MJ: Yes. Oh my God. You put it into words. So smart. But you see that here, like in the middle. The middle is where people sort of gloss over the most. Usually people read the beginning and they read the end.But the middle you see. Him, I'm assuming it's a him, right? Because only a man can write this book. Um, you see him like tuck in that little thing that you pointed out. It's like, actually they might have a point, but then immediately move on going back to his, um, his main thesis. Yeah. You know what's a good idea first?
Is that we should probably tell the listeners who haven't read this, what this is about before we dissect it even further, because they probably have no context right now what this article is.
Daniella: That's true. It's called The Ever Maskers. Mm-hmm. It was published in the Atlantic, written by Daniel Enger.
MJ: Okay. It is a man, I was right.
Daniella: Uh, he's a senior editor at The Atlantic.
MJ: Mm-hmm. The now Disgraced Atlantic. If you were to summarize it in like three to four sentences, what would you summarize it?
Daniella: Um, okay. It's an article about this author's exploration into the people who still take precautions against COVID.
MJ: Yeah, pretty much. That's the gist of the article. So it started out with a few examples. He basically picked, I think three people, maybe four. These are all people that are still taking COVID precautions relatively seriously. And basically going through their lives, their routine, and then sort of you can tell that he's pointing out like, oh, actually they're being kind of ridiculous for doing this.
That's sort of his, his general thesis for that piece. And obviously, you know, like any article, you plug in some numbers here, some studies here, a few quotes from experts here and there. The general summary of this article is. Look at these people that I've picked out who still take COVID very seriously, aren't they funny? Right? That's sort of the general gist.
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: Okay. Here's the second segment of this episode, and we come up with this last time. This is our thoughts on the margin.
Daniella: Yes.
MJ: I see. You actually wrote literal, literally wrote some stuff on the margins.
Daniella: I did.
MJ: You printed it out like a studious grad student.I did not do that. I don't have a printer at home. I did not get to write things on the margins. But how should we start?
Daniella: Is there anything that stood out to you that you like highlighted a lot or you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this. Like, was there anything that stood out to you like that?
MJ: Several things that stood out to me like that I've pulled several quotes that I think is worth discussing and
Daniella: Okay. Yeah, why don't you start with a couple and then I can jump in with my thoughts too. Okay.
MJ: Sounds good. So here's a few things that I've. Picked out, and I was really primed by this other article that I've read recently that sort of has nothing to do with this, but basically there's a huge discussion in the online space about whether we're losing the ability to read both our generation and the younger generation.I don't know if you, you've read that article, but there's a huge discourse in both the educational space, in online space in general, like. It seems like people aren't reading books anymore. And so I was really primed with the ability of critical thinking and close reading. And there's a lot of sentences here where if you were to turn your brain off and read it, it wouldn't occur to you that anything is wrong.
Daniella: Mm.
MJ: But if you were to like do some close reading, you can tell that this author has every intention to push his. I could say a propaganda across. Right. So we started with Dennis who is the opening anecdote that this author chose? It's another classic journalism trick of like that's picked, like the “craziest” person to open with.Dennis is not just masking. Dennis is also doing a lot of other things including, uh, mouthwash, nasal rinse, and also at one point during the pandemic, I believe Dennis bought Ivermectin as well. So, classic journalism trick. Let's pick the “craziest” person” as the example and use that to sort of detract people who wear mask, which is a very, very reasonable thing for people to do.
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: And this sentence I picked out as a Masker emdash. And as a mouthwash guy and a nasal rinser emdash, Dennis knows he's outta step with almost everyone he sees in person. I picked this because that emdash is a very deliberate use. That little phrase that's tucked behind Masker, because that, to me, the author is perhaps subconsciously aware that wearing a mask is not unreasonable. So he needs to like supplement his argument with that M dash phrase of like as a masker and, and and as a mouthwash guy and a nasal rinser, don't forget that he also do these things.Dennis knows that he's outta step, because if you take that M dash out as a masker, Dennis knows he's outta step with almost everyone. He sees in person that sentence. It's very weak from the author's perspective of his propaganda that he's trying to push. Mm-hmm. But as soon as you add that M dash phrase in, do you get what I'm trying to say? Maybe I'm not articulating this correctly.
Daniella: No, absolutely. Like I think trying to associate masking with things that are often, that are seen as. Less scientifically plausible. So like I think, yeah, from the perspective of the journalist of like, this is how people are pathologized, I guess.
MJ: Yes.
Daniella: Or like made to seem extreme or ridiculous or like all of these things that, like “me as a sensible Atlantic writer could never think about this.” You know? So I think you're very right, like kind of pairing these things with masking, like the ivermectin thing, which. I think as it's also placed in the beginning of this article kind of leads the reader to automatically assume, oh, I have heard and know that ivermectin is ridiculous and like Yeah.
Which it is. To be fair, that's a Trump related thing and like that's all of this stuff that we debunked in the beginning of, and so like by associating that with the person who is masking, I think immediately. Serves to like attack the credibility of masking and like attack the relevance of it, I guess, to protecting yourself. Because it's like, if he's doing this and he is also doing this, these things must both be ridiculous. Like, it's, I think a logical fallacy that he's leading the reader to.
MJ: Yes. And it's clever because he never actually says it. And which is what makes like a good propaganda piece. It's very subtle to the point where if you turn your brain off and read it, you would probably walk away as like, oh yeah, these people are kind of, it's not until you like read critically for a lack of a better term do you find out that there is some rhetoric and syntactical trick that he's doing? Anyway? I was really primed by listening to that discourse of like, oh, people are losing the ability to read.
Daniella: Hmm.
MJ: I don't know if it's a moral panic, but it is a concern with some educators in the space that people are not able to read long form text anymore.
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: I will say Ivermectin, we have debunked it, right? Ivermectin doesn't, doesn't do anything for COVID. That is true. I don't know the science of mouthwash and nasal rinsing, but. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, probably not super effective is my guess. Um, I don't know if you know anything about mouthwash and nasal rinsing.
Daniella: A bit like there were a couple of studies that kind of showed that there was some protective benefits to iota carrageenan nasal spray. Mm-hmm. There were some studies I think done in like hospitals that showed some protection and so people were like. Just sort of extending that, like maybe that could apply to COVID as well.
MJ: Mm. Yeah. What's your take on it?
Daniella: It's not, I mean, I do have that specific nasal spray, occasionally use it in addition to masking, but like, I think there's like, I would never rely on it exclusively. Like there's not enough research and there's also like no negative side effects really. So. Again, I think it's this sort of thing of like public health has left us to fend for ourselves and I think going to look for things that might maybe help is something that people do.
MJ: It's very reasonable for people to do. And unlike Ivermectin, which does have side effects, if you want to rinse out your mouth and and nasal stuff with this,
Daniella: you'll just have fresh breath.
MJ: So what? You just have fresh breath and I think everyone is entitled to a little bit of irrationality. I'm sure I have a lot of irrational behaviors that a lot of people don't understand, and I'm sure everyone does. And this is one of those things where. I would put it in that bucket of like, yeah, I don't get it, but because it doesn't affect anyone else and it also has very little side effect to you. Okay, rinse your nose, go for it. You know, like, why are we making a big deal out of this? So, yeah. So that's one sentence that I picked up, and then there's another sentence.This is addressing like these people who are masking and still quote unquote COVID-ing is the term that he used.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: Theirs is a kind of shadow world where the fears and obligations felt by everyone in early 2020 never really went away. The use of the term shadow world is hilarious.
Daniella: Oh yeah. I highlighted that too.I was like, wow.
MJ: Shadow world. Because it's funny to me because. They're not in hiding. You know, like they're very open about it. It is like, yeah, this is, I still wear a mask. They're very social as we've seen in this article itself. Like these are not people that are like quarantined in a mountain bunker and refuse to come out, right? These are people with actual lives and live their lives. They just wear a mask and are, might be more careful for your taste, but shadow world is wild phrasing to use.
Daniella: Yeah. That was a choice. Like there are these, exactly like you're saying, like things that he will include to make it seem like so outrageous and so ridiculous. Like “you're living in a shadow world”. Like what?
MJ: Oh man.
Daniella: Okay. And then I think it, yeah, it just brings in these implications of like, oh, people who do that are unreasonable, kind of pathologizing and othering people.
MJ: Very much so.
Daniella: Through language choices throughout this whole thing.
MJ: Yeah. Anything in the first section that you also highlighted or wrote on Thoughts on the margin?
Daniella: Yeah, I did so in the still COVIDing section where he's like, these are people who are quote unquote, still COVIDing, but some are going further to protect themselves than they did in 2020. Well, yeah, because people learned about airborne transmission that
MJ: That was also funny.
Daniella: Many people didn't know before 2020. I didn't, yeah, I didn't understand it. It was just this thing that was kind of mocked in public health school and then, you know, never brought up again. But it's like, of course people change their behavior based on new information, but he is acting like, “oh look, we did wild things in 2020 and they went even further? These must be like irrational people,” but maybe people read things and maybe people learned things and are adapting their behavior.
MJ: Also, maybe people change their tactics because other people are doing less. Right. Have you thought about that?
Daniella: Exactly. Yeah. But of course that doesn't come up. This sentence: They share tips online for how to fit their N95 masks or taping filters to the spouts of snorkels. Like again, combining this like very reasonable thing of like how to make sure your N95 mask is not leaking to something that like sounds kind of silly, like you're taping things to snorkels and going swimming, like, intentionally combining a reasonable thing with something that most people would probably be like, that's extreme. Just combining them both so they both seem extreme is like really…
MJ: it's a tactic.
Daniella: I don't know, sinister. Sinister is not a word to use, but like
MJ: No, it is
Daniella: Well, I don't know. There's lots of like ableism in some of the words that we choose. “Sinister” or like “crazy” or all of these things.
MJ: I'm glad we're on a very similar wavelength because that exact sentence is also one that I've highlighted. Make a normal thing sound absurd by juxtaposing it with something. Because the first thing, like how to fit a N95 mask, so reasonable. This is such a reasonable thing for people to discuss because guess what? If your N95 mask doesn't fit, it doesn't really do much, you might as well wear a surgical mask at that point, right? Yeah. The whole point of N95 is that it needs to fit well.
Daniella: Exactly
MJ: and the second thing. Completely outrageous taping filters to spout snorkels. If you're going to a pool, the snorkel is the least of your worries when it comes to like diseases.
Daniella: Yeah. Like I personally wouldn't do that. Like if I was gonna go swimming, I'd go swimming outside
MJ: or don't go swimming.
Daniella: Yeah. Right. I feel like maybe that's something that some people would choose to do if they don't really have another option or like are trying to think of ways that they could still participate in things.
MJ: Sure.
Daniella: But I think you're right it’s like, because access to things and like general mitigations are so low, maybe people are pushed to kind of figure out stuff like that. Or like try to, because otherwise they might get sick and like that has a whole host of other things that we'll get into. Yeah. And while he's kind of uh, I guess making fun of people, he never actually explains what the point of an N95 mask is. Doesn't explain how to fit it or why you would wanna do that. The word airborne doesn't come up once in this piece. Like,
MJ: yeah.
Daniella: If he bothered to like explain why people were doing this, like maybe people reading this might understand more and it wouldn't be this like wild thing happening in the “shadow world” where actually it could be used as a way to educate people. But he obviously has an agenda, obviously. It was like, “Oh wow. Can't believe people are still doing that.”
MJ: I do a lot of editing, specifically audio editing, right. Obviously for my podcast. But I think anyone who's in the editing space, whether it's for film, for YouTube videos, or even for like writing, will know that editing is a very effective tool for communication. Part of critical reading is understand that what the author choose not to include in a piece is just as important as what the author choose to include in a piece. So this article is not like a Bluesky post where you could sort of say, oh, you maybe just typed it and just posted it without really thinking much.This is a published article, which means probably multiple rounds of revision, probably many eyes on it. His lack of inclusion for all the things that you've said was deliberate.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: And if you can recognize that, if you can understand that editing has that much power in forming a narrative, you can sort of see that none of this feigned neutrality is genuine. Right. Because he's feigning neutrality throughout the entire thing.
Daniella: Absolutely.
MJ: Where it's like, “I'm just reporting”,
Daniella: “I'm just asking questions”
MJ: “I'm just asking questions”. But if you know the editing trick, you will know that that neutrality is very much feigns.
Daniella: Yeah. There's one other thing in that paragraph which I found interesting was how he singles out people who are looking for COVID conscious therapists. Because there has been, I think, such an emotional and like mental health toll Sure. That trying to take care of yourself when. Government, public health institutions have abandoned you. Like of course that's gonna have like mental health. Mm-hmm. Implications, like that's hard. That sucks a lot of people around you are going to think similarly to this or like people are losing friends.Like it's not an easy thing to navigate. But the way that he talks about therapists here, like “they share lists of ones who would never try to tell you that you're too afraid. Of getting sick or that your risk perception is distorted or that the problem here isn't the world but you”, like he is basically using that sentence to say the things that he actually thinks.
MJ: Yes
Daniella: And also I have an episode coming up where I spoke to three different COVID conscious, COVID aware. COVID informed therapist.
MJ: Okay. Sneak peek behind the scenes.
Daniella: Yeah. Who all talk about like the importance of being a therapist who understands what COVID can do, like interpersonally, biologically, because a therapist's duty is to not cause harm.
MJ: Yeah.
Daniella: But by telling people the things that he has included in here that, “oh, you're too afraid of getting sick. Just get out there, leave your mask behind” kind of thing. As a therapist, you don't know and you have no interest or desire to engage with scientific literature.
MJ: That's not your call as a therapist.
Daniella: Yeah. So they talk a lot about like, therapists can cause harm by doing this, and that is like completely unacceptable. So yeah. Yeah. Just as a sneak peek, I guess there's a very interesting conversation coming up.
MJ: This is why we're doing this. This is like the get to know Daniela.
Daniella: Wow.
MJ: I also find that to be another tactic that I see a lot in a lot of, um, these mainstream liberal journalists is – speaking what they think through an quote unquote expert.
Daniella: Mm-hmm.
MJ: And then again, going back to the editing thing, he picked this expert, right? He picked the things that he want, these people that he's quoting. To say, right? He's taking these quotes that he wants. This is not like a live interview. He chose those experts deliberately and he chose those quotes deliberately and he chose, um, where to place them deliberately in this article.
Daniella: Exactly. And this one, even like that there is quote he has from researcher slash therapist later on, but even this one is a hypothetical therapist.
MJ: Yes.
Daniella: It's not even one that exists or is not even a thing that he picked. He is like. This hypothetical therapist wouldn't say this thing that I don't actually think wink, wink.
MJ: He's actually doing like two steps. Yeah. Quoting a therapist, but a hypothetical therapist.
Daniella: Yeah.
MJ: Oh man. Okay. A lot of that stuff going on. Just a bunch of feigning neutrality, but obviously pushing an agenda. And then there's this sentence, and this I think is the highlight, or I should say low light for me in this article. He was discussing that these COVID conscious people, they used to be, uh, really attuned to the science, right? But now he's arguing that they're departing from science, and he had this one sentence that says, “this used to be the group that was most attuned to what quote, the science end quote said”.Why is science in quotes?
Daniella: Yeah, right? Like, uh,
MJ: What are you implying, sir? Like, are you implying that science is bad? What are you trying to do here?
Daniella: Scare quotes. Scare quotes around science.
MJ: Oh man. That's like the low light for me. The fact that he puts science in quotes.
Daniella: Yeah. And like, were these people, the ones who paid attention to dots painted on the sidewalk? Like, I don't think so. I thought a lot of that was silly after obviously reading and learning more things about airborne transmission, like, okay, sure. Being further apart is better, but like, not gonna just like stand on dots but nobody's telling me to wear a mask. Like what? I'd rather wear the mask and not stand on your dots.
MJ: So I was very naive. I thought the dots, this is like back when I still had hope, I guess, but I thought the dots were not for preventing transmission because it's silly, right? Like that space is not gonna do anything for something that's airborne. Even for droplet, it's really not gonna do anything. But I thought the dots were just limiting the number of people that can be in a given space.
Daniella: Mm. That made more sense.
MJ: There is some merit to, if there's less people in that space, like mathematically, you're playing a numbers game, right? So if there's fewer people in a given space. The chances are lower. I thought that's what that is, but apparently,
Daniella: Oh, you were thinking too much.
MJ: I was too naive. I was like, oh yeah, like it makes sense. We're playing a numbers game. If you lower the number of N in a given space, then the probability, assuming that there's a 2%,
Daniella: yeah, you were thinking way too much. They were not thinking that much.
MJ: They were just like, space is good.
Daniella: They were just putting stickers around.
MJ: I gave them way too much credit.
Daniella: I think so, yeah.
MJ: All right. Continue.
Daniella: The next sentence that's very close to that, and kind of the same was just like, in the past few years as official rules for social distancing have been revoked. They've had to make up new ones for themselves and that I was like, wow. Make up like again, these were choices of,
MJ: you can tell.
Daniella: Yeah. Making up. How about reading and adapting to new information? They're not just like pulling things out of the air. Yeah, no pun. But he, I think is trying to lead the reader to associate like the word makeup, make believe like all of these things that aren't real
MJ: fiction.
Daniella: Yeah. Kind of putting these into association with masking and with people who are still trying to protect themselves and their communities.
MJ: Yeah.
Daniella: So yeah, that was another piece that I think similar to like the science in scare quotes, like making up, no one's making up anything except you people make-believing that it's 2019.
MJ: That was also a very interesting word choice. There's also one sentence that's like the US Department of Health and Human Services said last week that COVID is over and I'm like, the current US administration is absolutely incompetent, possibly the most incompetent administration or regime I've ever seen in my life. Anyone who takes him seriously is (bleep) and the fact that he's quoting the US Department of Health and Human Services, the current one as like an authority is wild to me because you can trust nothing from the current US public health regime right now because it's not public health anymore. It's very much, I don't even know what you call this, like a clown show. I guess this is probably the term that I come to.
Daniella: Yeah. Actually a clown show, a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from is the quote that he's chosen from them and like, okay, if they're saying that, wouldn't you as a journalist want to interrogate that a little bit? Yeah. Like, is the pandemic actually over?
MJ: No
Daniella: No. The emergency phase is over because the WHO decided that. But they also made sure to say that the pandemic is definitely still happening.
MJ: Yeah,
Daniella: and we need to account for that. But you know, why do your job?
MJ: He had the audacity to say nearly 50,000 people die from COVID in the US last year. Okay. So you do know like, what the hell is this?You do know that you are wrong.
Daniella: I know. Oh my goodness. Like this is just the messiest thing I think I've ever… okay. And then at the bottom of that page too, he is like, if the ever maskers seem a little weirder every year, just again, like sticking these labels on like, yeah, okay. Maybe you should learn some things.
MJ: Yeah.
Daniella: There's just, yeah, there's so much, like I don't actually think we can dissect this to the degree that I want to, but yes, we should move on.
MJ: No, we can. It would just be an hour long.
Daniella: It would just be three hours long.
MJ: That's true. Depending on how deep we want to go. But I mean, we got the gist, right? And of course there's a pinch of misogyny towards the end. Tess, who's a woman who, a COVID conscious woman, Tess said she separated from her husband last year in part because at one point he'd taken off his mask at work without telling her, got infected and then passed along the illness. “Somebody who literally I got married to who I'm supposed to trust, lied to me, took away my agency and got me sick, she said.But moving out has not been easy. Any roommate she might find would need to share her view on COVID safety. For now, she's still living with her ex in a small apartment in the Bronx.” Why is this written like this?
Daniella: I know, right?
MJ: Why is it written like she's the unreasonable one? Her husband got her sick.
Daniella: I know, and I'm sure these are the same kinds of people who like clinging to the idea of consent and like bodily autonomy. But then when it comes to COVID, that doesn't matter anymore. Like what?
MJ: Yes, just a pinch. A tiny, tiny shred of misogyny. Just like sprinkled towards the end.
Daniella: He also doesn't acknowledge any of the data collection or assessment issues with COVID or long COVID. He says. That one sensible interpretation, according to whom, he doesn't say, the risk of long-term disability was greatest early on in the pandemic, but the threat, like the threat of COVID o overall, has been fading over time.Like, well, if you're gonna keep getting people reinfected, nobody's getting vaccinated. Or has access to vaccines? Like what do you think is gonna happen with long COVID? Like it's just all of this like really narrow inability and refusal to think beyond, just like the immediate, I think that's a bigger problem with like people's understanding of COVID in general is they're like, oh, I got sick once and I'm, I was fine.Then I got stuck again and again and I'm fine. But for a lot of people that isn't true. Yeah. And like you wanna keep rolling the dice? We know so much.
MJ: It's a numbers game.
Daneilla: Yeah. We know so much about like the post-acute impacts of COVID, whether that's long COVID or not. Whether that's a heart attack in like, I dunno, three months or you lose your hearing like Paul Simon did, or, I mean, there's like all of these things that could happen.
MJ: There's so many things,
Daniella:but he's just like got this really, really narrow focus and probably very limited understanding of what long COVID is and can be.
MJ: Yeah, like I think a part of this is. A fundamental lack of empathy. But also a fundamental lack of foresight
Daniella: and curiosity.
MJ: And curiosity. It's like, well, it, it didn't have to me, so it must be okay. You see that line of thinking with a lot of conspiracy theory and a lot of conservatives as well, where it's like, well, it doesn't affect me, so it must not be real. You're seeing that same thing here. Well, you know, people got COVID many times and they're fine. Again, it's a numbers game. If I gave you a revolver and one chamber is loaded. And I took it, rolled it, fired at my head and nothing happens. Would you be like, oh, nothing happened to you. Let me, let me do this too, right? No, you're playing a numbers game and how many times do you wanna pull that trigger, right? It doesn't matter whether it's like a one in a hundred or one in 10,000, if it's something that's avoidable.Why not avoid it?
Daniella: Exactly.
MJ: Why not avoid it? Why play the game? Why play Russian roulette when you can not play Russian roulette?
Daniella: I know another example somebody gave that I really liked,I don't remember who or in what context, but basically was just like long COVID itself. The WHO’s seemingly conservative estimate is that one in 10 infections will lead to long COVID
MJ: pretty high.
Daniella: I mean, that's high, but like definitely like an underestimate I think given like the amount of further research that's happening. But anyway,
MJ: even if it's half that, it's still high.
Daniella: I know. Exactly right. Like and someone was like, if you had the option to get on a rollercoaster that every one in 10 times would like fall apart, would you still do it?
MJ: Seriously maim you or something?
Daniella: And most people would say no, I think. But then when it comes to our health, it's like,
MJ: yeah, let's roll the dice.
Daniella: One in 10 becomes like very reasonable. I'm like, what? And public health used to move mountains.
MJ: Mm-hmm.
Daniella: Mountains to prevent the impacts of polio, which wouldn't happen as frequently, but like now, it just seems like public health is just, well, it's not my problem for any preventable disease.
MJ: I think it's, and this is sort of going on a tangent, but a big part of it is ideological capture. Public health has been sort of been captured by the, what I call in my podcast, like the econ bros. Mm. Of like. Oh man, the GDP is going to go down by 0.1% if we do this. And I'm like, if we can't agree that human lives are fundamentally valuable, yeah, then what is there to discuss? Like are human lives just dollar signs to you? And that's I think, a more difficult problem to overcome if in fact public health is sort of being ideologically captured by people who think. In economic terms instead of like, you know, maybe sick people isn't good.
Yeah, right. Yeah, no, I agree.
Anything else in the middle?
Daniella: I guess just the other part, like you mentioned that he says that nearly 50,000 people died from COVID in the US in the last year. Yeah. And then he also like probably didn't care to look at, but also just like how much COVID also contributes to some of the other leading causes of death and disability, strokes, heart attacks,
MJ: cardiovascular, right?
Daniella: And like increasingly like concerns about how it impacts cancer. Mm-hmm. Development and how it messes with some of the genes that are cancer suppressors and how it fucks with our immune system. Like all of these things that are so confusing and like, where did this come from in public health in so many ways. Maybe we should take a look at the thing that's been running rampant for the last few years. Like maybe that has something to do with it. Absolutely not. No. Can't be that thing.
MJ: Can't be that thing that we've been trying to suppress and ignore and move on from it. Even though it still kills like 50,000 people a year. Can't possibly be that thing. Yeah. Again, even if it doesn't cause any of those things. It's still wild that people want to move on from this, even if it doesn't cause stroke and cardiovascular and cancer, which we have preliminary evidence that shows that it does cause those things, but even if it doesn't, like don't you want to like not be sick?
Daniella: At a base level. Like isn't it nice to not be sick? I haven't been sick in years. Like
MJ: Also, you know what freaked me out the most is don't you want to like. Be able to smell things and taste things, right? There are cases where people lost it or either lost permanently or significant parts of it after an infection. I thankfully got mine back. That to me is like way more scary for someone who's like into food and who loves eating like that to me is way more horrifying, which I think says more about me.
Daniella: No, I mean that's one of the things of being human like don't you wanna like taste your food and enjoy smells? Like those are just human things, but also that's just such a clear neurological. Impact, like that's brain damage. Like your brain is responsible for those things and people are like, ha ha hee hee, I lost my sense of smell. Like honey! Your brain!
MJ: oh my god, that's so right. Okay, so this article is a mess. Let's wrap this up because again, we could truly did dive into this and make this like a three hour thing.
Daniella: Oh my God. It's already been 40 minutes.
MJ: Already been 40 minutes. Right? You brought up at the top. I think we have to end on this. You brought up at the top the comparison of mask with anti-vaxxers. Can you please dive into that? Because I think that is the piece de resistance of COVID normalization.
Mm-hmm. Let's get into that.
Daniella: So again, I think it's just this constant strategy that we've seen throughout this piece of conflating masking with things that are already considered by the liberal type of reader that the Atlantic, I think targets that are already seen as wrong, bad, just like inappropriate and ridiculous. And so I think it just serves to further push and create this narrative that like masking means you are also these things. But yeah, then just straight up says it that “like the evermaskers, even that name, maybe people wouldn't feel the need to mask all the time if we did something about this.” Anyway.
MJ: Anyway, continue.
Daniella: Like the ever maskers, they felt forced to find their own approach to staying safe while other people yelled that they were wrong, like it just serves to discredit the science. And proven evidence behind masking, especially N95, and it's like placed also in this like ridiculous self-righteous, like we know better than them because we are good and right liberals, not, Hey, maybe we should have a look at why people are doing this and maybe learn a little bit. No. Just like they're as silly as anti-vaxxers. But the thing is, I think that these kinds of people have, in a sense become anti-vaxxers and anti maskers in their own way.
MJ: Yeah.
Daniella: What surprised me a lot with former friends I had was how fast people adopted. The, um, alt-right. Weird talking points around masking.
MJ: Yes.
Daniella: That early in 2020, 2021, they were up in arms about how dare these people in the convoy, like the trucker convoy that went to Ottawa?
MJ: Oh, nostalgia.
Daniella: How dare these people be like saying that they don't wanna participate in society? Yeah. And don't wanna protect vulnerable people and like don't care about public health and it. Just like so fast that those same things were coming from people that I thought were sensible, reasonable, like have access to the exact same journals, papers, people that I do, and yeah, it's just very interesting that these sorts of Atlantic liberals. The Atlantic liberals when it comes to like COVID vaccinations, like I wonder when the last time they got a COVID vaccine was.
MJ: Yeah.
Daniella: If people are still like, yes, I'm double vaxxed from 2022. That's not doing much for you right now. It's not doing anything at all. Really? Not really, but they're so self-righteous in this. Like, “I'm vaccinated and I believe in science.
MJ: Yeah,
Daniella: but do you really? Do you?
MJ: the science says get a booster. That's what the science says.
Daniella: The quote unquote science, the quote unquote,
MJ: can't believe he puts science in quotes. Yeah. Like towards the end he basically compared these people with anti-vaxxers. You know, there's a lot of overlap between people who wear masks all the time and anti-vaxxer, which is a wild statement.
And then mm-hmm. The person that he quotes ends it with Being human is really hard. He is simultaneously making masking look absurd, but also. I think more dangerously making anti-vaxxers look more normal by having that sentence in of like being human is really hard. I was like, you can't defend anti-vaxxers like this.
Daniella: Yeah. It's really weird. And there's this like, what I find really fascinating, this like vitriol against anti-vaxxers that the people who like probably don't really understand how vaccination works. Like public health and the way that we've dealt with COVID has served to fuel anti-vax attitudes.
MJ: Yeah. Unfortunately,
Daniella: because public health was so overconfident in the way that COVID vaccines would work, and they were so overconfident that if everybody just got their vaccinations, we could. “Go back to normal,” but then people were still getting sick, people still getting long COVID like mm-hmm. They're not the kind of solution that they were really, I don't know, very clearly presented as. If you do this, we can stop doing all the other things. But people kept getting sick and I think it really, really like took out public health credibility and approach to vaccines at the knees. Like when people saw that no, the COVID vaccines weren't as great as public health institutions had led us to believe I think it really did damage trust in vaccines and public health because we weren't clear and we weren't, well, “we”, I dunno why I'm including myself, I'm not involved. Public health institutions were not honest about what people could expect and what people needed to continue to do,
MJ: which is wild to me because they basically went against traditional public health teaching. Right? Traditional public health teaching is, public health is a multidisciplinary field, it needs to be Swiss cheese model. You gotta have multiple angles of attack of like handling any sort of big issue like this. But because of, I think ideological capture public health was very much like a magic bullet type of approach, which is the wrong approach, right?You cannot magic bullet a public health problem simply because most public health problems are way too complicated to magic bullet. I mean, I think you put it perfectly by doing the magic bullet approach with vaccines when it didn't work as well, they lost a lot of credibility that way. They should have been, hey, vaccine only offers some protection against a current strain. They might evolve into future strains. They should have been a lot more clear about it. And you know, not to say vaccines are bad, vaccines are great, like everyone should get vaccinated. The overemphasis, at least in the US I don't know what other countries did, but. In the US there was a very much, an overemphasis on vaccines will save us, when in fact that should not be the approach. Right. It should be again, multi-directional, multidisciplinary approach.
Daniella: Yeah. It was very similar here and in BC Yeah. It was very much like, get vaccinated. Get vaccinated, everything is great. But then also when it wasn't working, they moved the goalposts too. They were like, okay, so vaccination plus infection, then you're good.
MJ: Which is a wild take.
Daniella: Yeah. And like who has. Used getting infected with something that is bad for you as a way to be protected against that thing that is bad for you. Like it just, we went into the upside down.
MJ: That's full regression. We're back to like cowpox for a smallpox. Right. That's sort of what we went back to
Daniella: anyway. What's your verdict on this? Out of 10.
MJ: Out of 10? Yeah. Oh man. Well, what is zero in 10? I guess that's my question to you.
Daniella: Zero. Yeah, I. Probably give this a negative, like I kind of wanted to give it a point for like having some reality in there about like, yes, people are still dying from this, but I think because it was used in such a like terrible way, I think it makes it worse. So yeah. Negative out of 10.
MJ: Okay, so here's the thing. If we're gonna judge it by how bad it is, we can't start with zero to 10, right? We have to, the scale needs to be
Daniella: a negative scale.
MJ: Yeah, it needs to be a negative scale. Then maybe zero is the highest and the negative 10 is the worst. Then maybe that's the scale we need to play with.Like, don't pick zero and 10 if you fully intend on giving it a negative score. So,
Daniella: okay, well it's not, maybe it doesn't even deserve a score.
MJ: Yeah, we could do negative 10 to zero. This is definitely negative. I wanna say two.
Daniella: That high?
MJ: You think it's lower? It should be negative five or something?
Daniella: Yeah, I'm thinking like negative seven because it uses,
MJ: at the end of the day, this isn't like Alex Jones.
Daniella: That's a 10!
MJ: Exactly. Right. If full on conspiracy is a 10,
yeah, I feel like seven is too high. Like what is a negative 10? Like how are we defining negative 10?
Daniella: Do you know what Rebel News is? Canadian alt-right ridiculous
MJ oh, okay.
Yeah. We have our version, so I'm not aware of this. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. You have your versions.
Several.
Yeah. Like those are probably like the negative tens I would think of, of like, oh my goodness.
MJ: Okay. So if alt-right conspiracies negative 10, starting with zero being innocuous, middle of the road, how would you rank this?
Daniella: Okay. Probably like negative 5.5 to negative six.
Wow. Very harsh. 'cause
Daniella: because it uses these liberal. Ideas of I am sensible and
MJ: feigned ignorance. Yeah.
Daniella: Yeah. Like middle of the road type. I'm looking at both sides of this, but not really. And I'm using like the realities of something like COVID to further other, isolate, and discredit things that are actually good for public health. So I think that this is doing a disservice, a huge disservice because a lot more people read this than read the like extreme ridiculousness. And I think on a broader scale like this pushes more nonsense to more people.
MJ: I see. If you're gonna account for how many people read The Atlantic, which I hope is declining because they really suck now, but um, yeah, I guess if you factor that in, this definitely does more damage because of just how many people read it.
Daniella: and would think it's reasonable.
MJ: Yeah. Like I've said on top, if you turn your brain off, you will read through this entire thing and not think anything was wrong with this. So yeah, I guess negative three, maybe negative four.
Daniella: Okay. Okay. More generous.
MJ: Yeah. I mean, like if we're going negative 10 is alt-right conspiracy there has to. Some room between this and that, so I can't go past five. But yeah, this is just such a
Daniella: trash
MJ: garbage article.
Daniella: I'm, I'm gonna throw this into the trash right now, into the recycling. Actually,
MJ: you're not gonna use it as like, when I eat snacks at my table, I have some scrap paper that I use to put under my bowl to catch food bits.
Daniella: Yeah, maybe afood bit catcher if you're a
MJ: second life. Or if you eat chicken wings, you could put chicken wings on.
Daniella: Oh wow. Anyway, that was a giant waste of time. But it's interesting to see what people think is reasonable.
MJ: Well, it's not a waste of time 'cause we got some content out of this.
Daniella: True
MJ: For us. I guess we got something out of this, but for most people it will be a giant waste of time.
Daniella: Yes. And I hope people don't read it and think that they don't need to mask. Because it does help.
MJ: It does help. If you have another article that you don't want to read but want us to read because. You don't want to read it.
Um, please send them our way. You could send them to either of us. Yeah. What's your email?
Daniella: Public Health is dead@gmail.com.
MJ: Yeah, you could send it to Daniella at that email or you could send it to me at everything is public health@gmail.com. We will read it for your pleasure.
Daniella: Or displeasure.
MJ: Or displeasure because this is what this show is now.
MJ: Um, but yeah. Thank you so much for listening to Public Health Media Club.
Daniella: Love Public Health Media Club.
MJ: Yeah. We will be back hopefully with another hot garbage of an article. We'll see what happens. All right. Bye everyone.
Daniella: Bye!