Dear Friend Who is Worried About H5N1...
Dear friend who is worried about H5N1,
You’re certainly not alone. I’m worried about H5N1 too. By now you’ve probably heard about it on the news or in your social media feed. You’ve seen videos of cow carcasses piled by the side of the road and birds flailing around on the ground, so ill they cannot even stand. You’ve seen the price of eggs skyrocket in a short period of time. If it seems like the situation is worsening, it is.
But no authority is going to tell you that. Under new directives from the federal government, all public communications from CDC, NIH, and other health authorities are paused.
Meanwhile we’re in the throes of the worst flu season on record for humans since the H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic in 2009. It doesn’t necessarily mean H5N1 is causing the increase in flu activity this year, but with all the different strains of influenza floating around right now, the chances for a reassortment event are high. Many of our trusted experts on the matter have assured us there’s no evidence that H5N1 is spreading human-to-human yet. With a historically observed mortality rate between 50-60%, we’ll know when it does.
It's not a matter of if, but when.
There are some common-sense measures you can take now. Stock up on canned goods and foods with an extended shelf life. Consume only pasteurized dairy products. If you have cats, keep them indoors from now on. Wash your hands often. If you were diligent about cleaning surfaces with disinfectants during the early days of the Covid pandemic, now would be a good time to get into the habit of doing it again. Look into hypochlorous acid (HOCL) as a safe and natural disinfectant for your skin, your food, and contact surfaces, as fomite transmission is possible. Invest in a pair of goggles to wear in public as ocular transmission is a possibility as well.
There’s one more big thing you’ll need to do, but first, I implore you to please read the rest of this letter with an open mind. It might be hard for you to hear, but I need for you to listen. I really, truly want to help you stay safe.
But I also need to hold you accountable.
Remember when the Covid pandemic began in 2020? We were asked to adopt masking - a health behavior that many of us had never practiced before. It was awkward at first, but over the course of that year, we got used to it. We adjusted.
And we all reaped the benefits of masking. Masks allowed many of us to dodge Covid AND all kinds of other airborne infections. We even eliminated an entire strain of influenza by breaking chains of transmission with masking. Masking protected kids and teachers from illness, allowing schools to stay open and students to continue their studies without disruption. People were able to continue working without impact to their careers, and without loss of paid leave or income, because they were healthy much of the time. Much healthier before Covid trashed their immune systems, at any rate.
For a while, we called this our new normal. Although we were in the throes of a global pandemic, we were still able to go on with our lives with the protection of masking. And for those first couple of years, most people were cool with it. A study from 2021 showed that 74% of people found mandatory masking to be personally acceptable. Another study from 2022 found that “mask wearing had no effect on the ease, authenticity, friendliness of the conversation, mood, discomfort, or interestingness of the interaction… mask‐wearing did not disable successful social interaction.”
We had a good thing going for us. Masking was becoming normalized. It didn’t have to stop.
But in the summer of 2021, we were told by our country’s leadership that if we’d been vaccinated, we didn’t have to mask anymore. They had heard from corporate America that the sight of masks reminded people we were still in a global pandemic and a threat was still present. So where there was masking in public, people were still behaving cautiously – staying home more often, opting for less travel, entertainment, and non-essential spending, consuming less overall. In a decision based on economics - not science - we were given permission to unmask and get back to pre-2020 normal.
Even though it was known at the time that not everyone had access to vaccines – like children. More than 20% of the population is under the age of 18, but vaccines weren’t available to protect kids until 2022. We also knew lots of folks declined vaccines for personal reasons – religious, ideological, mistrust of the government, etc. Likewise, we'd been informed that not everyone could mount an adequate immune response to Covid, even with the help of vaccines. The elderly, and people with cancer, organ transplants, compromised immune systems, and other pre-existing conditions were much more vulnerable to severe illness and death from Covid, even if vaccinated. We were encouraged to keep masking around those folks.
But not required, because hey, if those high-risk people didn’t want to get sick, they could just stay home all the time, right?
Wrong. Most high-risk people still have to go to work. We still need healthcare. We still have to pick up our prescriptions at the pharmacy. We still have to raise kids that bring home all the pathogens they’re exposed to at school. We still have to go to the DMV to get our driver's licenses renewed and we still get called for jury duty. One-way masking definitely limits exposure in public settings, but there are significant limitations to how much respirators can protect wearers for extended period of time indoors around unmasked infectious individuals. If you truly believed high-risk folks could just put themselves on house arrest and withdraw from public life to stay safe, I need for you to acknowledge you were wrong, and millions of people are now disabled or dead because of it.
Everyone had a choice to make. Continue masking and ensure public spaces remained safer for everyone, or unmask and accept exposure, knowing it would cost lives.
If that choice wasn’t clear in 2021, you’ve had 4 years to figure it out. You know by now that vaccines don’t stop you from getting infected and spreading Covid to others. You know that by not masking, you are accepting exposure and all the potential consequences of an infection. And you make that choice not just for yourself, but on behalf of every single person you come into contact with. You’ve accepted the social construct that some lives are worth sacrificing so the majority can live ‘normally.’
Covid was a litmus test. The majority made a clear choice.
Here’s the ugly truth. Our government is going to hold us to it.
This isn’t about politics. Regardless of who occupies the White House or who heads up the CDC, both political parties that have been in power throughout the ongoing Covid pandemic have prioritized the health of the economy over the health of the population. Don’t count on elected leaders to guide and support us through another pandemic.
We’re on our own now.
All that chipper messaging about assessing your own risk, practicing personal responsibility, staying home if you didn’t want to be exposed, and everyone’s favorite: you do you! That’s what we collectively chose. We can’t take it back now.
We are on our own.
You’re not going to like this, but if you want to survive, you will need to get N95 respirators and wear them consistently and correctly in public. When our next pandemic begins, they’re going to be hard to find. Once everyone decided to get back to normal, the demand for respirators declined so sharply that many of the companies that manufactured them couldn’t stay in the mask business. You might find some for sale on sites like Amazon, but unless you’re buying from the storefront of a legitimate manufacturer, they’ll likely be fakes that may not give you adequate protection. You can find links to purchase from trusted manufacturers or you can request free respirators through Maskbloc.org. Don’t wait. Get them now.
If you’re lucky enough to score some N95s once the next pandemic is underway, you’ll have to be careful about wearing them in public. Some states and cities have already implemented mask bans; more will follow. Remember last year when your Covid-Conscious friends asked for your support with emailing or calling legislators to protest mask bans and you ignored us, thinking it wouldn’t affect you? Or maybe you supported the idea of a mask ban, thinking it would force all the holdouts back to normalcy and you wouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable seeing masks in public anymore? Whatever your reasons were, you didn’t show up when we asked you to join us in protest, so policymakers made decisions they knew would be accepted by the majority of the population. Now, in many parts of the U.S., you are committing a crime if you wear a mask in public. You may be entitled to a medical exemption if you can prove you have a condition which makes masking necessary for your safety. But if you’re just someone who doesn’t want to be exposed to pathogens which might kill you, that’s not a good enough reason. Be prepared for the reality that protecting yourself in public might mean breaking the law.
You also might need to protect yourself from people who are triggered by the sight of masks. Take it from your friends who have been consistently masking in public since 2020; our society has grown increasingly hostile toward masking, so expect strange looks, laughter, fake coughing, questioning, mockery, and all kinds of bullying you never would have imagined grown ass adults would be capable of. I hope you are spared from physical assaults, as those have happened to masked people as well.
People can be assholes.
Maybe you’ve been one yourself. If you’ve ever snickered or rolled your eyes at the sight of a mask, shared memes that mock people who still mask, discouraged others from masking, or voiced your concern for those who ‘haven’t moved on from the pandemic,’ you will need to readjust your attitude. All of these microaggressions have contributed to the shift in culture which stigmatized masking. You can’t keep doing that and expect that people will be understanding when you change your mind and decide you want to protect yourself and others from a pathogen for which you have about a 50/50 chance of surviving if you’re infected.
Brace yourself for your friends, family, employer or school, and neighbors telling you that you’re overreacting and your decision to mask is causing fear or stress for others. Be prepared to be scapegoated for all the anxiety people are feeling about a new pandemic with deadlier outcomes, little to no guidance from authorities, and very limited support from their immediate networks. Don’t be surprised to find you’re excluded from social events and family gatherings. Prepare for the possibility that your employer or school may take issue with you masking, especially if you live in an area with a mask ban. Know that seeking healthcare in person will be one of the most dangerous things you’ll have to do. Healthcare professionals jumped on the unmasking bandwagon too, and many will not willingly wear them to keep their patients safe. Your own doctor or pharmacist or other trusted healthcare professional might even tell you that your decision to mask indicates you have a mental health problem and you should be in therapy. People will unleash all kinds of abuse on you over your decision to wear a mask. It’s not fun.
But if your goal is to survive, it’s much better than the serious illness, disabilities, and death that dangerous pathogens like SARS-Cov-2 and H5N1 can cause.
If you’re still with me, kudos to you. I know a lot of folks reading this will have checked out by now. They won’t want to hear they’ve made choices that have caused harm to those of us who have continued trying to protect ourselves and our communities. They won’t believe that their government won’t guide or support them through another mass mortality/mass disabling event. They won’t be able to fathom that even if massive numbers of people are dropping dead all of a sudden, we’ll still be expected to go to work and school and carry on with our lives as if nothing bad were happening right in front of our eyes. They won’t want to accept that in order to survive what’s coming next, they’ll need to change their behavior and wear a mask.
Now that we’re through with the hard stuff, here’s the hopeful part of this message. Regardless of when you stopped masking in public, it’s never too late to start again. Contrary to what disinformation campaigns would have you believe, N95 or better respirators provide excellent protection for both the person wearing them and everyone around them. Medical respirators are recognized as class II medical devices under the FDA and more than 400 studies confirm they work to break chains of transmission of airborne pathogens. You can trust you’ve got science on your side. Hopefully that will bring some comfort and reassurance to balance out the social costs of masking.
Remember, it's extremely likely there will be no more mandates to protect us from infectious diseases. No free tests or treatments. No communications or education. No help from our government to coax society into doing the right thing.
We are on our own now.
That doesn’t mean we’re alone. Every individual can choose at any time to do the right thing and wear a mask. You can influence others to do so simply by setting an example. You can make it normal again to protect yourself and others. You can stand in solidarity with the vulnerable individuals who were left to fall by the wayside in 2021. We’ve been trying for the past 4 years to warn you that devaluing our lives would have far-reaching consequences. Now it’s your life you’ll need to worry about, should an H5N1 pandemic begin.
You don’t have to wait for the arrival of another pandemic. Even though the emergency phase has ended, Covid-19 is still an active pandemic. Influenza A is overwhelming hospitals and claiming lives as you read this. Mycoplasma pneumonia is ripping through classrooms, closing schools and filling up pediatric intensive care units with children on ventilators. Tuberculosis outbreaks are happening around the country. This is where back-to-normal led us, and that’s just a short list. Masking with N95 or better respirators can protect against all of these airborne pathogens.
It’s time to decide what kind of normal you want for yourself, your loved ones, and your community.
You had a choice to make back in 2021.
You have a choice to make now.
Should H5N1 adapt to spread from human to human, it will upend the world and disrupt our lives in unimaginable ways. Entire species of animals could go extinct, resulting in catastrophic changes to the environment. There will be severe food shortages. Our healthcare system will likely collapse. As many as half of us will die.
And we likely won't get any official warning when the threat has arrived.
I wish I could tell you that you won’t have to change anything, that you won’t have to adapt. That you can just hope for the best and everything will be okay.
It won’t be okay.
But should we all do nothing and accept it by default, it will be normal.
You can choose a different normal.
It’s as simple as putting an N95 on every time you set foot in public.
Don’t wait till it’s too late.
If you want to survive what's coming, do it now.
Sincerely,
Your Covid-Conscious friend
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