The above image, shared by the person who flew like this, was widely shared on social media. As you can see from the screen capture, it had been shared 1,214 times and liked 21,900 times (and since likes are also shared …) – by the time this ran its course, it was seen by far more people than that.

There was a little problem however. The filter cartridges he used have no effect on Covid-19 and he eventually admitted he used the wrong cartridges.

May be also the message is – don’t publicize your own stupidity on social media. In fact, he is doubly stupid – he admits he did not wear Covid protection at “protests” (as of June 2, 2020, protesting was declared more important than fighting a virus), and he wore a useless get up on an airline flight.

The above post is part of what may have started as an organized astroturf social media propaganda campaign during the past two weeks. The posts were all similar:

I just flew on an airplane wearing an N95 the entire time and a few days later I tested positive for Covid-19. We must mandate N95 masks for everyone on all airline flights.

These similar items were posted by MD/PhDs, MDs, PhDs, MPHs – and a smattering of others. But there are significant problems with this line of thinking.

First, you have no idea where you caught Covid. It is convenient to blame the airline flight, in part, because when you are an “Expert” who has done everything right, catching Covid is obviously someone’s else fault. And since you’ve been saying we must mandate N95s on airline flights, that is the only possible place you could have gotten Covid.

Never mind that you were wearing an N95 in that moment, in an environment where the entire cabin is replaced every 2-4 minutes, and all air is filtered through high quality HEPA filtration systems.

I had Covid 2 weeks ago. I can speculate endlessly as to where I got it but there is no way to know. Rather than expressing moral superiority over others, the reality is its near impossible to avoid getting a highly contagious respiratory virus the remainder of your life.

There is data from the CDC that 58% of adults had had Covid at least once as of February 2022. There is a model that 80% have now had Covid at least once. In the UK, for children under 12, 99.6% were not vaccinated, 80% had Covid antibodies implying they already had Covid.

At this point, there are many people continuing to try and not get Covid – an infection that has already hit the overwhelmingly majority of the population.

Yet many continue to post on social media about the steps they are taking to avoid getting Covid which include:

• wearing an N95 mask at all times when indoors
• Avoiding indoor activities wherever possible
• Having no social gatherings with family, friends even outdoors
• Never eating at restaurants; Never going to gyms; Never going to movie theaters
• Outsourcing their Covid risk to a low paid servant class worker by having their groceries and goods delivered; not going shopping when you can hire someone else to take on risk for you.
• Loudly proclaiming on Twitter that (a) you are doing everything right, and (b) government must mandate these restrictions on the entire population.

Clearly, they are morally superior to those of us have had Covid. And they must virtue signal their superiority to everyone else!

Here’s the problem:

• None of these measures are 100% effective and most have been shown to have very low effectiveness. You’ll need to do this the remainder of your life – until you get Covid. And you will get Covid; in fact, you may have already had it and did not realize you had it at the time.
• A majority of “cases” are transferred between family, extended family or close social contacts, in the home. Unless you wear an N95 mask at all times in your home, you are quite likely to pick up Covid (see graphic below).
• Studies have found 35-50% of “cases” are asymptomatic; it is possible up to half of these people living life like this have had Covid but did not realize they had it.

For 35-50% of people, Covid will have zero or close to zero symptoms. Another third may have very minor symptoms – fatigue, headache, some nasal congestion and/or mild cough. Today’s Covid is not the same as the Covid people caught in early 2020, or even up through the Delta variant in 2021.

A few, and from the data, predominately but not exclusively, those who chose not to be vaccinated, may have worse symptoms. In my state, a majority of those shown as hospitalized with Covid are, according to the Oregon Health Authority, in the hospital for reasons other than Covid but are counted as Covid because all patients are tested and some test positive. In the UK, 2 out of 3 patients “with Covid” are in the hospital for reasons other than Covid.

Many experts who “went beyond” doing everything right, got Covid anyway. If the experts cannot prevent the spread of a highly contagious disease, what chance do you think us non-specialists have in keeping Covid at bay for the rest of our lives? The chances of avoiding Covid forever are close to zero even if living an isolated, locked up life, wearing an N95 mask the rest of their lives.

I just read two MD’s arguing on Twitter that we must wear N95s even while exercising outdoors claiming that outdoor airborne spread is common and it is a myth that it is not common. As someone with exercise induced asthma this would mean I could not exercise at all. Something about breathing …  a life without exercise means a host of other health problems crop up – but that’s okay, because we eliminated infinitely tiny degree of risk that a 3x vaccinated person who has already had Covid will have Covid again. And live to tell about it.

(Click on the image to enlarge to full size viewing).