Dissent Versus Consent

By Megan Mansell (Click Here For Original Link)

“I’ve always believed that credentials don’t matter in science. If you have a good idea, you can have no credentials, and if the evidence supports your positions, then you’re right.” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at 42:50 in Governor DeSantis’ Roundtable, 04/13/2021

It was never about reality. 

Had it been about the scientific process, it would have begun with minimum viable particle size under pressure, which for COVID-19-size particulates is .06 microns. We’d have noted that this particle is under .3 microns, placing it firmly within the radically-behaving particulate range, noting that multiple virions can compose a single particle cluster and still fall well under that threshold. 

It would have then become about respiratory emission particle size ranges, and we would have observed that around 90% of exhaled particulates fall within the radically-behaving particulate airborne particulate range.

Why does this matter? We heard “DROPLET” nonstop for 6 months before anyone began acknowledging airborne pathogenic spread, without ever correcting course on our nation’s personal protective equipment (PPE) recommendations, especially the use of random face masks as source control. 

Exhale matters a great deal with an airborne pathogen. COVID-19 is a low minimum infective dose pathogen, so when every breath you take increases the atmospheric viral load in an enclosed space, and it doesn’t take very much of it for vulnerable individuals to get sick, a contagious individual should not wear a mask or respirator that creates a concentrated stream on exhale of fine particulates that do not respond predictably to gravity and remain aloft for hours (even days, as explained thoroughly by Senior Industrial Hygienist Stephen Petty here), as this exacerbates the spread of airborne pathogen.

For a closer consideration of the mechanics involved in the process of aerosolization through a membrane, please see my article “Indignation in a Polarized State,” where I discuss at length how changes in respiratory pressure through a membrane cause the forced aerosolization of droplets, creating both pressurized plumes and forced filtration of larger droplets, taking what would fall in a predictable 6-foot arc and sending it into an 18-20-foot trajectory, where it remains aloft, officially killing the “6 feet over or 6 feet under” rhetoric.

Some are not yet brave enough to say the tide has turned, yet the waters are churning, murky and dark, and many are fighting back, finally creating alignment with the relevant scientific fields, such as Senior Industrial Hygienist Kristen Meghan Kelly and OSHA integration expert Tammy Clark’s stellar and concrete takedown of OSHA-non-compliant apparatuses being required, with near-impossible public exemption requirements, and how  medical consent and medical clearance fit into workplace respirator and PPE requirement guidelines and implementation. Their joint testimony aided in the success in passing North Dakota House Bill 1323, which is aimed at the prevention of future masking requirements. 

Medical consent is a huge part of the COVID-19 conversation that has been swept under the rug time and again, as school districts require children to wear masks to attend federally-funded free and appropriate public educational institutions, while failing to acknowledge that child-size masks are unregulated and have no standards for use. If someone had told me an ethics board would approve a study on children that would decrease their oxygen intake for prolonged periods, increase recycled carbon dioxide exposure, come with grave microbial inhalation issues (as children wear them in dirty public restrooms, drop them, put them on lunchroom tables and then back on their faces, blow their noses in them, put them back on their faces, even vomit in them, and breathe this for 8 hours), I’d have obviously said they were spending too much time sniffing glue.

Medical consent belongs in all conversations involving non-standard integration requirements for a given student. Not only are exemptions being denied rampantly in public schools without freecourse (that’s recourse without it costing you, and yes, I just made that word up), but truly immunocompromised students are compliant with these masking orders, and it is putting the lives of our truly vulnerable in undue risk when there are far better options for tiered integration of special populations within our schools. But here we are, performing this very experiment on those we hold dearest, and they are defenseless. This must stop. 

Those of us on Team Reality have had our spirits trampled over the past year. The food becomes flavorless, as a caged bird does not sing. The lockdowns and unfathomable distancing of local leadership from behaving as responsible, attentive representatives has been an absolute dumpster fire. Ask me how I know. 

Yet I found myself humming recently, and it took me by surprise. I see reason taking root, and I am becoming content with the peace that these shifting tides have brought to us, but I fear we’ll flip a switch and leave our developing nations in a confused and aimless scramble, as we must engage in dissent with the rest of the world to truly slay this many-headed beast of misinformation and woke credentialism without substance.
 
We expected a prepared and targeted response. We got the national flood mitigation equivalent of boats full of holes. 

Free our people from these mandates and treat this as an environs mitigation issue, not solely a medical dilemma. And in the case of future pandemics, can we all agree to leave out the granny-made non-PPE?

Megan Mansell is a former district education director over special populations integration, serving students who are profoundly disabled, immunocompromised, undocumented, autistic, and behaviorally challenged; she also has a background in hazardous environs PPE applications. She is experienced in writing and monitoring protocol implementation for immunocompromised public sector access under full ADA/OSHA/IDEA compliance. She can be reached at MeganKristenMansell@Gmail.com.