I own a fine-mesh strainer with a diameter slightly larger than a wine glass.  It’s a very handy tool for someone who likes to drink wine, because it separates the unwanted solids that occasionally accompany a bottle’s contents.  The bottom of an older bottle is likely to contain sediment.  Sometimes an old cork will crumble before it can be pulled.  Very occasionally, a piece of otherwise sound cork will find its way into a bottle when an impatient operator rushes the process of pulling the cork.

The sheer mesh of the strainer keeps those solids out of the glass.  However, I notice that some liquid will cling to the strainer.  The device is great at stopping large pieces from moving from bottle to glass, but it also stops some small drops of liquid due to surface tension.

So, would you say that my fine-mesh sieve is effective at collecting liquid?  If you have to answer that question yes or no, you can’t really say no.  It does stop some liquid.  You can’t say that it is entirely useless at preventing a liquid from flowing downhill.

That’s about the situation we are in with masks as a means to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

As we know, the virus inhabits the respiratory system of an infected person.  When it leaves the infected body, it travels on droplets that measure 0.1 to 1.0 microns in diameter.  A micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter.  These droplets are as small as one-tenth of that size.

An N95 respirator with all of its edges taped to the face will stop droplets that small.  A cloth or paper mask lets droplets of that size through, whether heading toward the wearer or away.  However, cloth masks are not entirely ineffective.  A few droplets will cling to the mesh.  The masks we wear are about as effective at stopping these droplets as my wine strainer is at stopping the flow of wine.  Surface tension will stop a few droplets, but not enough to justify wearing the mask.  The sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci made this point early in 2020 but then changed his mind and decided to lead from behind.

There is very little reason to wear a mask as a way of keeping sub-micron sized droplets from getting to you or keeping them from getting to someone else from you.  Certainly, if you “believe in science” — if you believe in adjusting your behavior to accommodate the facts as revealed by scientific inquiry — there is no point in wearing any mask other than an N95 respirators and keeping it taped tightly to your face.

Yet, a recent survey found that 90% of people who have been vaccinated still wear a mask.  90%.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made the point as well as anyone:  If you are vaccinated, you’re immune.  So, act like you’re immune.

Before you scoff at that last sentence, dear reader, because of the source cited, let me suggest that in your heart you agree.  Prior to March 2020, did you wear a mask to avoid contracting measles, mumps, chickenpox or the rest?  You didn’t.  You didn’t need to (and you don’t need to now) because vaccination has made you immune.  Or if you are, like me, transitioning from senior citizen to cranky geezer, you acquired immunity through infection when you were a child.

But those diseases are conquered, I hear you say.  Not for the unvaccinated, they aren’t.  They flare up from time to time.  That’s why schools require vaccination as a condition of registration.  But they don’t require masks to “stop the spread” of the measles.

Nor did you wear a mask to “stop the spread” of colds or the flu.  Those have not been conquered.  They are everywhere.  Catching a cold or coming down with the flu is one of those burdens that we all bear.  Perhaps you plan to wear a mask to “stop the spread” of the common cold after any remaining mask mandates are lifted.  That’s your choice, of course, but there is no basis in science for government to require the rest of us to conform.  Wearing a cloth or paper mask to prevent the spread of a virus that travels in packets that are far smaller than the mask’s mesh makes as much sense as wearing garlic.

The fact is that masks did not stop the spread of COVID-19.  High incidence of mask wearing does not correlate to low incidence of disease.  Some states with high rates of masking have low COVID-19 rates; other mask-wearing states have high rates.  Other factors are at work having nothing to do with mask-wearing.

Vaccination, however, does provide effective immunity.  Some lucky people have natural immunity to this infection (from T-cells).  Others with less luck have acquired immunity through infection.  The rest of us can obtain immunity through vaccination.  When you add up all the individuals who are now immune one way or the other (and so far governments count only those who acquired immunity through vaccination), the likelihood is that we have achieved “herd” immunity.   

Whether or not there is sufficient immunity among the population to reduce the risk of an out-of-control infection, wearing a mask has nothing to do with the gains in public health that we have achieved in the last few months.  Yet nine out of ten disagree.

I take a walk through my neighborhood nearly every day. I see that many of my neighbors – who appear almost without exception to be friendly, positive, purposeful, and conscientious — demonstrate their independence of mind by displaying yard signs proclaiming their unconventional beliefs.  (To be fair there are minor variations among these signs.  One size does not fit all when it comes to pre-printed independent thought.)  I have learned that you can buy them at Amazon.  Just search for “in this house”.

One of those beliefs is “Science is Real”.  When people proclaim that “Science is Real”, I don’t think they intend to include all of scientific inquiry.  I think they mean “We believe the scientists who tell us that burning fossil fuels is leading to uncontrolled global warming climate change.”

Of course, what’s “real” is not “science” as such but, first, the facts uncovered by methodical inquiry using the methods of science and second, the theoretical explanations and mathematical models that fit those facts and yield to us an understanding, tentative and subject to amendment, of the place we inhabit.

There is a lot of science that is anathema to my mask-wearing sign-planting neighbors.  Immunology?  Epidemiology? Embryology? Psychometry? Population genetics?  I wouldn’t count on a lot of support among the buyers and planters of pre-printed signs for the findings of any of these areas of study.

However, a computer model that shows a warmer earth 100 years from now counts as “science” and qualifies as “real”.  So does the belief that you can use a sieve to catch water or an off-the-shelf cloth mask to catch something that measures one ten-millionth of a meter in diameter.  These are illusions, nothing more.  Wearing a mask in these circumstances is equivalent to posting a sign in your yard, and about as effective.

Sometimes a politician’s spontaneous comments reveal more than intended.  My favorite example was the reaction of French premier Raymond Barre in 1980 when he received the news that a synagogue in the Rue Copernic in Paris had been bombed.  His reflexive reaction was (paraphrasing) “This is terrible! Innocent French people could have been killed.”

When President Clinton was running for re-election, someone suggested that low tax rates ensure that individuals rather than government make choices about how their money should be spent.  Mr. Clinton asked, “What if they choose the wrong things?”  A man who cannot govern himself was concerned about the bad choices the common folk might make.

And just recently, Dr. Anthony Fauci chastised a widely followed podcaster who had argued that there was no reason for a healthy 21-year-old to receive a vaccination against COVID.  Dr. Fauci pointed out that the vaccination benefits not only the recipient but all those with whom the recipient may come into contact.  It was good to hear Dr. Fauci imply – even if he didn’t say it out loud – that vaccines confer immunity. This was a point on which America’s leading epidemiologist and part-time Caesar has expressed doubt on prior occasions.  Apart from skeptics like super-scientist Jenny McCarthy, I believe this is the first time anyone in the medical field has expressed doubts about the efficacy of vaccination since Edward Jenner coined the term – and invented the process – in 1798.

However, the Fauci example is not really appropriate because he is not a politician.  He is a scientist, America’s foremost authority on contagious diseases.  Not a politician.  When he tells the citizens of the United States “Do as you’re told” he is speaking as a scientist.

Let’s leave Dr. Fauci alone.  Please.  The spontaneous statement I want to focus on is one that Nancy Pelosi made years ago during her first tenure as speaker, during President Obama’s first term.  Discussing the best way for government to stimulate the economy, Speaker Pelosi stated that issuing food stamps to poor people was the surest way to achieve the goal.

Like the first three examples, this one is prompted by an idea lurking unthought in the background.  This time, the unnoticed idea is that consumption drives economic growth and prosperity.  The more we consume, the better off we all are.  Put a dollar or a food stamp in the hands of a poor person and that individual will spend all of it.  A dollar in the hands of a rich person might be saved or invested instead.  If it goes into the bank, it might as well never have existed.  Consumption creates growth and spending fuels consumption.

Is that why the United States is a richer country than, say, Peru (not to pick on Peru)?  Are Americans better at consumption than Peruvians?  If only the people of Peru, Bangladesh, Chad, or Albania could be taught to consume, they too would be prosperous.

The “consumption creates prosperity” idea is clearly wrong, yet it persists.  Consider a witticism of John Maynard Keynes.  He suggested – I assume in jest, but with a purpose – that local governments could cure unemployment by placing cash in old wine bottles and hiding the bottles at various depths in the local landfill.  Contractors would be invited to bid on the right to mine the wine bottles.  The winning contractor would need employees to work the mine.  Unemployment problem solved.

That’s very clever from one of the cleverest economists ever, but what I wonder is when the employer uncorks the bottles and pays the workers, what are they to do with their newly earned wages?  Are they going to buy old wine bottles from other mining companies similarly employed in other towns?  The plan would put money in the hands of people willing to spend it, but someone – someone who is not mentioned or thought of in the clever example Mr. Keynes offered – is going to have to produce something besides old wine bottles in order for the ad hoc mining operation to make any sense.  You can’t build a prosperous economy by having us all take in each other’s laundry or collect each other’s thrown away trash.

I can offer a real-life example.  Six days a week, a mail carrier delivers mail to my house.  I put 99% of it into my recycling bin.  Every other Thursday, the Waste Management people come and collect my recycling.  I pay the mail carrier to deliver recycling material to my house and I pay the collection person to pick it up and carry it away.  My role is to move it from my front door to my back curb, a job for which I am not paid.  The only reason this self-contained system can continue is that I am bringing in a paycheck from outside the system to pay for delivery and collection.

Instead of using wine bottles full of spendable cash or the delivery and collection of recyclables as the model of what drives prosperity, imagine a simpler economy.  (This parable courtesy of Peter Schiff.)  Three people, Pat, Chris, and Jamie, live on an island.  Each of them is able to catch one fish a day.  One fish, gutted and cooked, can sustain the life of one person for one day.  So, the daily GDP of this island is three fish.  That’s what they produce and it’s what they consume.

One of them, Jamie let’s say, conceives the idea of a net.  Jamie develops a design and works out what materials will be needed.  Jamie is convinced that a person who uses a net built to this design can catch three fish a day without help from anyone else.

The problem is that Jamie needs all day to catch a fish.  If Jamie does not catch a fish every day, Jamie faces starvation.

Jamie figures that it will take two days to build the net.  Jamie decides to manage on two-thirds of a fish per day for those two days.  Jamie will face hunger and want for two days but not starvation.  On day one, Jamie divides his fish into three parts, consuming two-thirds while salting away the last third.  Jamie saves rather than consumes that final third.

I forgot to mention that while you were reading the preceding paragraph, I assumed some salt.  I am not an economist, but I can assume as easily as if I were fully credentialed.

After four days, Jamie has four pieces of fish, enough for two hungry days.  Jamie takes two days off from fishing and builds a net.  On the third day, Jamie tests it.  If it works, Jamie can catch enough fish in one day to feed the entire population of the island.  If it fails, Jamie and the other fishers will be back where they started.

The design is a good one.  Jamie’s net catches fish.  Jamie unveils the invention to Chris and Pat.

Now the island has the capacity to be more productive.  One person can catch all of the fish that the island needs.  That frees up the work of the other two to gather fruit or nuts, or to tend a vegetable garden.  A brisk trade in fish, fruits, nuts, and vegetables results.

The island is more productive and more prosperous.  It consumes more, but it wasn’t consumption that drove economic growth.  It was investment in a piece of equipment that allowed one person to do the work formerly done by three.  And investment was made possible because of deferred consumption.  (Note, meanwhile, that the economy “lost” two life-sustaining fishing jobs.)

When you strip an economic model down that far, you don’t lose sight of the fact that production not consumption is what drives prosperity.  Production is enhanced by investment – intelligent investment like a well-designed net.  And investment is made possible by deferred consumption.  That’s where the savings come from that can be invested to improve productivity.

The scaled down model tells us that Nancy Pelosi had the answer to a prosperous economy backwards.  To hand out food stamps, you have to take the funds away from someone.  If that someone would also have consumed his or her entire income, then it’s a zero-sum game.  Those individuals who would have consumed all their income make an involuntary contribution to someone else who will consume it for them.  But if the person whose income was contributed involuntarily would have saved some of his or her income, then by taking that investible potential out of the economy and handing it to someone who by design will consume all of it, you have reduced the productive capacity of the economy.  You are forcing everyone to live on an allegorical fish a day instead of investing in a net.

If the first law of politics were “Do no harm” the corollary would be “Don’t subsidize consumption by confiscating savings that can be invested to improve productivity.”  A second corollary would be “Don’t use the word invest when you really mean spend.”