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The Unintended Consequences of Mandatory Mask Mandates
and Governor Janet Mills' All-Out War Against Humanity
By: David Deschesne
Fort Fairfield Journal, December 30, 2020
As face mask mandates ramp up in Maine, as well as many other states in the U.S., a pandemic-weary citizenry is now beginning to notice what the scientific tests have been saying all along - COVID-19 transmission doesn’t seem to slow down even if everyone is faithfully and religiously wearing face masks in public.
This has been demonstrated most recently in Maine after Democrat Governor, Janet “Big Sister” Mills imposed a mask mandate at the beginning of November only to see an increase of 4,605 COVID-19 “positive” cases by month’s end. Big Sister further expanded her frivolous mask mandate on December 11 taking away handicap exemptions and imposing fines on businesses who fail to enforce her arbitrary and increasingly ineffective mask mandate. In the first eight days after that mask mandate expansion, Maine recorded an additional 3,326 “positive” COVID-19 cases in the State. Intriguingly, actual COVID hospitalizations, which briefly peaked to 20 per day at the first of December, have subsided to around 7 per day out of those massive case numbers and had gone as low as 1 on December 20. To be clear, however, the Maine DHS admits on their official COVID-19 tracking web page that a new “case” number does not necessarily mean a new person infected since the department is not correlating test results with the individual people who receive them.
The unnecessarily intrusive response by Big Sister’s mask mandate, for a virus that has an Infection Fatality Rate similar to seasonal flu, is beginning to wear the patience of some Mainers thin as new scientific findings on the coronavirus continually show it’s not as “deadly and dangerous” as government leaders thought it would be in March, 2020; and that the government’s continued over-response and hyping of the virus is making the cure worse than the disease.
Two Mainers have come forward to discuss their adverse experiences under the governor’s frivolous mask mandate. They come from opposite ends of the unintended consequences spectrum; ranging from child abuse-induced phobias surrounding face coverings in general to a run-in with poorly trained grocery store “mask police” officer.
Masks vs. Mental Health
Teisha Priest is a homemaker in the northern Penobscot County town of Lee,Maine. She recently told her story of how an abusive situation as a child is now being revived by the ceaseless and ill-conceived face mask mandates now being imposed on all of Maine's inhabitants.
“I was abused as a child. One example of this was when my father duct taped my mouth shut and told me that I best not take the tape off until told otherwise,” Ms. Priest told the Fort Fairfield Journal. “I sat in the dark living room, with the TV glowing in the background, cheeks burning with shame, and absolutely hating that duct tape covering my mouth. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’ve never been able to stand having any sort of scarf or dust mask covering my face since then.”
She also recounted how the phobia created by abuse as a young child continued to manifest as a young adult. “I was helping relatives remove old plaster from the walls in their home. I coughed up plaster for the next couple of days because when I tried to wear the dust mask they gave me I just couldn’t handle it. I said that it was because my glasses kept fogging up. Of course, that wasn’t the real reason, but there was no way I was going to admit to the real [reason] why behind it.”
She also has suffered from debilitating panic attacks. “My worst experience involved parking my car in the driveway and then wondering how I got there because the last thing I recalled was having a panic attack as I was walking out of the grocery store. Even years later, I still have no memory of loading the groceries into the car and then driving 20-something minutes to my home. “
In researching panic attacks, Priest found that milder effects include—but are not limited to—sleep disruptions, nightmares, inability to focus, difficulty completing minor tasks, and physical health problems. “Trauma-related panic attacks aren’t just a small case of nerves,” explained Priest. “They cause very real damage to both mental and physical health.”
“Many will dismiss panic attacks caused by mask-wearing as 'no big deal' and insist that we should just 'suck it up and wear the mask already.' Severe panic attacks are far more than a simple case of nerves. There’s good reason why many people mistake them for a heart attack! For victims of trauma, the physical and psychological harm caused by forcing them to wear a mask that is far too much a reminder of the trauma they suffered is not a joke. Yet, they are dismissed, minimized, mocked, and told that they are just making things up.”
Priest is sympathetic to others who suffer from similar phobias surrounding this frivolous mask mandate from the governor. “They are not allowed to go to work, to the grocery store, or to the doctor’s office unless… They try to wear the mask anyway, knowing full well that the panic attack is coming, and wondering if it will be bad enough that they won’t even be able to safely drive home—or worse, bad enough that an ambulance is called and they are taken to a hospital where in order to receive treatment for the severe panic caused by the mask, they will have to keep wearing a mask.”
In light of the recent mask mandate from Big Sister, Priest attempted to reach out to various organizations for guidance in dealing with her problem. “None of the organizations that claim to support victims of child abuse, domestic violence, or sexual assault have been willing to take a stand and speak out on behalf of the trauma victims they supposedly support. I have spoken with individuals and offices in all three branches of the government at both the state and federal level, and the nicest response I’ve gotten has been, 'Well, we can’t get involved in legal matters.'“
Priest says she is generally opposed to blanket mandates and the government overreach such as we’ve seen this year. “While it may be argued that they are for the good of the community, those arguing that point completely ignore the fact that their actions taken for the 'good of the community' cause real and tangible harm to certain people. One could counter that it’s better to harm a small number of people than a larger number, but I reject the idea that it’s ever OK to harm innocent people for “the good of the community,” no matter how small the injured demographic is. When we may choose to intentionally harm individuals who have committed no crime because we believe it benefits other people, we cannot claim to live in a country that offers liberty and justice for all.”
“I’ve spent the better part of a year staying at home, save for necessary trips to the grocery store. I’ve been lucky in that no one has made an issue of me walking into the grocery store mask-less, but that seems to be changing. Where that leaves me, I’m not certain. I’m not willing to go back to the kind of panic attacks that make my hands start shaking as soon as I leave my house. I’m not willing to go back to never knowing when one will overwhelm me to the point that I can’t even recall driving home. Getting to the place where I’m at today has been a hard-won battle, and I won’t purposely do something that makes me take steps backwards.”
Since publicly sharing her story, in an effort to raise awareness of the great harm and injustice being done by this kind of discrimination, Priest said she has received messages from people who have experienced things that make her own experiences look like a walk in the park. “They aren’t able to talk about what happened to them publicly at this point, and nor should they be forced to. That means that someone has to speak up for them. It’s clear that neither organizations nor elected officials are willing to take this kind of stand. I’ve begun asking various media outlets to please consider using their platform to raise awareness of and put a face on the people being harmed by all of this. This is the reason why both the state and federal Constitutions included such strict protections when it came to the issue of individual rights, and forbade the government for infringing upon them. This is why we have to safeguard those very protections. If anyone may be harmed at the whim of a politician or the “majority,” then no one is safe. No one is free.”
The media-perpetuated hysteria over COVID-19 have been going full throttle for the better part of a year. Even if the impetus of the irresponsible reporting is simply part of a marketing campaign for the vaccine manufacturers, the over-the-top hysterical reporting has caused some irreparable harm to society's mental health. “If we’re to continue with new lockdowns, shutdowns, and mask mandates for the foreseeable future, we need to also consider the harm these measures cause,” said Priest. “These are not benign mandates that are merely an inconvenience in every case. If you’re one of the lucky people to whom these really are nothing more than an inconvenience, then I am glad you and your family are in a good situation during what is a complicated and stressful time. Please do not assume that everyone else is. For people with a history of trauma, those living in an unsafe home environment, people struggling with mental health issues, and those who were already on the edge of poverty before this began, these measures are much more than an inconvenience—they are harmful in terrible ways. Our society may indeed decide that the harm caused to these individuals is justified, but we owe it to the people being harmed to at least acknowledge that we are choosing to do these things with a full understanding and acceptance of the cost.”
The “Mask Police”
Mental health issues are not the only problems with wholesale mask mandates among the public. These mandates, with government fines, put business owners in the untenable position of being the governor’s front-line law enforcement officers while at the same time attempting to maintain good customer relations with people who walk through their doors. In some cases business owners have been stuck delegating that police power to store clerks who have received no law enforcement training, nor have any crisis negotiating or similar social interaction skills. In most cases, that works out okay, but some people are fully aware the current face mask mandate has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with an authoritarian, communist population control model designed to mind-screw the public and create a “new normal” where a nanny-state government dictates and mandates how a person can live their life down to the smallest detail. One such person who’s wise to the game being played by the governor is John Shaw, from Caribou.
Mr. Shaw recently had a run-in with a poorly trained “Mask Police” grocery store clerk at the Hannaford supermarket in Caribou which resulted in him getting a disorderly conduct warning from the Caribou Police Department.
Mr. Shaw is an 84 year-old life-long Caribou inhabitant. He is a military veteran, having enlisted in the U.S. army shortly after the Korean Conflict, and formerly owned the John Richard Shaw real estate company.
His run-in with the Face Mask Police happened on Sunday December 13, 2020 and he believes that it clearly shows the extreme effects that the Governor's tyrannical, controlling, illegal and unnecessary mandates are having on Maine citizens.
“I have shopped at the Caribou Hannaford store for about three years, since my wife, Norma, of over 51 years died,” Mr. Shaw told the Fort Fairfield Journal in an exclusive interview. “I have never before worn a mask in the Caribou Hannaford store.”
In attempting to fill a prescription at the Hannaford pharmacy, Shaw ended up being confronted by a poorly trained and recently delegated Face Mask Police officer in the form of a grocery store employee assigned to that job.
“At approximately 11:45am I entered the Caribou Hannaford store. A male Hannaford employee inside the entrance, told me that I would need to wear a mask in the store. I told him that I believed that he did not have the legal authority to require me to wear a mask and that I therefore would not shop there,” said Shaw. “As I turned around and walked out, the mask enforcer screamed after me, 'Don’t you ever come back in here!'“
“As I walked back to my car, I was thinking, ‘These mask mandates by the governor are getting really bad!’” said Shaw. “Before I got back to my car, I remembered that I still had my prescription at the pharmacy inside the store, so I turned around and walked back in the store.”
Shaw recounts how the face mask enforcer screamed, “I told you not to come back!”
“I explained to the extremely hostile enforcer that I needed to pick up my prescription at the pharmacy and that I would wear the mask. I put the mask on and walked the short distance to the pharmacy, where I purchased my prescription and walked back toward the entrance.”
“As I walked toward the extremely belligerent mask enforcer, I defiantly removed the mask and threw it on the floor. As I walked to my car, I nervously looked back as I was aware that now the mask enforcer was out of control. As I was getting in my car, the mask enforcer came running out of the store after me. He loudly screamed, ‘The police are going to arrest you for criminal trespassing!’ Several other shoppers stopped in their tracks at the incident.”
“As I got in my car, I thought, ‘This is really beyond insane!’ So, I drove home.”
“About 30 minutes after I got home, Caribou police officer, Kyle Scott, knocked on my door. I explained to Kyle my impression of the occurrence. He was very understanding. We discussed the legal and political implication of the Governor’s mandates and he seemed to agree with my opinions. Kyle gave me a warning for “disorderly conduct.” I commended him for his professionalism as a law enforcement officer and he asked if he may shake my hand.”
This writer reached out to both Hannaford and Caribou Police Department for comment on this incident, but received none from either.
Shaw pontificates the basic question which now we must ask our leaders in the state of Maine as; “When are these illegal, cruel, unnecessary, unneeded and harmful mandates going to be ended? Maine citizens are losing their freedoms and something must be done before it is too late, if it is not already. Who will stand up and loudly speak against this vicious tyranny which is being inflicted daily upon law abiding Maine citizens under the corrupt excuse of it being for health reasons? What will it take to put this country back on the path to freedom? Will it take Revolution? Will it take civil war?”
Now nearing two months in to a “surge” in cases everyone is finding out Big Sister’s mask mandate has been wholly ineffective at achieving its stated goal. Yet, the governor persists in her population control face mask experiment/psychological warfare operation on the people in Maine.