What Are You Going As For Halloween?

Here is a great collection of vintage masks...who are you going as this year? Col. Sanders? John and Jackie Kennedy? Starsky and Hutch? Cleopatra? A gypsy? Batman and Robin? Spock? Scooby Doo and Shaggy? The Pink Panther? A Reese's Peanut Butter Cup?

A wonderful collection of more vintage Halloween masks can be found here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/93779577@N00/albums/72157616202184878

HOW TO SAVE LIVES

Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also an effective way to save lives.

By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick | The New York Times
July 23, 2021

How to save lives
Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also effective.

• Before Houston Methodist became one of the first hospital systems in the U.S. to mandate Covid-19 vaccines, about 85 percent of its employees were vaccinated. After the mandate, the share rose to about 98 percent, with the remaining 2 percent receiving exemptions for medical or religious reasons, Bloomberg’s Carey Goldberg reported. Only about 0.6 percent of employees quit or were fired.


• Schools — including Indiana University and many private colleges — that require students and workers to get vaccinated have reported extremely high uptake.


• A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey of Americans who had been opposed to getting vaccinated and later changed their minds found that mandates — or restrictions on the unvaccinated — were one common reason. One 51-year-old man told Kaiser that he began to feel as if he had “limited options without it.”


• The French government will soon require that people show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test to eat at a restaurant, attend a movie or participate in many other activities. After President Emmanuel Macron announced the policy last week, the number of vaccine appointments surged. Italy announced a similar policy yesterday, The Times’s Marc Santora explains.

It’s true that these mandates often generate intense criticism. In France, more than 100,000 people marched to protest Macron’s policy. In the U.S., critics sued, unsuccessfully so far, to stop Indiana University’s mandate. Some Republican politicians have also tried to stop mandates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio.

The mandates are also not 100 percent effective. Some people will receive exemptions, as was the case at Houston Methodist. A small number may forge vaccine records. And some vaccinated people will still contract mild versions of Covid, through so-called breakthrough infections.

But even with the opposition and the exceptions, mandates can play a major role in reducing the spread of Covid and saving lives. That’s especially true now that the Delta variant is fueling a rise in cases. “The takeaway message remains, if you’re vaccinated, you are protected,” Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist, told our colleague Apoorva Mandavilli. “You are not going to end up with severe disease, hospitalization or death.”

A ‘staggering’ success

Covid is a new disease, and the debates over Covid policy can seem new, as well. But they’re often not wholly new. They instead echo longstanding debates. Vaccine mandates fall into this category.

Throughout history, societies have struggled with when and how to require vaccines. Opponents of mandates have argued that individuals should be allowed to make their own health decisions — and bear the consequences: What, they ask, is more personal than deciding whether to inject a medicine into one’s body? Supporters of mandates have replied that society has a duty to protect its citizens, including those who cannot be inoculated (like young children and some immunocompromised people, in the case of Covid) and are therefore put at risk by people who voluntarily refuse vaccines.

For these reasons, vaccine mandates cause intense disputes. But when supporters win the argument, public health has often benefited. Guy Nicolette, an administrator at the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out to The Washington Post that colleges have long required other vaccines, like the one for measles. “It’s staggering how well a mandate works on a college campus,” he said.

Dr. Aaron Carroll, Indiana University’s chief health officer, has noted that the country’s victories over many diseases — including smallpox, polio, mumps, rubella and diphtheria — have depended on vaccine mandates by states or local governments. “That’s how the country achieves real herd immunity,” Carroll wrote in The Times. (In the U.S., a national mandate may be unconstitutional.)

When states and school districts have opted not to require vaccines, a disease can often spread needlessly, Carroll explained. That has been the case with human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease known as HPV that can cause cancer. It’s also been the case with influenza, which kills about 35,000 Americans in a typical flu season.

Covid now seems certain to join influenza and HPV as diseases that American society chooses to accept. But it is a choice. Companies, schools and communities that decide to enact vaccine mandates will almost certainly save American lives by doing so.

Mark Barnes, a former health official in New York City, told Bloomberg that he expected the number of these mandates to grow in coming months. “We’re going to see more vaccine mandates by large organizations of all kinds,” he predicted.

Link to original article:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/23/world/covid-variant-vaccine-updates#vaccine-mandates-are-controversial-theyre-also-effective

Wear A Mask!

Masks Disclose The Reality Of Souls

"Horror is the removal of masks."
― Robert Bloch

"Mask" by Maribou State and Pedestrian

This track, "Mask" by Maribou State and Pedestrian, is just sublime. But the video is rather special too. Upon first viewing, I was not so moved, but it left an echo in my heart. Something about the kaleidoscope of humanity and the locations reminds me a bit of "Baraka" or "Samsara"... and the way everyone closes their eyes at the end...we're all here, on this little spinning ball...

https://www.facebook.com/mariboustate
http://soundcloud.com/mariboustate

HALLOWEEN BEAUTY: Painting and Illustration

Above: A Beautiful Death and Navajo Skull by Terry Fan

Above: Mask by Brian Luong

Above: This Fragile Planet by Bill Mayer

Above: skull by Señor Salme

Above: Heartbeat of Death - Queen Elizabeth the First and Heartbeat of Death 2 by Haruko Maeda

Above: What You Are Made Of by Jason Freeny

Halloween Costumes

"In the fall of 1969, the days grew shorter and colder and the colors of the maple, oak and elm trees in my little village in upstate New York were magnificent. It was and still is my favorite time of year. I don’t recall any specific Halloween before this and I can’t remember going Trick or Treating dressed as anything special but this year my parents wanted to dress me up as something called 'Howdy Doody.' My mother told me that he was some sort of television character from her childhood but I had no idea who this 'Howdy Doody' was—and what a bizarre name. She dressed me in dungarees and a red and white checked shirt with a bandana around my neck. She put bits of red yarn in my hair. With some of her make-up pencils, she drew freckles on my cheeks and two lines running down from the corners of my mouth. Then, my parents took me downtown and put me in the annual kid's Halloween parade and costume contest. My mom instructed me to walk by the judges with my arms up and swinging because, she explained, Howdy Doody was a marionette. Well, this wasn’t my idea, I had never even seen Howdy Doody, and I felt foolish walking along pretending my arms were dangling from strings. Obviously I was an image from my parents’ childhood which meant that I was also an image from the judges’ childhoods and that must explain why I won second place. I went up to accept my ribbon with some residual embarrassment but mostly being impressed that my mom knew what she was doing after all."
--JEF

I wear my mask on the inside...

...it's much scarier that way.