WE are only two weeks into January but there seems little point waiting to announce the winner of this year’s Dumbest Tweet by An Australian Politician award.
Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath, please step forward (while maintaining a safe 1.5m distance) to receive your gong.
And since she has two hands, she might as well take the prestigious 2021 Covidiot trophy while she’s here.
She deserves it for this tweet, fired off on Saturday morning as Brisbane entered a three-day lockdown:
“If anyone in the Greater Brisbane area is leaving their home they must wear a mask throughout the entire period they are out until they get home. This includes while driving.”
What possible reason could the Health Minister have for insisting that people driving in their own car wear a mask? Does her government even science?
Where is the data on virus transmissibility in a car, alone?
Can Covid-19 now jump through glass and steel?
Are health officials worried that the cleaner who contracted the virus while working at the Hotel Grand Chancellor might pull up along-side us at an intersection and cough into our window?
Must we wear masks while driving just in case our car caught Covid overnight in the driveway?
I suppose wearing a mask while driving alone does prevent you from catching Covid from yourself.
Wait.
If you can protect yourself from infecting yourself, would that mean you no longer had the virus if in fact you did have it?
I agree. It’s getting silly now.
There’s risk management, and then there’s insane bureaucracy. The Health Minister’s directive is pure hygiene theatre. And it would be funny if it were not dangerous.
It’s dangerous in two ways. Firstly, do we really want oxygen deprived people at the wheel of a car?
And what about drivers crashing because performative mask wearing fogged up their prescription glasses, obscuring their sight on the highway?
No doubt such fatalities would be recorded as Covid-19 deaths and used to provide justification for even more rules and regulations.
But it’s also dangerous because stupid directives like this undermine whatever sensible instructions the Health Minister might issue. It starts to feel like we are being played, tested to see the limits to which we will go in order to comply.
If we must wear masks while driving, must we also wear gloves?
Should we wear a mask while putting on our mask?
It’s tempting to wonder how the Health Minister, having issued such silly advice, sleeps at night.
But I think we can guess. She probably sleeps wearing a mask.
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James Macpherson is a sought after international speaker with a background in journalism at the Courier Mail and Daily Telegraph. He previously pastored a significant church in Australia and South Africa. James' weekly Good Sauce podcast comes out every Tuesday. He also writes regularly for The Spectator.
