Well, the NFL season as begun anew and The Underground’s favorite loveable losers, The Detroit Lions, decided to win their first game. This was quite a shock, as last season they waited until their 12th game to accomplish the same feat as they did yesterday in their second. Go Team!
While watching the game there was a commercial from the NFL talking about how last season they had the lowest number of concussions ever. I’ve got questions as to the veracity of this claim given the league has really only been paying attention to concussions for the past couple of decades and the league is over 100 years old… but maybe it is true. Surely concussions have come down over the previous seasons. Advances in helmet technology have no doubt helped, but also rule changes more harshly punishing head-to-head contact have certainly played a part as well.
The NFL has a vested interest in making sure that concussions come down. For the league to continue to grow, they need a pool of talented players… and if moms and dads are concerned about their children getting brain injuries playing the sport, that could potentially be a deal breaker. A broken bone is one thing, Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is something completely different.
Is there a way that the NFL could reduce concussions even more? In The Underground’s Wacky Counterintuitive Idea Factory, we have an idea. Ban the modern football helmet! Bring back the leather helmet!
Hear me out, this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Helmets were devised as a device to protect the wearer of the device from head injuries. And while they can certainly protect the wearer from physical injuries (cracked skulls and whatnot), what they are less effective at is protecting the wearer from traumatic brain injuries. This isn’t to say their ability to do so isn’t improving, it is, but it is unlikely to ever get to zero… unless we go to a Gary Busey Motorcycle Helmet Protectors.
(and if you watched that video and thought it was ridiculous… have you seen the Guardian Caps players were wearing in pre-season training???)
The helmet creates an illusion of safety. And this is dangerous because when someone believes that they have a risk mitigation measure in place, they are likely to partake in riskier activities than they would otherwise. Why worry about running full speed at someone and diving headfirst if you think that the thing on your head is going to protect you from ill effects. And it is pretty clear that while a helmet may reduce the risk of a concussion with all things being equal, in a contact person to person sport such as football what it also does is incentivize riskier player behavior. Especially if other players are equally as reckless and can gain a competitive advantage over you if you pull back.
Thus, I believe that it would be wise of the NFL to revert back to leather helmets. Do not imply that the helmet is going to provide proper protection and let the players and their self-preservation instincts limit their head-to-head contact. I suspect that most players would adjust their playing style immediately to prevent head injuries. Beyond the obvious health consequences, a head injury could cost playing time or a player’s roster spot. In a highly competitive field such as football I believe that targeting or spearing would drop overnight.
And mind you, I’m not talking about removing all safety mechanisms from sport… Just those that are ineffective and offer a protection that they cannot reasonably provide.
Does this illusion of safety occur in our day to day lives? Well, here is a chart of one such safety mechanism that offers the illusion of safety.
Freaking MASKS! Read the “Outcome & Finding” column in that table. How many times does it have to say “No significant reduction” for this to be clear? Masks to prevent respiratory illnesses is generally not a thing. And it certainly isn’t a thing given the way that 98%+ of the population uses masks. Cloth masks are completely worthless at preventing illness. The little blue surgical ones too. A properly fitted and religiously worn N95 can have some effectiveness if you dispose after each use and get a new one to put on. A full-blown hazmat suit might help you as well. Otherwise, masks are generally ineffective at preventing the spread of respiratory illnesses. And we knew this until 2020.
I don’t want to go into the societal issues that come downstream of mass mask wearing. Nor do I want to go into developmental issues they may cause in children. I don’t want to go into how they harm those who are hard of hearing from being able to communicate effectively with others, depriving them the ability to read lips. I’m not going to go into how repeatedly using masks is effectively wearing a germ collector on your face.
I want to talk about how we are putting people at risk by acting as though masks are an effective method of preventing contraction of respiratory diseases. This is a real risk and, in my opinion, one of the most solid arguments against mask wearing.
If we are to accept that the manner in which most people wear masks is ineffective, at best, we must admit that the risk of disease contraction is not meaningfully reduced by wearing these masks. Our issue, like with the football player helmets, is that if people believe they will be conferred protection from the masks, they will be more likely to participate in activities that are of high risk to them. For instance, take an elderly person that had multiple co-morbidities and was at a significantly higher risk of fatality if they contracted covid. Is it morally justifiable to tell that person that a cloth mask would prevent them from contracting covid if they wore one in public? You have now given that person license to go into a high-risk scenario thinking that they are protected. Would you send someone into a live fire scenario with a T-shirt that said “Bullet Proof” on it? This is essentially the same thing.
And our health experts clearly did this. They knew the science said that masks were not effective at preventing the spread of respiratory illness. But they told they were anyways. And by doing so they allowed many people that were at high risk to feel safe to go into risky situations, believing they were protected. That is the amongst most thoughtless of healthcare crimes that our “experts” have committed.
If they worked, I would be ok with the most high-risk people wearing masks, with the caveat that they were made aware of the actual protection level they provided. At this point they could make a proper risk/reward decision. Instead, our experts said they were nearly perfect protection. There are certainly a non-zero number of people that paid the ultimate price for that messaging.