Today in things that make me feel tired of the human race, a video of a woman pretending to be from a fake U.S agency dedicated to the refusal to wear masks has gone viral.
As Daily Dot has shared, the footage of this ridiculous person was posted to TikTok (which is honestly the news now) by Liz Chavez. In the video, you can see old mate anti-masker tell an essential worker in a store that she could personally be sued for asking people to wear a mask.
The woman declared that she is a representative of the “Freedom to Breathe Agency,” employed to make “sure that people’s constitutional rights, civil and federal laws are not broken”.
The Freedom to Breathe Agency is not a government agency. It’s a big nothing.
And yet, this woman continued. While wearing a laminated badge and carrying around printed paperwork – that would have taken 50 times longer to prepare than putting a mask on – she told the worker “You personally need to take this to your manager because you personally can be sued for this, okay?”
The store employee simply replied with: “I’m just following the store policy ma’am.”
The “Freedom to Breathe Agency” has been publicly discredited a few times at this point. Earlier on in the COVID crisis, they were issuing laminated cards that tried to offer people exemptions from being asked to wear masks. The U.S Department of Justice tore those apart back in June.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Matthew G.T. Martin stressed:
“Do not be fooled by the chicanery and misappropriation of the DOJ eagle.
“These cards do not carry the force of law. The ‘Freedom to Breathe Agency,’ or ‘FTBA,’ is not a government agency.”
In case it needs to be repeated, health officials have said many times over that masks do not reduce your oxygen levels. Catching, or passing on COVID-19, however, is pretty damn likely to impact one’s breathing.
Here is a video of a doctor wearing six masks at once to prove they do not impact oxygen levels.
While yes, there is a list of reasons people can be excused from wearing masks here in Australia, intimidating folks with lawsuits from fake government agencies is really not the way to go about it all.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go lie down and yell “why” for the next hour or so.
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