You can stop looking now: we’ve reached peak absurdity.

Sure, telling people they need to wear a mask for the 10 seconds while they walk to a table at a restaurant, but they can take it off for two hours to eat, is objectively absurd.

Joe Biden still commands everyone to wear a mask on federal property to protect us against Omicron. But COVID snuck around Jen Psaki’s mask and got her. Jen came back no worse for wear. She doesn’t wear a mask while spewing her phlegm and lies during press briefings. But notice: the people asking questions still have to wear a mask. It’s all absurd.

But Vice reports that “experts” (maybe the same genius scientists who told us it would only be “two weeks” to flatten the curve and “wear a mask, save a life”) have determined that wearing pantyhose on your face is the best protection against COVID.

“Oh, come on, Jim! This has to parody, right?”

No, I do a lot parody and satire, but this, according to Vice is — 100 percent — the best way to keep your virtue-signaling mask tight to your face. Pantyhose is the new, ultimate virtue signal. Wear it with pride, wear it about town.

The publication’s headline reads:

Scientists Find Putting Pantyhose on Your Head Makes Your Mask Safer

According to Vice’s Samantha Cole:

The pantyhose caused high levels of discomfort as well as issues speaking and occasional obstruction of the eyes,” the researchers wrote. 

“For most of the hacks, comfort was a big issue,” Eugenia O’Kelly, the paper’s first author, said in a press release. “The rubber bands for example, tended to put painful pressure on the ears and face, to the point where they hindered circulation to the ears. However, using an effective but uncomfortable hack may make good sense in some high-risk situations, where the discomfort is worth it for the added protection, but it would be harder to wear these hacks day in and day out.

If someone can figure out how to combine the fetish market for crotch-scented masks with the improved safety of a better fit, they would have a real seller on their hands.”

The study was peer-reviewed, and likely financed through an expensive federal grant. At least they didn’t torture beagle puppies, but they had to buy a ton of pantyhose.

The visual PowerPoint slide in the Abstract shows the “hacks”:

I still see people in parks, in the open air, wearing cloth masks. Thursday, I saw the same woman I see almost every day, pushing a baby stroller with a preschooler in tow. She and the kid wear masks, every single day, in the open air. I suspect that when she gets her directive from the Cardinals of the COVID Cult, she and her child will be wearing pantyhose on their faces, too.

This might work for bank robbers, I guess. In any event, it isn’t satire.

We are truly doomed.