Finally … after practically two years of mandated masks at work and elsewhere, we’re being told that wearing them is now our choice. It’s up to us! Basically 70 percent of us, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has no need to wear masks all the time especially at large gatherings like work and school.
It’s hallelujah time, paralleled to the COVID-19 vaccine!
Why so glum? You’re not gonna join me in stripping off the mask, tossing it in the trash, and filing the bag(s) of unused sanitary masks under M or H or P? We learned all sorts of medical terms during this pandemic. There were a lot of reasons why I didn’t choose the medical profession: 1) blood and gore, and 2) wearing masks. Even medical professionals never wore masks all the time, just during surgery. Remember when dentists never wore masks until AIDS came along?
So in some semblance of restored normalcy, I can commence to wearing lipstick again and relying on facial expressions like smiling to let everyone know I’m not being sarcastic or in a bad mood. And now everyone will see I’ve been straightening my teeth during the masked years. Yeah, a few more weeks to go yet. But I’d rather everyone know than continue wearing masks at work … 8 – 10 hours Mondays through Fridays … changing to a fresh one after lunch … spraying medicated mist and chewing medicated mint discs to clean my breath … and after washing my face with a cleansing cloth because wearing a mask all day created skin problems. I predict that two years of wearing masks at work and other places—which meant breathing in all the carbon dioxide we’re naturally supposed to be exhaling … into the air—will someday be found to cause assorted lung problems including cancer. Go ahead, call me Debby Downer.
Through foggy lenses
I wear glasses, just like our national health leader Dr. Fauci. I remember him saying on 60 Minutes early in the pandemic that things would not get so bad as to mandate everyone wear masks. What a laugh seeing how things turned out. Besides getting used to shallow breathing and itchy runny nose, my glasses fogged when wearing a mask, no matter how tightly I clamped the nose wire. So I had to decide which is more important: seeing clearly when among a crowd like grocery shopping and working and walking or going along with the mandate so that others do not get sick (this thought after the vaccines … and booster). As for my own fears, I felt a sitting duck in the months before the vaccine, and it did take a few more months before I was permitted to get them (yes, two).
But I was never afraid I’d die from COVID-19. I don’t know why I was so confident.
President Trump was right when he said: We told everyone to go home, lock the doors and hide under the bed. I was never that afraid of this virus. We were not in biological warfare. We could go outdoors and not choke to death on chemicals or fall ill from radiation sickness. I knew all along that the great majority of humanity would not die from this little ol’ virus. Why didn’t everyone feel the same way?
We’ve lived through lots of pandemics and epidemics. Remember Ebola? That was gruesome and scary and totally deadly. HIV and AIDS? I was a young adult in college when that came down on the planet. Back then I learned two things: that new viruses evolve and some stay and some can be eradicated by vaccines; and that there is a Big Reason From Way Up On High that pandemics come along every so often. We are to learn from them. They have something very important to teach us.
The reason with HIV/AIDS was so obvious. Remember how mean and cruel all the prejudiced people, many self-proclaimed Christians, became when having to deal with others who had AIDS? Our society devolved into mass hysteria. The whole ordeal was played out on and in the news, this before the 24-hour cycle. Unlike the belly aching over hearing too much about COVID-19, back in the 1980s I don’t think anyone said, “I’m so sick and tired of hearing about AIDS.” In fact, we wanted to know everything about it; every day there was something newly discovered about the disease. In comparison to AIDS, COVID-19 is a blip on the screen of human history.
But both AIDS and COVID-19 divided us as Americans. With AIDS, people either supported gays and those who developed AIDS, or you abhorred them, blamed and condemned them—at the time sick and dying people, young and old, even children. See, AIDS was in the blood supply, and a lot of people who had had surgeries before AIDS was known ended up with the disease. You can see why everyone was so frightened, more than we’ve been with COVID-19. It took a few years and a lot of educating Americans, but eventually our nation changed. Our society’s view on homosexuality changed. AIDS made everyone think about … throwing stones.
Our society opened its collective heart to the many victims of AIDS. We became a better people for understanding that when it comes to sexuality and drug addiction, there is nothing we need to understand. We’re all just human beings down here. Live and let live, that was the lesson from AIDS.
What is the Big Reason for COVID-19, which is really a strain of previous viruses that infect the lungs? We’re just as divided as we were over AIDS long ago. Could this pandemic be teaching us that like it or not we’re all connected to one another and indeed our brother’s keeper? So we have to do things like wear masks to help each other stay healthy and avoid a spreading deadly virus. Some have chosen to ‘follow the science’ and tried to prevent the virus from spreading by wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Others chose to pass on yet another vaccine, even if mandated at work, even if doctors say it’s for the common good. They avoided crowds and working in a large office but saw the benefit in wearing masks interestingly enough. Each side has demonstrated remarkable bravery and the price of freedom as a few of the ardent anti-vax have died from the disease.
Perhaps this pandemic has taught us to avoid thinking we’ve got life figured out. Maybe we had become too smug and needed a lesson in humility. Maybe we needed a lesson in accepting one another whatever individual decision about how best to deal with this pandemic. Maybe the lesson is not so much “Live and let live” anymore but “Live and let die.”