Back in May, when COVID-19 looked like it was gradually getting under control, I wrote an insightful and enlightening post about wearing face masks. I said, in so many words that folks unwilling to wear face masks were too stupid to live. Ok, not in those so many words, but something less threatening, less harsh, less Trumpy.
Well, folks – well done, America. You stopped wearing masks in public, you started gathering in large numbers – at the beach, in bars and nightclubs, you moved back into restaurants and shopping malls. You got tired of the inconvenience. You wanted a quick return to normal. Nice job. Fifteen hundred deaths in one southern state alone. The President telling us confidently, as he did in March, April, May, June and July that he’s fully on top of the problem and that his administration has risen to the occasion. Meanwhile, the pandemic experts, including his own people, are saying the exact opposite.
We’re now heading into the start of the new school year. We could have been preparing for a not-quite but slightly modified soft landing. Instead, we have Secretary of Education DeVos telling us that all schools can and should be fully returning to classes, because “children don’t get the virus.” Not sure exactly what planet she’s on. In an opinion letter to the editor yesterday, a teacher, no less, stressed the importance of students being back in the classroom. This person teaches in one of Boston’s elite exam high schools, so perhaps it will be safer there than in all of the other public schools in the city. I doubt it. Is it more important to save young lives or reach arbitrary academic achievement benchmarks? If America’s students end up a bit behind, is that irreparably damaging their lives? Won’t they catch up at some point, or are their lives permanently scarred? I’m of the view that young people are remarkably resilient and they will catch up. As a local representative wrote today, “what happens if one student gets sick?” There’s the question, isn’t it? We know how highly contagious this virus is. One case rapidly becomes dozens, becomes hundreds, spreading like the wildfires of California. Stopping the spread in our schools once it starts, where even “social distancing” is more dream than reality, will be terribly risky and dangerous, and very difficult to achieve. No, we should have been spending our time since June improving the quality of internet learning, bringing back only the special learners and those few that can’t survive online.
An article in the paper this past week mentioned that a high school age hockey player from Massachusetts participated in a tournament in Connecticut back at the end of July, and thoughtfully brought the virus home with him. This despite the Massachusetts ban on sporting events across state lines. Apparently, there were players from New York at the tournament, and that was the tracked source. To make things better, his team played in two tournaments here in New Hampshire after that. Just great. Is youth hockey really that important that it’s worth risking lives? We’re just starting to understand that there may well be other health risks far beyond recovery from the virus, particularly among athletes. Yet professional baseball players are sneaking out to bars and football players are sneaking companions into their hotel rooms. What does it take for people to understand that this is very, very serious?
Still another news release detailed how a fundamental church just a few miles down the road from me, resumed services in June and held a youth summer camp in July, and since then has had 16 church and family members test positive for COVID-19. The state Department of Health is investigating the possible causes, but all of the infected people belong to that church. I’m not a specialist, but I don’t have much trouble connecting those dots. The senior pastor was puzzled. Really? Apparently, God wasn’t protecting his flock quite as thoroughly as he thought. And isn’t that the point? So many of ministers, pastors, and churchgoers think that there’s an invisible force field protecting them from all harm, because that’s what God does. Only he doesn’t. God doesn’t seem to work that way. I guess these deeply religious people figure that the rest of us are on our own.
Then, of course we see the unmasked face of Herman Cain, sitting surrounded by people with no effort to distance at a Trump rally, just a few weeks before he mysteriously contracted coronavirus and died. The poor man, but wasn’t he challenging fate just a bit? And will it change the way a president chooses to campaign? Probably not.
We in America are at a crossroads. We hold the record for most cases and most deaths of any single country in this pandemic. We’re not allowed to travel to most places in the world now, and probably won’t be for some time to come. The Canadian Prime Minister won’t come here. Our healthcare system, which we thought was the envy of the world, is overworked, undersupplied, underfunded, and exhausted. I’ve come to believe in the t-shirt that says, “Science doesn’t care what you believe.” Isn’t that the truth? Infectious diseases in the forms of viruses and bacteria are learning to adapt, grow, and reappear in ways that we’re still trying to understand. We do know that these diseases don’t pay much attention to religious beliefs or political principles. The Black Plague centuries ago raced from Asia to Europe because people didn’t know about basic hygiene. Now we know quite a bit more, but we’re still in first grade about this one. We do know, though, that this one is airborne, and that wearing face masks could prevent hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of infections if we would just pay attention and listen to those that do the research. Issues of “liberty” and “freedom” don’t even enter into the discussion. One doesn’t have the freedom to stand in the middle of a shopping mall and yell, “fire”. It’s not about freedom of speech, but about safety. One doesn’t have the freedom to drive at whatever speed one wishes on the highway or in a neighborhood without consequences. Again, not freedom but the safety of those around you. So too is the mask. It protects you, and more important, it protects everyone else from you. So, to the freedom fighters among us, save it for voting rights, access to medical care, rights of immigrants, peaceful assembly. Just remember to stay safe, wash your hands, and for heaven sake, WEAR A MASK!!
I'm Thinking...No! 