Amie and I recently traveled by plane from Florida to Pennsylvania and back. Based on the decision by the Federal judge removing the mask mandate, a majority of passengers, flight attendants and TSA personnel were not wearing masks.
It is not my point of this discussion to address the validity of the decision, the qualifications of the judge or the potential legal steps forward. The issue of whether these types of decisions should be made by health professionals, politicians or the courts is worth debate - but not here.
What I think is an important thing to talk about, however, is the prevailing intellectual and emotional manteau covering our own selves that affects our decision-making process and why we may be troubled by the association with unmasked people or torn about wearing a mask ourselves.
WHY DO WE MASK?
Masking has been discussed at length, but often those lessons learned are placed in our mental attic. Masks are primarily effective in preventing infectious agents that are inside YOUR body, from being expelled from YOUR nose and mouth. That is why surgical teams wear masks. Condoms are used to prevent sperm from reaching female ova.
Masks worn by an individual to protect THEMSELVES from infection are far less effective. Surgeons do not require the patients to wear masks to prevent the surgical team from becoming infected. Diaphragms for contraception are not effective in preventing the transmission of STD’s from an infected male who is not wearing a condom.
WHERE DO WE STAND TODAY?
As of today, over 60% of the total American population has antibodies to COVID-19, and therefore have most likely been infected. For children 11 or under, that number is over 75%. As I have mentioned before, for any infectious agent, there is always a fraction of the population that does not get infected even though they are exposed. This phenomenon is not well understood, but it exists. That is why the entire pre-vaccine world was never wiped out by the most pathogenic and lethal infections like the “Black Death”.
Also, with vaccination, the risk of death has been reduced to levels comparable to most other infectious diseases. This does not mean that the virus will not continue to spread; it will, particularly among the unvaccinated who will be primarily responsible for keeping this endemic advancing. But the likelihood of hospitalization and/or death from COVID-19 and its current variants has been reduced to a point that, in my opinion, is no longer a severe threat to the health of the vaccinated/boosted population.
So, why are those of us who are vaccinated and boosted and who plan to get, or have already gotten a fourth dose still resistant to removing our masks in public? Is that fear based on medical/scientific data or is it from an emotional/reactive perspective?
I think that to some extent we measure our actions based on the political constructs that we have associated to the right-wing who have resisted wearing masks for the past two and half years, and for reasons that were terribly misplaced. Masks DO NOT contain the virus inside and make us more ill. Masks DO NOT impair our breathing. Masks ARE NOT symbols of government domination; and refusing to wear a mask IS NOT a banner of patriotism.
BUT our choice NOT to wear a mask today is also NOT an affirmation of the right-wing position. We are not “admitting that they were right, and we were wrong” by stopping our use of masks.
It is important for us all to understand this. This IS NOT 2020 or 2021. There is now sufficient PPEs for the healthcare institutions and workers so that we do not have to protect them; the virus is not now spreading exponentially and threatening to overrun the healthcare system; with vaccines and a reduction in the pathogenicity of the circulating virus, the virus is not deadly to everyone, especially the elderly who we needed to protect; the levels of mortality are not extraordinarily high; we have vaccines; we have monoclonal antibody treatments; and we have new antivirals that have shown remarkably positive results.
If we choose to not wear a mask, we are not endorsing Mr. Trump, Ms. Greene, or Mr. Jordan. We are not rejecting Dr. Fauci.
We accept risk in everything we do – driving a car, eating in a greasy spoon, crossing a street, or eating raw food.
So, it is OK for you, if you are comfortable with the decision, to go outside, eat at a restaurant, fly on a plane, meet people for parties or go to the theatre, and do so without a mask. If you are vaccinated and boosted your risk of danger is normal. If you feel that you want to wait a little longer before you “unmask”, that is fine. You should act as you feel most appropriate, but don’t feel that you still must wear a mask because taking it off would validate the prior irresponsible behavior of others.