The "Right" to Go Maskless and Infect Your Neighbor: WHY??!!

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is this: what are you doing for others?”

--The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s just a mask and it’s just six feet.

That’s what I’m having trouble understanding, as I watch the country I love fall further and further into the black hole of a virus, spreading like wildfire, while a large percentage of my fellow citizens still refuse to either don that mask or stay six feet distant.

It’s just a mask and it’s just six feet.

And so, on the day I post this essay, about four months after our nation first woke up to the threat of this once in a century pandemic, I’m sad. Sad at the fact the United States recorded an unprecedented 70,831 new cases of the coronavirus just yesterday, July 17^th.  That’s the highest number of infected folks we’ve ever faced into in a single day.  Multiply that out by a month and that’s a possible worst case scenario of  1.7 million new sick folks.  Divide that by a conservative infection fatality rate of .5 percent (50 deaths for every 1,000 infected) and that means by mid-August we could be seeing upwards of 11,000 new deaths, on top of the 135,000 who have already died. To put that into perspective: that’s as if the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts or Springfield, MA were wiped out overnight. Every last man, woman and child.

It’s just a mask and it’s just six feet.

And yet it took our President until last past weekend to actually be photographed wearing a mask in public.  Why his reluctance? Doesn’t fit into his self-inflated oversized ego? Or his insistence at various times that COVID is overblown, or a plot by the Democrats to defeat him, or a weaponized virus created in some secret Chinese labs to destroy America? And now we are hearing of a coordinated effort on the part of this administration, to contradict and even discredit the nation’s highest and best scientific civil servant, Doctor Anthony Fauci.

Words and actions from a leader have consequences. These can either inspire a people to step up and unite and do their part for a greater good like public health (thank you Governor Baker); or these can tear a country apart, sabotage any sense that as Americans we are all in this together. No thank you Mr. President.

It’s just a mask and it’s just six feet.

Makes me wonder what might happen if tomorrow, the United States faced an actual war, a real threat from an outside enemy, that called for the mustering of all of us, to do our parts, to unite, to be as one nation, ready to make sacrifices for a common good.  Could we meet that test, now, in 2020, given our fractured and piecemeal response as a country to COVID-19? Do we still have within our civic DNA the willingness to sacrifice, or would too many of us balk?  “Not my fight!” “You are not taking away my right to do nothing!” Have we as a people just spent so much time on the couch, watching Netflix, that we could not even be bothered to get up and do something, do anything, to help our nation!?

It’s just a mask and it’s just six feet.

I want to believe, I need to believe, that somehow we will pull it together as a country.  Make what is really a tiny sacrifice of discomfort, to just wear a mask and to just stay 72 inches away from others, and all to ensure that the least among us won’t get sick, won’t die.  Why is this so hard for so many? Why do some folk actually think this is a partisan request, somehow tied up in our political fights? 

Does anyone think COVID cares if we are a Democrat or a Republican? I just don’t get it. Why is this request twisted by some into the absurd idea that by actually following these public health mandates, we are somehow giving up our civil liberties?  Are you serious? Is it really all that hard?

It’s just a mask and it’s just six feet, people!!

Makes me thank God that I live in Massachusetts, that though our track record on wearing a mask and physically distancing is far from perfect, still, we’ve done a good job of flattening the curve and preparing for the worst and caring for each other as citizens and neighbors and friends.

And all that has taken is this: wise and prudent governmental leadership.  A shared sense that yes, we are all in this together, and what I do or do not do: this can help or hurt another.  And a mutual commitment to walk with each other, through the best and the worst, of these strange and amazing days.

Wear a mask. Stay six feet apart.  Repeat, until a vaccine is discovered and distributed.

Now that isn’t so hard, is it?