Risky Business: Is It Right To Claim the Right To Not Wear A Mask?

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” –Philip K. Dick

I’m a risk taker.

So, even though science and real world experience has taught me that wearing a mask around others to prevent the spread of COVID is one of the best ways to stop me from getting sick, or sickening others, still I choose to not wear a mask in public. It’s my personal choice, after all. No one, especially the government, is going to tell me what to do. If I get it, I get it. I’ll take that risk of being maskless.

I’m not a risk taker.

So, even though wearing my mask around others is a pain and even though when I wear my glasses my mask makes them fog up and even though as a hard of hearing person I can barely hear others when they talk through a mask and even though I can’t see another’s facial expression when they are masked, still I choose to wear a mask in public. I won’t take the risk of becoming ill or making another ill, or severely ill, or perhaps even being responsible for the death of another from COVID. I won’t take the risk of being maskless.

Risk is everywhere in this life: that’s what COVID has reminded us of, the possibility that any decision we make might put ourselves or others, or all of us, in danger. Risk, after all, is the cost of living. When we stand on a ladder to clean out the gutters there is always the risk we might fall. When we get in the car and drive there is always the risk we might crash or another might crash into us. Heck, every time I put a slice of bread into my ancient toaster, there’s a risk that this circa 1960 contraption might burst into flames!

But here’s the truth about risk, one we may not think about much. There is personal risk and then there is communal risk.  Personal risk puts no one in danger save for the risk taker. Communal risk puts others in danger, when I choose to do that which also threatens thee.

So, if I choose to stay at home all by myself and drink a quart of whiskey while watching reruns of CSI Las Vegas, I could die of alcohol poisoning. Die from falling down the stairs. Die from choking on my own vomit. Die because a candle I lit is unattended and burns down the house. 

But, even in this extreme imagined scenario, the only person hurt by this risk is me. ME. I don’t take anyone else down with me for having made what is clearly the reckless decision to drink much too much.

But, if I drink that quart of whiskey and then stumble outside to my car and take a joy ride, there is the distinct possibility I could swerve into oncoming traffic and kill not just myself, but others. Kill the police officer who gets hit by another car when he pulls me over for drunk driving. Kill a kid on a bike when I drive up onto a sidewalk.

In this extreme outcome, when I take a risk, others are hurt by my individual decision to drink and drive, especially the innocent. I make a thoughtless or stupid or selfish choice and in the process I bring a world of hurt and pain into the community.  Thus, I take a risk, not just for me but for “we” too, and the potential consequences are real and awful.

This day I can’t get off of my mind the fact that so many of my fellow citizens, including the President, have decided to willfully take communal risks when it comes to COVID, consequences, apparently, be damned. I can’t get past the great heartbreak I feel knowing that if mask wearing had been the nationwide norm for us beginning last spring, so many folks might have lived, instead of died. I can’t understand the reluctance of so many to make a tiny sacrifice  in wearing a mask, and by doing so, to say to a neighbor, “I do this because I care about you and want to keep you safe.” I can’t get past the resentment of knowing how hard I’ve worked and so many others have worked, to follow simple public health rules, while others have decided that the rules just do not apply to them. I can’t describe how angry I am at what a terrible job our so called “United” States of America has done communally, in fighting against a one-hundred year pandemic. 

I wonder what God thinks about all this?

All this waste of life. All this sickness and death. All this chaos. All because we have failed as a collective people, to see the cost of risk and the inevitable outcome of risky behavior, in this risk filled time. 

I won’t take that risk. Instead, I choose to mask. For me. For you. Just mask up. For yourself, but even more important, for others.