I don’t mind wearing a mask. I don’t like it, but I don’t mind it all that much. I hate the fact that it’s necessary (and, yeah, it IS actually necessary), but it’s a relatively small inconvenience. I have maybe a half dozen masks, all of which were given to me by friends. When I have to put one on, it’s a reminder that there are folks out there who care about me. I like that.
That’s the reason we wear the masks — because we care about other people. Because we’re not selfish dicks. We wear masks because this is a public health issue; not a political one, not a religious one, not a cultural one. Comrade Trump and his followers seem determined to make it into all three.
Politically, they say it’s about Democrats wanting to scare the public, wanting to hurt the economy in order to damage Trump’s chance for re-election. Which is profoundly stupid. Like everybody else, I want to go back to pubs and coffee shops. I want to go to the movies. I want to stroll through the crowds at the farmer’s market, and linger over the counter of the pastry shop, and spend a few idle hours at the art center, and wander through the aisles of the market. I miss all that.
But the only way we’re going to be able to safely do that stuff again is if we wear masks for a while — until we can get a handle on Covid-19. Which we are NOT going to do if we don’t do more actual testing, if we don’t do contact tracing, and if we don’t wear the goddamn masks.
In terms of religion, they suggest Democrats want to keep churches closed in order to…I don’t know what. Something Satanic, I suppose. But we’ve seen that houses of worship are now the most common source of new Covid-19 outbreaks. That’s true internationally. Prayer alone is a poor prophylactic against viruses. The only way folks will be able to safely return to church is — well, again, testing, contact tracing, and wearing masks. If a divine being exists, he or she or it should be able to hear prayers said through a mask.
Culturally, wearing a mask gets passed through a filter of absurd masculinity and phony notions of heroism. Those folks standing together in crowds, mask-free, shouting about tyranny and mocking mask-wearing reporters — they see themselves as heroes. They see themselves as William Wallace (or at least Mel Gibson and his hair in Braveheart) shouting ‘Freedom!’ (they seem to forget he’s beheaded immediately afterwards). They see themselves as a Band of Brothers (the television mini-series about WWII, not that poofy Shakespeare St. Crispin’s Day bullshit), courageously displaying their willingness to stare a virus down and show it who’s boss. Wearing a mask, they think, is cowardly. A mask is a white flag of surrender to…something. Mask-Nazis.
It’s not cowardly to wear a mask when you buy groceries. It’s not cowardly to wear a mask when you’re burying your brothers-in-arms. It’s not brave to wear a mask either. It’s just being respectful. It’s just being a good citizen, a decent person. It’s just looking out for other folks in your community. It’s just good public health and common sense.
Wearing a mask is about not being a dick. Don’t be a dick. Wear a mask.
gregfallis.com 
Thank you for this, if less people were dicks and this executive order was put into place earlier my mother might still be alive. My mother contracted and was murdered by the virus without having even left her apt. (since thanksgiving). I can only think it was some dick that was food shopping and sneezed on her groceries. I could be wrong. Thank you again, I wish more people would be considerate and wear a mask.
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Oh, I am SO sorry for you and your family. I wish the universe would make sense, that the innocent would be spared and the wicked appropriately humbled. It’s such a small thing, wearing a mask. It’s astonishing that so many folks feel their inconvenience is justification for putting others at risk.
Please take good care of yourself and your family while you grieve.
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lmmfao at the dont be a dick ware a mask
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Don’t be a drone. Learn to think for yourself and stop living a life of fear.
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It’s astonishing to me that there are people who actually believe this is about fear, as if refusing to wear a mask is somehow courageous instead of just flat out stupid.
It’s not about courage; it’s about thinking of other folks and not just yourself. You’re not being brave by refusing to wear a mask. You’re not being independent. You’re being a selfish, self-centered dick.
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Let’s look at this from the perspective of real information, and thinking for one’s self. When people honestly think for themselves, I mean truly think for themselves, they make better decisions. While growing up, we saw good examples in our family and neighbors. And while we were taught important responsibilities, we also were encouraged to use our brains and not go along to get along, except when doing so was the right thing. And sometimes, we were punished for not using our brains when we knew better. Great lessons. For we would one day be adults and have to use our heads for the sake of others: family, friends, work, and more. **Okay, enough of the preliminaries. That’s exactly what we are doing. In thinking for ourselves, listening to our conscience, we are also benefiting others by example. The last thing I would ever want to do is create a fear society, and certainly not ruin young people’s connection with reality and what they intuitively know inside. In other words, I want the young people to be confident in themselves, and by making wise decisions, the pass on understanding to others. I can be strict when it comes to young people not listening to their own inner knowing. But I also want them not to be influenced by fear mongering, propaganda, and peer pressure. I hope they will see things for themselves, listen, research, and observe, and in this, see the difference between rhetoric/propaganda/disinformation, and reality. However, many haven’t learned these lessons of life. They live a life of frustration. And, very often, those who live in fear, have been passively aggressive most of their lives, probably haven’t learned to speak up to bullies, use things like this to take a stand, more often than not, because they can’t find real meaning in the meaningful things in life. In other words, when it really counts, they’ve fallen far short of the mark. So they look for things that require no real thinking to perpetrate their own ideas. They look for fights where they’re safe to point fingers. While they huddle at home. And very good at finding the ones they can intimidate through barbs, popular language of propaganda, and such. ***The very use of insults identifies the person’s motives. Real and truly honest people don’t need to resort to losing their tempers online. But they can do this because they can’t do it in real life, when they have to come face to face. I saw the same thing at a store. Perhaps we’re writing to that person. The person saw a strong looking man not wearing and so grumbled inside. Then verbally attacked a much smaller women. However, she discovered the much smaller woman was much tougher than her, speaking right back up. The lady had to flee the scene, unable to speak up. Perhaps she went to blogging.
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The first reply by Dophinwrite seemed to make a statement that was contrary to the OP, although he (assuming he, apologies if she) really didn’t elaborate further on his vague statements about fear-mongering. Then the next tirade was a collection of rambling thoughts about critical thinking, of which the author seemed to hold very little.
The one statement I found amusing was the part about thinking for ourselves. “In thinking for ourselves, listening to our conscience, we are also benefiting others by example.” Did Dolphinwrite leave room for the possibility that the example set could possibly be detrimental to those around him? That just because you have a right, doesn’t mean you should exercise it. That just because you chose to be the devil’s advocate and argue the opposite side, doesn’t mean you are right or just or factually accurate.
I am one of those pesky people that has practiced medicine for almost two decades. I was also a (biomed) researcher in a former life. The annoyance I feel by all of the armchair doctors out there now is only outweighed by the astoundment I feel over the stupidly defiant “drones” (to use a word of the author) blindly following their leaders into the abyss of COVID19 death and destruction. Critical thinking is grossly absent from these shills, not to mention a sense of common decency.
Without breaking down the one million one reasons mask-wearing is recommended, I will leave with this one reply. WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU JUST NOT BE SAFE THAN SORRY YOU FUCKING MORONS???!!!
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I’m generally willing to engage in a discussion with folks who disagree with me. I think there’s a chance we can all benefit from that sort of discussion. But this Dolphinwrite person clearly had no interest in a rational discussion, which is why I didn’t respond.
That said, I’m glad you did. If more folks had been willing to wear masks back in May when I wrote this, we wouldn’t be in the fucked up situation we’re in now.
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Right?!! Listen, I cringe, completely and totally cringe, when I look at my all but defunct facebook page that is mostly littered with people from my birth state, which is in the Deep South. I fully expect some of the far right conservative viewpoints, but I’m still amazed at their ability to surprise me… I mean utterly AMAZED because I didn’t think it possible for me to be surprised by anything from that type of groupthink, yet here I am…. amazed, and I hate the overuse of that word.
I used to wonder what it was like in Nazi Germany and if that would have flown in the U.S. It is frightening to see how much propaganda was swallowed during the past four years, and not just swallowed- PROPAGATED FERVISHLY.
I think most of us worried or were at least concerned about the possibility that we would end up in some type of overseas skirmish and DJT would lose his shit more than normal. That a large part of his undoing was a pandemic is something. If so many lives weren’t lost and ruined, it might be worth it to see him bitten in the ass so badly by his own ineptitude and disregard for science. If all of these people were only hurting themselves by not following guidelines, THAT might be fitting too, but that isn’t the case. It’s like the drunk driver that kills the family in oncoming traffic and walks away unscathed.
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The technique the two above are using, readers, is a method of not understanding, or appearing to not understand, then collaborate together as if they were in the know and others they disagree have no point. We used to do this in grade school when we didn’t like someone who was different, but much later, realized they had good points.
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