Commentary: While COVID-19 thrives, are some people are letting their guard -- and masks -- down too early? Here's what I see where I live.
My local Starbucks reopened to foot traffic last week. With a sign on the door that said to come on in, I've been missed. It also said that if you're not wearing a face mask, one would be issued to you. In my county, wearing a face covering in any building is now required by order. A man followed me into the store, his face as naked as when he got out of bed. Nobody said a word. Nobody offered him a mask.
As I shop for food and supplies in my area, I can feel the mood lighten around me. The days are getting brighter and warmer. More businesses are opening. And even as the US scoots past its grimmest milestone yet -- 100,000 people confirmed dead from COVID-19 -- I can't help but feel that a false sense of security has taken hold around me, a seeming belief that wearing a face covering might keep someone from getting sick. As we face a potential second wave of coronavirus cases, this worries me. Just look at Wisconsin.
Here's what I mean. There was the Starbucks barista in a flimsy mask who ventured beyond the plexiglass divider and leaned in to bring me my drink, our faces inches apart. Excellent service, ordinarily, but would she have done the same if we weren't both wearing a mask? Then there was the man at a jam-packed Costco who removed his face mask inside the store to take a sip from a water bottle. And another man a few feet away whose cloth mask covered his mouth only, his nostrils jutting out like binoculars. Let's not forget the woman in Trader Joe's who crossed the aisle right in front of me to grab an item from the shelf instead of waiting for me to move on, bringing our faces within spitting distance -- if it weren't for our masks, hers a cotton panel draped across her nose and mouth.
Are these signs that people are becoming so comfortable wearing face masks that they feel invincible? Or is it more a function of human nature that warm weather and loosening restrictions make the invisible threat of serious disease somehow less urgent?
I have a personal reason to be cautious, to keep from acquiring or transmitting the coronavirus. My mother. Physically fragile (please don't tell her I said that,) but a woman of inner reserves who rises to the occasion, my septuagenarian mom is a recent widow. Read More
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The World Health Organization was initially reluctant to recommend the wearing of face masks out of the concern that those wearing face masks would become lax in complying with other precautionary measures such as social distancing. The WHO's concern does not appear to have been unfounded. What I am observing in my community is not so much people wearing face masks but not observing other precautionary measures but people not wearing faces masks and not observing other precautionary measures. It is evident that one part of the community's population has bought into the argument that the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic has been exaggerated and that such measures are unnecessary. President Trump's refusal to wear a face mask in public and his urging that Americans resume their normal lives as if there is no pandemic has not helped. In the meantime the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in my county is slowly but steadily rising as are the number of such cases in other counties of Kentucky and neighboring Tennessee.
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