I often tell my kids, perhaps more frequently since we’ve all been on lockdown together, “Be as good as you can be, not as bad as you can get away with.” The scolding feels different looking out into our community during shelter in place.
But before I get to what some are getting away with, I want to take a second to thank folks who are doing their best. We’ll remember those businesses that worked hard to follow the rules of social distancing to keep employees and customers safe. And we’ll remember the patrons who showed up in masks and maintained their distance. We should keep in mind those darkened storefronts, too: the business owners who decided they couldn’t operate safely, as well as those who closed to follow the letter and spirit of the shelter-in-place order. Those owners and employees are making a sacrifice we’d do well to remember when the county re-opens and we enjoy broad choices of where to spend our money.
Of course, we’ve all seen or heard from friends and family about people who don’t seem to be trying at all, ignoring social distancing and masking, the very things designed to protect the rest of us from them should they have the virus and not know it.
Our sheriff and public health officer have tried to be clear and calm leaders in this, speaking to adults in the language of adults. But it’s clearly not getting through to everyone. So I’ll use my mom voice: Wear the damn mask.
Many of the people behind the counter are worried. They’re worried about their jobs, their safety and you. Service workers are getting hit hard in this pandemic. If anything, we should be more careful around the people risking exposure by doing jobs that feed and sustain us.
What do you think working in a restaurant is like? Or a market? Or a hardware store? You think it’s easy standing all day and dealing with customers? Because I’ve done these jobs and let me tell you it’s hard work — usually without decent, if any, insurance — and they deserve to be treated with respect. And being a customer doesn’t give you the right to roll up to the conveyer belt with no mask or breathing over one pulled down below your chin like your breath is doesn’t have germs. People must wonder how you were raised.
The least you can do for somebody who’s on the eighth hour of a shift breathing into a steamy mask over a register or a grill and waiting on you is to wear the damn mask and stay 6 feet the hell back. And don’t you dare make a fuss about it. Because the rest of us are doing it and you’re not special.
I don’t know what you’re smiling at, Business Flouting the Shelter in Place Order. You’re on my list, too.
What do you, maskless wonder, think giving attitude about slowing the spread of a deadly disease is going to get you? Play it through. You think you’re going to impress your friends with this? Because you’re such a big deal, pushing up on staff with no mask and no manners, disregarding their safety and putting them in the difficult position of tossing you out. You think everybody is going to cheer your brave stand? People are out there getting killed in the streets for the color of their skin; people are homeless and starving; hell, just today, hundreds of people died alone connected to ventilators of a disease whose spread can be limited by a simple mask — but this, this is your moment to protest?
And if you think the same people who can remember you wanted your burger rare with ranch on the side aren’t going to remember your unmasked face, you are out of your damn mind. No tip is going to fix that. You’d better believe we’re all going to remember who caused a pointless and frankly scary — potentially deadly, even — ruckus at the store. Everybody with health issues and loved ones with health issues is going to remember your foolishness.
Do you want to escalate and turn this into a police matter? Because that is how this becomes a police matter.
I’d be embarrassed for you if the stakes weren’t deadly high. Wear your damn mask.
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill is the arts and features editor at the Journal and prefers she/her. Reach her at 442-1400, extension 320, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @JFumikoCahill.
This article appears in ‘Very Soon’.
Thank you!
Thank you for writing clearly and simply, in hopes that the few self-absorbed morons will be able to comprehend the rationale the rest of us understood the first time around. These idiots are playing Russian roulette with the guns pointed at the rest of us.
I’m going to start taking pictures of people in stores who TOOK THEIR DAMN MASKS OFF once they got inside. Like the 6 people I saw in the back of Costco last Saturday afternoon!! The teenager who’s dad pretended not to notice the bandana DOWN around his son’s neck for their ENTIRE trip through the store. The young mother who took her mask off and wandered around the freezer cases talking loudly to her toddler and unmasked older child. …oh and THIS peach, the guy who pulled his mask down to speak loudly to a friend ACROSS the onions and potatoes. Aaaaargh!!! Please someone, consider a public Rogue’s Gallery I can submit them to.
I worry about my health (half of one lung is scar tissue and I have a history of bronchitis and pneumonia dating back to childhood). I worry about my husband, who is healthy, but also 67 …and I worry about the vulnerable clients in my care as a social worker in this county who is lucky enough to still be working. What if I carry some selfish idiots germs to a vulnerable senior …and they die? I will remember you (bad selfish person) and carry evil thoughts about you in my heart for the rest of my life.
Thank you for a well-written and spot-on piece. Wear the Damn Mask.
Thank you for this Damn Mask piece, I have recently seen a man in a hardware store not wearing a mask, when I asked the person behind the counter if he should have a mask on she said he is ok, the store hadn’t made it mandatory for costumers to wear masks?
Why aren’t all businesses requiring everyone to wear a damn mask? No straight standard of care safety, does not make any sense..
Our cases of covid are increasing, stay safe..
End the lockdown. Protect and shelter the at risk demographic. Free everyone else to work and support the tax base.
Did all of you mask complainers completely sanitize yourself, Costco card, credit card, cash change & your plastic covered products before loading into your car?
Your purchases were handled by the stocking crew, checker, and assistant checker (along with any customers who picked up the product before you did).
No?
If not properly worn and then disposed of single use N95s, your fabric masks are just so much feel good health theater.
Washed your hands? Doesnt matter. All of the goods and the staff who handled your purchases were exposed to hundreds of customers before you got there. Thousands even.
Wearing gloves by staff continues the spread & only protects the wearer.
By limiting where we can shop we are all crowding into the few places open that we can enter that sells everything.
Does that make sense?
Open the mall, open the mom & pop stores. Let us go inside. Its better then limiting our options to a few big box stores.
Dont wear a mask then wear a mask. The experts cant make up their minds.
Wear a mask and have a worse Covid reaction than without? Can it cause other unintended health problems?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scienceti…
May 18, 2020
Newer evidence also reveals that the coronavirus may enter the brain in some cases. By wearing a mask, viruses released upon expiration will not be given a chance to escape and will further congregate in the nasal passages. This allows the virus to enter the olfactory nerves and travel further, eventually reaching the brain.
Dr. Blaylock says that one should not attack or criticize healthy people who do not wear masks, as studies point out that it may be a wise choice after all.
Amen!!!
As a somewhat late adopter to wearing the mask where I live (April) I discovered that it was not easy to buy them anywhere or in any style. The thing you can make with the cloth and elastics doesn’t stay on my ears. Bandanas unfortunately are an art; getting it to stay on is not easy either.
However an elastic headband works perfectly to hold a piece of cloth over my face. Doubled-up canvas material. The headband is about an inch and a half wide and snug around the mouth and nose to the back of the head, so no ear problems. With some adhesive Velcro bits I shaped the cloth to curve around the chin.
I tried bandanas yesterday and it was a fail. So I intend to continue with my headband solution until the box of ordered masks arrives next year or whenever. Perhaps folding the bandana over the headband will work even better.
Sympathy to all for the logistics of this. We still must, as JFC said, wear the damn mask.
Unfortunately, there’s an “internet expert” offering conflicting information with authoritative confidence for every conceivable belief.
Actual professionals in virology and epidemiology (and your family doctor) are distinguished by their avoidance of speaking in “absolutes” like we see above.
Their consensus in clear:
“Not enough is known about this novel virus”.
“Not enough testing is being performed”.
We also know that Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and Singapore initiated national campaigns to wear masks, focusing on impoverished epicenters while banning exports of medical supplies and equipment all LAST JANUARY! As a result, most of their schools and businesses remained open and they have few cases and deaths.
The anti-science, climate change denying, flag-waving, belly-dragging mouth-breathers want it both ways: no masks and no closure and their representatives have heard their cries, preparing to crowd them into Eureka’s fair-grounds by the hundreds, side-by-side on tiny cots like Mother Theresa’s AIDS “death-clinics”, freely exchanging each individual’s viral strain to enhance rapid mutation.