“We need to make sure we don’t stigmatize people wearing masks. People should have that right to wear masks or not when there’s no mandate,” Dr. Kim-Farley, an UCLA epidemiologist and infectious-disease expert, said.
If only it was as simple as this quote from Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.
I’ve been writing about being confused and disturbed about mask mandates being relaxed even as people are still getting COVID and plenty are dying of it. Yes, cases are down, but medical experts still urge caution and talk of new variants, including Deltacron, a merging of the last two.
Yes, I want to be safe and not get COVID but am now not really sure how to do so. But I realized that there’s something else that is bothering me: I don’t like some people being okayed not to wear masks and others being told that they should wear them but don’t have to.
On top of being confusing, I don’t like how this is dividing us even more and what my now wearing a mask may or may not mean.
From day one, wearing or not wearing a mask meant something. For a while, I wore a mask because I believe in science and didn’t want to be seen as supporting Trump. There was a time when I was worried that if I didn’t mask up, people would think I wouldn’t get the vaccine when I had in fact been vaccinated. Now, people might think I’m paranoid when I wear a mask.
See how murky, how twisted this all gets?
I shouldn’t care what people think about my wearing a mask. But the thing is that I think about whether or not others are wearing a mask. I find myself wondering why that person isn’t masked and that person is. Is that person who is not wearing a mask a Q-anon follower who believes that COVID is a hoax and that vaccines are a way for the government to track us, or are they simply vaccinated? Is that elderly person masked because they aren’t vaccinated or because they’re really cautious like I am?
It is so easy to judge each other. This is what bothers me about this no man’s land where it’s okay that some wear masks and others don’t. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we’re all looking at each other, at if we’re masked or not, and wondering why, wondering what those others are thinking. We’re judging each other still if not all the more. Being able to not or to wear masks is further dividing us.
Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive, making a mountain out of a mole hill. And I’m not advocating that we should all stay masked indefinitely. Then again, do you think that someone who doesn’t like being told by the government to be vaccinated will go along with a recommendation from the government to wear a mask?
It doesn’t make sense – and doesn’t feel safe.
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