Some Thoughts on Masks

by Pa Rock

Concerned Citizen

Being a senior citizen, I have multiple doctors including a general practitioner who manages my primary care and several specialists who test, diagnose, prescribe, and report back to my GP.   My healthcare is a team effort, and I have gone to great pains over the past several years to assemble a group of doctors whose care and opinions I respect.

Several weeks ago my primary care doctor made the front page of the local newspaper when he went before the city council and proposed  a city-wide mask-wearing ordinance.  After much discussion and an impassioned plea from the articulate young physician, the council voted four to three to ignore the good doctor's advice and continue on with the policy of masks being voluntary.

I sent the doctor a card thanking him for his effort in the matter.

A couple of weeks after that I had an appointment with my doctor and after we got all of my medical stuff out of the way, our talk turned to the pandemic.  The physician still had a fire in his belly over the council's rejection of his request, and rattled on about people "exercising their freedom" not to wear masks were putting everyone in the community at risk.

He was preaching to the choir.

The big push not to wear masks has, of course, been coming from the White House.   Fox News, the media arm of the GOP and the White Hosue, has been needling Democrats for months about wearing masks.  One of the networks vacuous blondes, a person named Tomi Lahren, took a cheap shot a Biden in early October saying that he "might as well carry a purse with that mask."  Trump has also thrown a lot of ridicule Biden's way for wearing a mask.

Trump and the GOP have not only stoked controversy about wearing masks, they have also been actively inciting the radical fringes of the party to protest state efforts to mandate social distancing and the use of masks - as well as stoking anger about closed segments of the economy.  The dangers of that strategy were made apparent when it was revealed that a group of domestic terrorists had been plotting to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan over her policies to contain the spread of COVID - a plot that dovetailed into the GOP's angry rants against measures designed to protect the health of the general public.

Of course, things calmed for a bit as Trump and Melania were diagnosed with COVID, and Trump was hospitalized for four days, but now he is out and appears to be sliding back into his boisterous disregard of the pandemic.  He is once again holding large rallies where many of the participants decline to wear masks and where social distancing is not possible.

And now the third wave is upon us - and things are getting worse.   But still the noise of the deniers persists.  

Yesterday Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign, took a shot at Biden and the Democrats with this tweet:

"Biden starts his rally with thanking 'everyone' for wearing masks and social distancing.

So starting with an appeal to fear.

Great message, Joe."

And that snide remark burned at me for awhile - and then I thought about my valiant doctor and decided that I needed to respond - and here is my Twitter-sized reply: 

"Jenna Ellis, people who wear masks help to protect others.  I appreciate their consideration.  People who discourage wearing masks through humiliation and ridicule place others in danger.  I regret their disrespect for human life."

This afternoon I will go to town and buy a few groceries.  It will be the first time that I have even been in my car in four days.  We do not have a delivery service in my area, and there is no curbside pickup, so I will be properly dressed and masked.    

I take this stuff seriously - and shame on Donald Trump and the GOP for their continuing efforts to put the lives of Americans at risk.   Their attacks on public safety procedures increase the danger for all of us!

I like Presidents who respect my health and personal safety.