It's as if a global pandemic failed to instill in us the most basic public health courtesy:
Sick people, mask up.
At this stage, I'm not talking about mask mandates for everyone. We all see how that went down.
But it would be swell if folks who are coughing and sneezing could stay home, or at the very least, wear a mask in public. If you've been on a plane lately, eaten at a restaurant or ridden the bus, you've probably witnessed people hacking up their lungs with total disregard of airborne droplets escaping their mouths. Do they not notice everyone around them cringing and immediately foraging their own handbags or jacket pockets for an N95?
Blame my grumpiness on the season's unholy trinity of RSV, influenza and COVID-19. A wretched cough has been aggressively lingering in my household for a month while taking out schoolchildren by the drove. An early start to the winter viral season has clogged hospital beds. Last week a Children's Minnesota official described the unprecedented sight of having 30 to 40 children waiting in the emergency department for an inpatient bed.
How far we've fallen since sewing our own masks, for our family and strangers alike, as part of the Early Pandemic Era of solidarity and kindness. The mask became weaponized. Many on the right saw it as an attack on their individual freedom. Many on the left clamored for mandates to continue, even after vaccines and at-home tests became widely available and hospitalizations were at their lowest point.
When we turned the mask into a symbol of someone's political convictions, we stopped seeing it for what it was: a simple but effective item that could help curtail a virus. Is that why we've become reluctant to wear them now? Or do we all feel we have moved into a post-mask world, never to put that genie back in the bottle?
Granted, the confusing messaging from public health officials at the start of the pandemic didn't help. They said masks weren't necessary for asymptomatic people and actually discouraged folks from buying them, only to later reverse course. Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged that health officials downplayed mask wearing partly because they were in short supply, and health care workers needed the protection the most.