I think I’ve figured out the aversion to wearing face coverings when out in public.

It’s a two-fold issue, from everything that I’ve been able to piece together.

One of the forks appears to be the idea that people are learning that wearing a mask doesn’t actually protect the wearer from catching the virus. This isn’t that startling of a revelation – wearing a piece of cloth over your face doesn’t filter out the tiny, microscopic virus particles that get you sick, and therefore people are deciding that they don’t want to do that if there is no benefit to them.

This extends into the second fork, which is that people can’t be bothered if there is no direct benefit to them – if the mask isn’t going to protect them, then they simply aren’t going to wear it.

This is a dangerous attitude to have for multiple reasons.

While the mask doesn’t filter out the particles that get us sick, it does prevent widespread distribution of “respiratory droplets” – the things that excrete from our lungs when we breathe, and we cough – and that in and of itself prevents other people from getting sick.

You can try this yourself with a mask and a mouthful of water.

If you were to spit out the water without a mask on, it would project out quite far and potentially get people standing in the spray zone wet. But if you put on a cloth mask, that water won’t go nearly as far. The water still exists, but the point of contact – which in this case, is breathing in those water particles – is severely diminished.

Think of your breath in the wintertime – the cloud that goes up into the air every single time you exhale when the temperature is cold enough. That same cloud still exists in the summertime, but you just can’t see it. Wearing a scarf over your face, however, cuts down on the prominence of that cloud – just as wearing a mask now does the same. It’s extremely basic, and the mask with distancing ourselves is the only defense that we have against this virus at the time.

If we’re going to be out in public interacting with people that we know and don’t know, then we need to be wearing a mask. Period.

This has nothing to do with the government trying to force people to comply with “authoritarian” directives. I actually laugh out loud when I see the lengths that people go to simply to avoid something that will protect other people from their germs in the rare event that they get sick (and, hopefully, the masks of others will protect them).

Just as I get outrageously offended when people prop up autism as a potential pitfall for vaccination – like somehow being a person with autism is worse than catching a disease that will very likely kill you – I can’t help but be incensed with the lengths that people are going to not have to wear a mask in public.

Apparently somebody created a website for a fake government agency where people can print out cards that say that the Americans with Disabilities Act precludes them from having to comply with the directive, and announces that the person that they’re presumably showing the card to can’t ask what the ailment is because it’s a violation of their medical privacy.

They even went so far as to include the seal of the Department of Justice on these little trinkets and included a phone number for people to call when “violations” occur.

Yeah – that’s going to work, alright. Go ahead and call the Department of Justice because somebody at Costco told you that you can’t come inside without wearing a mask. Let me know how that goes. I’ll wait.

Meanwhile there are people with actual disabilities that are having a hard enough time getting through the day that are being co-opted by these people who all of a sudden claim that their hardship from wearing a mask is somehow equivalent to theirs. That’s offensive to say the very least. While there may be some health issues that wearing a mask can aggravate, the sheer number of people who are proudly throwing these cards around social media aren’t those people.

There also exists a misperception that the idea of wearing a mask is somehow going in and out of favor with the doctors and the scientists that initially suggested their use. There is no back-and-forth here – from the moment that it was suggested that people wear masks months ago, there has been no pullback. Just because some guy from high school is sharing a quote from Dr. Anthony Fauci from months ago – before we knew the full extent of the virus and how to prevent its transmission – doesn’t mean that we don’t need to be wearing them now.

Ever notice how the date on these little quotes is never actually shared with the quote itself? That’s because they’re trying to fool people for some reason – often a political one – and even the slightest amount of investigatory legwork proves the idea that is peddled is incorrect and dangerous.

It doesn’t help that the President apparently sees wearing a mask as a sign of weakness – the fragility of the ego is not to be underestimated –  but that doesn’t excuse all of us from doing the slightest of poking around to see what we need to do in order to protect our fellow residents.

What this really comes down to, in my opinion, is the fact that people are unwilling to look past the end of their noses when it comes to most things, and this is just an illustration of that on a wider scale.

You don’t wear a mask to protect yourself – you wear it to protect others from you. And when they do the same, then you’re protected. And when that happens, we don’t have extensive spikes like the one we’re seeing now that could actually result in our healthcare system being overburdened. Want to talk about how frustrating it is to wear a mask? Imagine how frustrating it’ll be when your loved one has a heart attack, or a stroke, and you can’t go past the front door of the hospital with them – if there’s even a bed for them.

Just wear the mask.

It’s literally the simplest thing that any of us can do to return life to normal.

 To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.