Insert your nightmare here, and understand that it’s quite likely to happen.
I recently posted this, “Shame,” about the distracting and Very Woke complaints that those of us who criticise people for not wearing masks in public are “guilt-shaming” them. You can read the entire piece here. “Shame” was born out of a Facebook conversation and I want to take this oppurtunity to thank everyone who chimed in, especially the person (eventually kicked off) who complained that I/we was/were engaging in shaming: without you, there would be no “Shame.”
One of the issues discussed was whether or not we need to always wear our masks. Is it okay to be maskless in, say, the middle of a park, or when there truly is no one around? I do think there are times when one might be maskless in public: I sometimes hang out with friends, one on one, in a nearby park, and we might eat and drink together, at a distance, and that necessitates unmasking at least briefly. If there’s enough of a breeze around us, I’m less likely to feel unsafe.
But the science on all that is ever more foreboding by the day. This recent New York Times op-ed by Linsey C. Marr, an engineer, makes the compelling and frightening case that, yes, “The Coronavirus Is In the Air.” You should read it in its entirety. The short version: “aerosols matter in extremely mundane scenarios.”
To return though to the issue of always keeping a mask on: the only times I take mine off is after a long spell of walking, as I sit down in Midway Plaisance, a giant park in Hyde Park, where I’m the only person that early in the morning, as I sit to huff and puff indelicately in a way I try not to while in more visible spaces (it’s not attractive and I’m vain). But I otherwise keep it on because, frankly, I have a deep distrust of human beings and don’t trust them to not suddenly emerge from nowhere or lunge at me. I stopped walking in my favourite small park after an incident where an unmasked runner was compelled to make her way around me as I held my cane out but then quickly darted to my side and deliberately and vociferously coughed in my direction. Which is to say: humans are stupid, petty, and idiotic and a grey-haired brown woman with a cane in a plantation city is likely to be among the first to suffer the brunt of that stupidity.
Some people choose to only mask up as they approach crowds of people, or only when they go inside stores.
Here’s my analogy for why none of that makes any sense to me, and it involves eggs.
I was at Trader Joe’s this morning and, proving that bagging is not simply about putting things into a container but actually requires a knowledge of both physics and art (and that clerks need to be paid a lot, lot, lot more than is currently mandated in this country), I clumsily dropped my carton of eggs on the table they provide for people who’d like to pack their goods into backpacks or their own bags. And because Trader Joe’s has some of the best people around, an employee quickly came up to me, insisted he would bring me a fresh carton, and did. The funny thing is: I’d only asked for a paper bag because I wanted to carry the eggs in it to keep them safe. I knew that carrying the carton in my hand while everything else was in my backpack would be pointless. I might think that the eggs were somehow safer because, after all, I had them in my hand and wasn’t that the best place? But in fact, the eggs would be much more vulnerable in my hand (or hands, if I had both available) because any number of things might happen: I might become unsteady for a minute (Hyde Park has all kinds of nifty half-cut pipes deliberately laid into pavements just to kill you or at least trip you up) or drop them as I tried to dodge yet another idiot runner, or my hand might get tired…and so on. Besides, why leave my hand immobile holding a dozen eggs? What if I needed it to steady myself as I slipped on something?
The only thing I could do to keep the eggs safe to the best of my ability was to place them in a paper bag, cushioned by bananas and avocadoes on all sides.
Think of your mask as a bag for your eggs, of course, before you clumsily drop them on the bagging table. Are you, conceivably, just fine unmasked if there aren’t people around you on the street? Sure. But literally anything could happen: a runner or even a walker, unmasked, might come out of nowhere and into you, a crowd of drunken fools emerging from anywhere might suddenly surround you as they traipsed and giggled away, maskless. Insert your nightmare here, and understand that it’s quite likely to happen. Being masked will at least significantly reduce your chances of infection. Your eggs might still break if you drop the bag on the ground but they’re significantly much safer there than out in the open, protected by nothing but your hand.
Think of a mask as a paper bag for your eggs.
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. I make a point of citing people and publications all the time: it’s not that hard to mention me in your work, and to refuse to do so and simply assimilate my work is plagiarism. You don’t have to agree with me to cite me properly; be an ethical grownup, and don’t make excuses for your plagiarism. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
Image: Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, Salvador Dali, 1943.