I understand the need or desire to personalize your mask. The standard blue or white paper ones are boring. Choosing an interesting print while picking out cloth to make your own mask can add some much-needed family fun during the 'stay at home' era.
Buying a mask with your favorite team or product's image may help you prove that you belong to something and have value. It also likely provides your favorite organization with some royalty money while you promote their licensed image/likeness - even if the profits of the mask 'go to charity.' Think of it as a win-win-win.
The CDC now urges all of us to wear masks in social settings. This, after discouraging us from wearing them weeks earlier. Cloth or paper no longer matters either.
But is the function being overrun by fashion? Are masks simply becoming accessories instead of tools in the fight against the 'invisible enemy?'
Many of us are ignoring the actual recommendations of properly securing, sanitizing, or changing a mask. I am guilty.
I checked the guidelines. No where does it say that TV Reporters standing alone in front of a camera in an abandoned parking lot must wear a mask. So please stop doing it. We know you really, really care. We can hear the compassion in your voice that is now muffled by the mask.
The media tore Vice President Pence apart this week for not wearing a mask when visiting a hospital to show support for those treating or recovering from Covid-19. These same media-types forgot to tear James Clyburn and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to shreds for not wearing masks during Thursday's press conference in which she said she does not 'need a lecture or speech' regarding questions about how the party reacts differently to various sexual assault allegations.
So, how about a lecture on the proper use of your mask, Madam Speaker? Mr. Vice President? Mr. House Majority Whip? Anyone?
Mr. Pence got the message. He wore a paper mask while touring an Indiana factory on Thursday. It was not a fashionable one….and his voice was muffled.
In her defense, Speaker Pelosi did wear a pretty blue & white mask on stage. It matched her outfit really well. But, all that planning flew out the window when she pulled it down under her chin once she began speaking. This is a 'no-no' people!!
And, speaking of the media & masks. Check out President Trump's press conference Thursday evening. Many of those journalists seemed to be standing too close together while questioning the Chief Executive. Did anyone notice that many were not wearing masks? They did not even have them pulled under their chins! Oh, the horror.
If you must wear a mask - wear a dang mask. Pulling it under your chin goes against everything we are told. Smart scientists call this 'improper doffing.' (This is point I would be asked to leave class for snickering.)
Studies by smart folks show that a virus can survive on the surface of face masks. By pulling it up and down on your face or repeatedly using the same mask without cleaning it can result in self-contamination. A contaminated cloth mask may help the user transfer the icky stuff from the mask to their bare hands.
Cloth masks also increase risk of infection due to moisture retention. Basically, they become Petri dishes that smell like bad breath.
The mask craze is a result of the entire world suspecting anyone and everyone of being an asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, or unsympathetic carrier of Covid-19.
Using a mask is either to protect you from getting it from us even if we don't know we have it or you from spreading it to us even though you don't know you have it but we suspect you of having it anyway.
Are we clear? Good. Now put your mask on. And, tuck in your shirt.
Have a great weekend.
