Are you being selfish?

[gpatt0n]

I was at a store in Temple yesterday. I had some screwy dishtowel arrangement for my 'face mask.'

 The store had for sale a box of 'ear warmers' ... little felt like arrangements, that almost looks like an eye mask that would look normal if placed over your eyes except there are no holes for the eyes.  So it looks pretty good and seems relatively convenient. 

That is an idea because the experts are calling on people - all people - to wear a mask of some sort. Further they are saying that wearing a mask won't protect you from the Covid19 which seems kind of self-defeating considering face masks, whether for fun or fate, aren't what I'd call comfortable.

I mean if you listen hard, you'll definitely come away with the notion that in this battle against this 'alien' virus masks probably won't work. The experts seem consistent in saying masks won't magically protect you and may entice you to self-infect because you'll be touching your face as you adjusts the dang thing. 

What they say plainly is you wear a mask IN ORDER TO NOT INFECT OTHERS.  In other words, you wear a mask because everyone else needs to know you're wearing a mask.

Of course you and every one's third cousin will say, "I feel fine and I'm not toxic" and most likely that is absolutely true.  But you have to know the big problem with THIS covid-19 invader, is that it is a sneaky little sonofa-B and hides itself in the bodies of people who don't even know they have the infection.  These 'typhoid Mary's' may be as many as one in four of all the folks infected and we really don't know how long they stay infected.  

That people could be infectious and not feel a thing is what Gov. Kemp said bamboozled him and he said when he found that out, he delivered his stay home order. 

Now do know that we begin the understand the important offer of solidarity with our fellow man shown by wearing a face covering.  Fact is, a mask is kind of like clothes; you wear it for the benefit of everyone else. Putting on a mask these days is like putting on a shirt before you eat at a buffet. You do it so when you go back for seconds, you don't eat your own chest hairs.  

We know from the experience of those in Singapore that if everyone wears a mask will can quickly kick this covid to the curb with the masks and social distancing. We procrastinated through the opportunity for containment and now we've got a hell of a mess... or maybe a better description is we were mesmerized by Nero's fiddling. 

We're actually  going to get out of it; we will recover although one should always be aware that the world as a whole is in crisis and there are a lot of criminally inclined world leaders out there; many of whom have better reputations than they deserve.  Unless people get their heads out of their butts and recognize the seriousness of the circumstances, the error of our ways will be counted in the bodies stacked in the refrigerators. 

Trump's estimate these days is between 100,000 and 220,000 ... I hope and pray that we are so lucky. 

I'm also seeing the logic behind wide-spread testing including identifying those who contracted covid-19 without symptoms in part because they're at least partly immune (how immune needs research) and are needed in the workforce, particularly working with others that are contracting this virus. Those of us who avoid  the virus need to do so until a vaccine is not only discovered but manufactured in adequate      quantities which could take six months to a year even if the vaccine were discovered tomorrow. 

The point is we are in this for life and there are a lot of opportunists out there angling to take what those who die leave behind.