No definitive studies exist that prove masks prevent infections.
Check me out on that one.
Also, masks are designed for different purposes, and only a select few guard against infectious diseases. Picking the right type of mask, using it correctly and then disposing of it properly is the key to making masks work.
Masks definitely need to be disposable.
You breathe into them and that is the perfect environment for germs, including COVID-19. And all that “stuff” touches your mouth and nose, which is the preferred entry point to the body.
I’ve seen people driving around in a car with the window down and a mask on. I’ve seen people at the big box store with mask strings over both ears and the mask slung below their chin. I also saw a woman poke a french fry around a mask at a drive-up window earlier this week.
Me and my mask
Take look at the photo.
Yeah, I probably need to cover up that mug and that grin in these serious and perilous times.
I started wearing my mask to select locations shortly after the pandemic panic started. As I walked through doors, if they had their mask on, I kept mine on. If they were not wearing a mask, I politely asked if I could remove mine and to the very last person they said “Yes!”
Maybe I don’t look infectious. Maybe they want to see that infectious grin.
I remember my first trip to China in 1988 and seeing people on the streets in masks.
Our guides told us workers only got a very limited number of paid sick days – it was three at that time – there was no welfare system and people had to stay well so they could work.
Coronavirus has changed the way we look at the world and each other.
Some look at the public as a health menace and some now look at China as a health menace.
When the economy does reopen, I think you will continue to see check-out clerks, waiters and people at sports events in masks. I think that trend will continue until the Lord – who has the final say – calls us home.
I hope people in Clarksdale realize there are risks to living in this brave new world and we all view them a little differently.
My Momma
My mother was born on a Southern Baptist mission field in Pingdu, China in June 1933. It was literally the edge of the world at that time.
I called her the other day and told her my concern for her health, this disease and I had never seen anything like it in my life.
She told me of cholera, typhoid, measles and smallpox epidemics that routinely swept the countryside when she was a little girl in China. She also told of warlords, civil war and the Japanese invasion of China, too. It was a pretty rough place. And this was the day and age before antibiotics.
“We knew about scarlet fever and yellow fever and I once asked my mother if there was a blue and green fever,” Momma said with a smile I could see over the telephone. “We stayed inside our compound, watched what we put in our mouths, washed our hands a lot and prayed a lot.”
Americans really don’t know how blessed they are.
The disease may have changed but the remedy seems to be the same.
Floyd Ingram is the Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register. Call him at 662-627-2201 if you want to discuss coronavirus policy and procedure and please leave your mask on!
