No definitive studies exist that prove masks prevent infections.
Check me out on that one.
I’ve gotten both my shots, but the latest data from the state says only 35-percent of Coahoma County has been vaccinated. I had COVID for the first time in January and it humbled me. So do I need to put my mask back on?
Please remember, 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.
Me and my mask
Take look at the photo.
Yeah, I probably need to cover that mug and silly grin up 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.
COVID has changed the way we look at the world and each other.
And then there is the politics of masks, but that is a column for another day.
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 is 88 and through all this, her health has been my major concern and reason I wear a mask.
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 when the pandemic started 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 Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register. He urges you to drop by his office at 128 East Second Street with or without your mask.
