My Friends
This is an open letter from here in Central Ohio, to all of my “won’t wear a face mask,” “going to church this morning” friends. There are a lot you: I see you in the grocery store, at the restaurant for carryout last night (including the staff) and for sure at the hardware store. Some of you are uncertain, but many are proudly proving that “you aren’t scared”. And when I read social media, I hear you over and over again.
There’s a litany of reasons.
- “It is all a hoax,” says one far-out idea.
- Many doctors say facemasks don’t help.
- Most people who get the virus won’t have a problem, or at least they will survive.
- And the final reason, more people will be hurt by the economic disaster than are by the virus.
All I can say to all of you is I truly hope you are right. You better be.
Decision
You see, you’ve decided this for all of us. The reason that we didn’t have the “curve” at the beginning, overwhelming our hospitals with thousands more, is that we shut down. You could hear it on Broad street two hundred feet from my house. On a normal morning, about six, there’s lots of traffic, people heading to work. But in the shut down, six in the morning sounded like four in the morning. There were only a few cars headed into town.
You could see it at the grocery store, where folks quickly got what they needed and got out. And you could see it on the side streets, where the only traffic was the Amazon vans silently slipping in and out of driveways, providing “everything needed” for sheltering at home.
But that’s all done now. When you wander around our small town, it’s getting right back to “normal”. Traffic is back up on Broad street. Folks are acting like “we won”. And today the President has “ordered” that churches, synagogues and (he could hardly say it) mosques should be open. It’s his first “national” command, and he probably doesn’t have the authority to do it. But that doesn’t really matter; he’s told the country it’s OK. OK to gather in groups, OK to sing together in a room, OK to share the Eucharist. The President wants us back in our pews.
Science
In a progressively smaller voice, the leading epidemiologists have said: the virus is still here. We only stopped if by stopping transmission, but it hasn’t “gone away”. If we go back to “normal” we will be right back in February and early March. But that’s not what people want to hear, and it’s certainly not what the President wants us to do. No, we’ve done “our duty” in March and April; we’ve made our “sacrifice”. It’s time to get back to work, to life, to normal.
Back to swimming pools and Little League, back to bars and restaurants. Hell, Disney World is going to reopen soon. But none of this is based on “science”; it’s all based on a whole lot of wishing and hoping and “what it should be”.
Rights
I hope you’re right: I hope all of this was a hoax. Except for those 100,000 dead and probably a whole lot more. We’ve been playing fast and loose with the numbers; figures make Presidents and Governors look bad. 100,000 or more are dead in less than three months. And that was with all of the protections and protocols that we had in place.
I hope your right, that facemasks won’t make a difference. Because even if they did, they won’t when you aren’t wearing them. There are those who say, “Well, if you’re scared, wear it, but don’t make me wear one”. But, of course, if they work at all, they work by preventing transmission, not reception. Put simply, it keeps an infected person from spreading the virus, not a non-infected person from getting it. One person with a facemask isn’t protected. It’s all of the unknowingly infected people wearing them that prevent the spread.
And I, truly, hope you are right that religious places opening to actual services won’t spread the virus. Because that is really an awful thought: folks go to commune with their fellow man and God, only to be struck down by a virus they could have avoided.
Your Choice, Not Mine
I feel like a man driving back from work late on a Friday night. You know that out there, on the roads, there are people driving home from the bar. Some are far too drunk to drive, but they’ve made the choice to “make it home”. They’ve chosen for themselves, but when they swerve into your lane, they’ve made that choice for you too.
So, my mask-less, church going friends, I hope you are right. If you’re not, then we are going to go through so much more tragedy than we’ve already seen, and so many more are going to die needlessly. But I know, it’s your rights. And I know that you are so sure you’re right.
Right?
