Coronavirus — Of Masks and Men

Does wearing a mask in public during the time of coronavirus make you meek or manly?

On the rare times I’ve ventured out these past few months, I’ve worn a mask whenever I was either indoors, or outdoors, but about to come within ten feet of another person.

It’s felt more than different — it’s felt actively uncomfortable.

After about 10–15 minutes, I often start gagging, likely some sort of reflex left over from childhood asthma, a ghost long since forgotten.

The gagging triggers a sudden urge to instantly rip off the mask and, in so doing, negate its effectiveness in helping stop any COVID-19 germs from reaching to — or from — my mouth and nose.

Simply put?

It’s difficult for me to wear a mask for even 20 minutes at a time.

I can scarcely imagine how uncomfortable and difficult it must be for both our medical staff and others on the front lines — meat packers, grocery store clerks, fast food workers, etc. — to wear such masks for hours at a time, day in and day out.

These are scary times, no doubt.

But they are also eminently manageable, if you are lucky enough to have a job that hasn’t been eliminated by the nationwide shutdown.

As countless political cartoons and Facebook memes have put it, our grandparents were asked to sacrifice their youth to go overseas and fight.

Witness the words inscribed at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, DC:

“Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met.”

By contrast, we are simply being asked to stay home — to stay inside.

When we do have to go out, the ask is similarly simple — respect social distancing; wear a mask; wear gloves.

And in so doing, save countless lives — maybe even our own.

All Quiet on the Western Front

I know embarrassingly little about World War I.

By the time we got to it in AP U.S. History class in 11th grade, it was reduced to sound bites — something about the Austro-Hungarian empire, Serbia and the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand.

My high school education was excellent, but World War I was treated as an annoying pit stop on the journey between the Civil War and World War II.

Even the superb Wonder Woman film a few years back did little to help my understanding.

But I do remember trying to read the book All Quiet on the Western Front in high school — and failing.

Why?

Because the first 30 pages freaked me out.

The scene?

Young soldiers, in a trench, being passed out gas masks — describing the suffocating, uncomfortable feeling of the masks, and hoping to god that they both fit properly and were woven tightly enough that they would indeed protect against the poison gas they all knew would be used against them shortly.

I was horrified, borderline traumatized.

No thank you. I put the book down, never to go back to it.

But, more than 20 years later, that scene haunts me.

I guess growing up in the 1980s on a diet of GI Joe, The A-Team and Star Wars, I’d always presumed gas masks just worked — there was never any worry about proper fit, or tight weaves, or manufacturing defects — let alone the horrifying effects nerve gas might have on exposed skin.

It was a revelation to realize that the gas masks of 100 years ago not only weren’t foolproof — they may have offered precious little protection during a war where many advances in military technology (including airplanes, flame throwers and nerve gas) made traditional battlefield strategy obsolete.

Mask as Political Totem

In this unprecedented time of COVID-19 — a disease that has killed more than 100,000 Americans in just four short months — I’ve been truly baffled by how wearing — or not wearing — a mask outdoors has become a political statement.

The science is clear — the mask may not prevent you from contracting COVID-19, but it certainly helps prevent you from transmitting the virus to others, particularly indoors, where people interact in close proximity.

Thus, we have the CDC and WHO guidelines for mask use — burgeoned by mathematical models that show if 80 percent of people wore masks, we could nearly eliminate transmission of the virus, stopping its spread.

And yet — despite both those CDC guidelines and mandates that all White House visitors wear masks, President Trump defiantly refuses to wear one.

I imagine he believes being photographed wearing a mask would betray his manliness — somehow depict him as weak.

Perhaps President Trump believes that an image of our Commander in Chief wearing a mask would be played ad infinitum in political attack ads, the photo a simple shorthand symbolizing his mismanagement of this epidemic.

Whatever the reason, I’ve been truly befuddled at how wearing a mask has become a charged political statement rather than a neutral exercise in public health.

Biden v. Trump

The political and ideological war over masks seemingly came to a head earlier this week when Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden attended a Memorial Day Service on Monday wearing a mask.

I submit that in normal times, this moment would have passed without much comment. But these are not normal times.

But in this era of intense political polarization, many interpreted the photos of Biden in a mask as a direct attack on President Trump, and the right-wing media criticism of Biden’s actions was as brutal as it was swift.

On Tuesday, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh called masks a “required symbol on the left to promote fear, to promote indecision, to promote the notion that we’re nowhere near out of this.”

To me, such statements simply play into the anti-science sentiments that seem to have pervaded conservative thinking in the President Trump era.

President Trump himself seemingly mocked his challenger‘s’Memorial Day mask-wearing on Twitter. And for his part, Biden fired back in a CNN interview, stating that the president’s behavior was “macho” and “falsely masculine” — that his anti-mask rhetoric branded him a “fool” when “every leading doc in the world is saying you should wear a mask when you’re in a crowd.”

To Biden, wearing a mask projects “leadership.”

Of Masks and Men

You may believe that wearing a mask, as world health authorities have stated, could help keep those around you safe if you are unknowingly carrying the coronavirus during its asymptomatic period.

Or you may believe that masks are just the latest symbol of governmental overreach — a plot by liberals and democrats to continue to hype a pandemic whose deaths and economic carnage pose a threat to President Trump’s re-election chances.

As for me?

I’ll continue to exercise my freedom by wearing a mask in public — not out of fear, or as a virtue-signaling liberal, but as a strong, independent man who believes the vast majority of medical doctors and scientists — and is doing his best to stop my neighbors from falling ill to this virus.