No, you wear a mask
Hey do you remember when we couldn’t wait to stop wearing masks indoors? I do. In March, 61 percent of Ontarians said they were in favour of lifting all pandemic measures, which by that point we thought had been in place for either long enough or too long.
We’re in favour of mask mandates when they make sense, we keep telling pollsters. We just… don’t wear masks unless we have to. If you’ve been out of the house at all since the spring you’ll have noticed that the minute they’re no longer mandatory masks disappear in one big hurry.
I have been roaming far and wide throughout North America for the last year and even though my experience is anecdotal, it sure is overwhelmingly convincing. And it’s that, absent an obligation to wear them, very few people choose to mask up.
To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t typically wear one either. I do it to get a flu or COVID shot, to go to the dentist and otherwise if my wearing a mask makes the people I am near more comfortable.
I don’t wear them out of a sense of self-protection. I only wear them for others.
I’ve had five doses of COVID vaccine since May 2021, including the new bivalent shot, and I also get my flu shot once a year. I’m pretty sure I haven’t suffered from COVID-19 since March 2020. In part by being careful, especially before vaccination, but now that I’ve got my five shots I feel reasonably well protected.
Now, that’s me. I don’t want anyone to think they can follow my example, thinking it’s advice. Clearly it’s not. I am not a doctor and don’t even play one on the internet. It’s simply me being honest about my own experience.
Which beats what politicians and public health officials are doing.
The province’s top doctor was busy “strongly” recommending everyone wear a mask indoors less than a week ago, only to be caught on camera at some indoor party… entirely maskless. Members of the Ford government have also been criticized for not wearing masks after encouraging the rest of us to do so.
I can deal with COVID. It’s the hypocrisy I can’t stand. And the fact that masking seems to be a measure politicians resort to only because they’re scared shitless that hospitals are about to fall apart. A point I made in this column.
Kids are having a very tough time with respiratory illnesses these days, and we should do all we can to protect them. It probably makes sense to bring back mandatory masking in schools, at least in elementary school.
It’s something politicians could do. But no. They choose to encourage us to do one thing while they personally do the other, and in the meantime do nothing to protect kids or undo the incredible damage their stupid and destructive policies (hello, Bill 124) have done to the health system.
