Random Ramblings and not-quite-a-rant - Masks

                                     

I pondered this earlier today as I hauled gravel and rocks and pulled out weeds in the cat palace - garden work provides wonderful opportunities for contemplation - did learning to wear underpants cause as much complaint as being asked to wear a mask? People happily keep their sweaty bits entrapped in undies without whingeing. When we had the bushfires and could SEE the enemy (smoke) we couldn't get enough of those tight, hot and heavy masks. People wear a dust mask when weed-spraying/installing insulation. Surgeons wear them when they cut people open. Why the widespread whingeing over this precautionary measure against the spread of a deadly and invisible enemy? (And don't get me started on the politicisation of masks!)

Here’s another thought – people appear to be quite happy to follow the dictates of fashion (those heels are SO last year, dahling!) or interior design (remember Mission Brown trim?) or the way your food appears on your plate at a restaurant – who can forget the deconstructed cheesecakes of 2019, piles of ingredients served on breadboards or in slippers or some such bullshit?)  As long as a vapid, vacuous celebrity tells you to do it, it’s ok. And yet – and yet – when epidemiologists and public health experts outline measures that should be taken for your own safety and the safety of those around you – people want to whinge and bleat and sook about rights and freedom and sovereignty. Why is that? It's been something I've pondered for months now. 

This awful pandemic has exposed a lot of ugliness and inconsistency in the people we share the world with. I haven't forgotten the callous calls, early in the pandemic, to lock down oldies because "only oldies die from this" (and then the irony, in the Victorian experience, at least, of those oldies in aged care being sitting ducks because of the casual workers who unwittingly took Covid to several workplaces where those vulnerable oldies were living.)  I wonder whether the mask-refusers are the same “lock down the oldies” people, or whether they’re a whole different group of selfish jerks?

It’d be nice to be able to rely on people to do the sensible thing – but we apparently all have different definitions of “sensible”. Unfortunately, this means the government has had to make a bunch of rules to try and stop the spread of Covid, and to keep us as safe as possible – and it’s using the “one size fits all rule”.

Is there anything wrong with that, when you’re talking about a public health emergency? I don’t think so. Here in this far-flung outpost of regional Victoria, we are expected to observe the mask rule, despite having had zero cases of Covid since the pandemic began. Fair enough. Making exceptions for every self-interested group is fiddly – and also leaves the government open to charges of unfairness.

Think about this: one rule for all means people don't (or shouldn't, at least!) moan about being left out or singled out. Yay, we’re all equal! Rich, poor, young, old blah blah blah blah. Isn’t that a good thing?

I'm having a lovely time, as I weed the garden, thinking about "what-ifs"... What if the government had said that everyone over (insert arbitrary age here) must wear a mask and everyone under that age had to take their chances? What if only those in "essential occupations" were allowed to wear masks? (Remember the early shortage of PPE, when the general public was advised that health care workers needed the masks more than we did? Bit of ill-feeling erupted over that.) What if only the employed were issued masks? What if only casual workers were allowed them, because they couldn't afford to take time off work? I'm still thinking of the loophole-seeking by some of those so-called journalists at Dan Andrews press conferences. (Everybody's special. Everybody has a compelling reason to argue and be non-compliant. Oh. please!)

If people were denied masks, I suspect they would suddenly all insist on having them! Perhaps a bit of reverse psychology could’ve been employed, tee hee - humans are such contrarians. We want what we can't have. We want what other people have (in fact, we want MORE – and we’re prepared to fight people in the toilet paper aisle to ensure we get it!) When we're told we must all have masks, we don't want them because we won't be told what to do. Our first response to so many problems in society is "The government should ___" but on this very important matter of public health and the common good, we want to ignore the government and make our own rules, because theirs make us uncomfortable. Boo hoo. (Personally, I’d rather wear a mask than a ventilator, but anyway…)

As we in this part of the world talk about opening up, easing restrictions and so on, those in other countries are starting to mask up, lock down – and far too many are dying.

Humans. Endlessly fascinating and so so frustrating, don't you reckon?