The Mask

I always wear a helmet when I ride a motorcycle. I still have a motorcycle helmet that bears the scars intended for my skull.

I always wear a seatbelt when riding in a motor vehicle. I had a strawberry stripe down my chest for days from a seatbelt that kept me from going through my car windshield after I broadsided a car that ran a stoplight. (in a pre-airbag car) So why don’t I wear a mask?

I should because I’m a prime target for a good covid kill; I have type 2 diabetes and two stents in my seventy-plus year-old heart. Still, I don’t wear a mask.

I really didn’t know why for a long time; I just knew the concept of face coverings didn’t make sense to me. I social distance and sanitize my hands because that does makes sense to me.

I’ve been categorized as selfish, racist, bigoted, you name it for my beliefs. I don’t care. If you would care to hear the other side of the mask argument then read on. The rest of you can just delete or unfriend me or whatever your righteous indignation leads you to do…

Social media rants would suggest my point of view is politically motivated but people on both sides of the political spectrum wear masks. I was actually ready to agree and quit pondering it when I came across a Facebook rant that I’ll paraphrase:

            You wouldn’t want a surgeon to operate on you without a mask, would you? Wear a mask!!!

            Of course not! I thought.

A surgeon enters a sanitized environment with sanitized hands covered with sanitized gloves wearing a mask taken from a sanitary container. Even the air is constantly sanitized in the sequestered environment. Let’s compare that use of a mask to the way the average person complies with the government mandate mask usage.

You don’t have to Google the information I’m about to share, just go to your local Walmart or any business. Observe the people and their mask hygiene habits.

Most all of them will pull a mask out of their back pocket or purse and fumble with it until it is positioned on their face. Where has that mask been and how many times has it been used? Now the germs on the mask incubated in their pocket or purse are transferred to their fingers. The surgeons discard their contaminated gloves and masks as soon as the operation is done. Their masks are then properly disposed of. Not the ones in Walmart.

Let’s go inside the store and observe. Ten percent of the people will have the mask positioned under the nose; some pull it down under their chin. Others hike it up every few minutes.

All are saving the microbes the trouble of traveling in the perilous open space between the socially distanced by providing the germs a ride on the same fingers fondling the mask and the merchandise in the store. The same merchandise I have to touch.

I have one last question, how does a restaurant keep the covid from breaching the area from the waiting room, where everyone has a mask, to the seating area where everyone is mask less? Is there a force field in place?

I would think that the learned scholars that claim to have all the answers and our best interests at heart would at least do some unbiased studies to show that masks work.

Until they do, I will not comply. I want all of you maskers to think of all the nasty germs you are harboring the next time you look down your nose at me.

The answer to the question of the surgeon wearing a mask? If it comes from his back pocket and he’s used it more than once then I’d rather take my chances with a bare-faced surgeon!

I refuse to wear a covid Kotex!

Dan Fulton

3/28/2021