It’s not quite as fun as the primary school “Kick Me!“ sign, but it works. A conversation just now with a university professor revealed the true purpose of masks: It says “Stay away from me!” to everyone around us.
There are PLENTY of reasons we might prefer not to talk to anyone. Maybe we don’t want to talk about the weather, or the latest sports score, because our team lost. Perhaps we’re not in the mood for token insincere gestures of “Hello! How are you?” that we neglect to answer at our own peril. Maybe everyone gives us a wide berth with the mask and a fake cough, so we can get where we’re going more quickly! Perhaps we just haven’t had our coffee yet. Wear a mask.
There are plenty of reasons we may not want to talk, and would prefer people give us plenty of social distancing. “Just in case” they think we are sick, the masks are multi-purpose! And everyone is at least a little bit sick, right? The Stanford/Yale Study of 350,000 people, tested over an 8-week period, revealed .76% tested positive when un-masked and .68% tested positive when masked. But no one knows that factoid!
The mask stigma definitely helps avoid small talk and speeds up our journey through a crowd, according to my university Professor-Buddy. Try it! It works! It’s an important tool now in our social arsenal.
It’s not quite as fun as the primary school “Kick Me!“ sign, but it works. “Stay away from me!”
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Charles Snyder
Or if your family member is under going chemotherapy and you don’t want to kill her after going to a conference
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Michael H Peters
“The Stanford/Yale Study of 350,000 people, tested over an 8-week period, revealed .76% tested positive when un-masked and .68% tested positive when masked.”
It is very small value to mask, but I agree with you Charles: it is well worth the effort to do ANYTHING we can when there is much at stake. Probably staying away even, since the masks are very ineffective, provably.
Just today I did everything I could to avoid sharing air with a newborn baby and mother, after returning from travel a few days ago. I feel fine, I know the unmasked vs masks are .76% vs. .68% – nearly no value according to Stanford/Yale testing for efficacy regarding Covid, so I do what I can to not share air. I’m totally with you in that regard. Caring for other people should be top of mind.
