COLUMN: Mask

Well, just look at that lovely photograph.

Go ahead, soak it up in all its glory. That's me, captured unknowingly by our marketing guru Todd Mizener upon my first day back in the office after two months of self-imposed house arrest. Please, bask in its unbridled majesty. The unholy, unkempt hair. The wrinkled attire. The look on my face that says "I'm super happy to be back in the general public." The fact that if you squint, it looks like I'm wearing an oversized turtleneck and a gold chain rappers would be jealous of.

"Shane: Portrait of a Disgruntled Columnist." Autographed copies available upon request.

I'm so torn on this whole grand re-opening. I can tell you one thing, I'm sick to death of staring at the walls of my house. When I moved in, I thought this place was spacious and homey. After two months of barely leaving the place, it's starting to look I belong on "Hoarders." My only contact with the outside world are boxes of junk from Amazon I keep ordering mostly out of boredom. There's a whole wide world out there I enjoy exploring. I just prefer my wide world a touch less toxic, thanks.

These past months have been an unspeakable nightmare for many. I'm friends with business owners, restauranteurs, bar owners, musicians, and actors, and their lives are coming apart. Either the government needs to step up their game and start supporting them or we need to allow these fine folk to make a living.

But I also don't want to do it if we're turning the world into "Survival of the Fittest." There's not ONE medical organization that I'm aware of that's given the ol' thumbs-up to going about our regular lives willy-nilly — at least not without mitigation, caution, and some new habits. You know where I'm going with this.

If we're going to shirk medical advice and re-open the country (and it's probably time,) the very least you can do is take a couple seconds and tie a mask around your virus-spewing faceholes before you venture out. You need to wear a mask. I need to wear a mask. We ALL need to wear a mask. There's not ONE valid reason not to wear a mask when you're out and about.

There ARE a lot of INVALID reasons. I've been watching them run amok on Facebook every day. This week, for one of the first times ever, I deleted people from my friends list. I snoozed and unfollowed others. It was either that or give myself even HIGHER blood pressure. There's a breaking point, and social media broke mine.

From what I can gather, the non-mask-wearers generally fall into two argumentative camps:

Camp One are the people who spout on about their liberties, the Bill of Rights, the government can't me do this or that, blah blah blah. Those people are 100% right. The government can't make you put a mask around your head when you go out in public. They shouldn't have to. It should be common sense and common decency. Our nation also has a long and proud history of not letting you run around killing people. And if you go out without a mask, there's a chance you could do just that. I don't want to get sick, sure — but I REALLY don't want to get OTHER people sick when I could have prevented it.

That brings us to Camp Two: the well-educated among us who have logged onto Facebook and read some article from some random person saying that masks are pointless. Viruses are tiny and you can breathe them right through a cloth mask. Masks are stupid.

Look, I'm no more a medical expert than your crazy uncle on Facebook. But I'm also lazy as all get out, and that means I've had two months to sit and read all these articles. I've also had two months to read actual news in this very publication. And most medical experts in the world are in agreement that masks help. They're not perfect, but nothing about this pandemic is.

Can the virus get through a mask? You bet, unless you have one of those fancy N95 suckers. If you think a mask makes you impervious, you're dead wrong (hopefully not literally.) But masks aren't recommended to stop you from getting coronavirus. It's to stop you from SPREADING coronavirus if you have it and don't realize it. One of the grossest things I've seen in all this was a news report where they used slo-mo and some kind of UV light to show a sneeze. A single sneeze can send your nasty ick droplets cruising some 26 feet away from your schnozz. But if you sneeze and you're wearing a mask, much of that ick gets stopped in its tracks.

It's like if you throw a bucket of water at a screen door. Sure, a lot of water will get through -- but not ALL of it. And maybe, just maybe, a mask is enough to keep your buddy from ingesting 1000 microns of your cooties, which is what they say it takes for COVID to take hold. In Austria, mask-wearing in public IS the law - and they've had a 90% drop in cases since it happened.

Yes, you can walk into a Wal-mart and find tons of maskless people and their clerks aren't all getting sick. But those box stores are HUGE with enough air circulation to dissipate our collective ick a bit. You might just be safer in a Wal-mart with 200 other people than in a small office with five co-workers and stagnant airflow. Did you hear about the call center in California? ONE guy got 26 of his co-workers sick, and he wasn't anywhere near them. The air circulation in their office sucked and the viral load just hung in the air contaminating people. Maybe if had had a mask on, the outcome might have been different. Maybe not. No one knows for sure. But what can it hurt?

When the virus first came out, there were people on your TV telling you not to bother with masks. But here's the thing. At the virus' onset, there was serious concern that everyone would freak out and buy up masks like toilet paper and there wouldn't be enough supply for our nation's healthcare workers, who need them more than we do. Ergo, medical experts were dissuading Joe Q. Public from wearing them so there'd be enough masks for Dr. Joe Q. Public, MD. But thanks to the hard work of many small businesses around the country, masks are now easily attainable.

In fact, hop online. There's some crazy stylish ones out there. Bands and sports teams are putting their logos on masks as we speak. You can get high fashion masks from elegant brands if you're some snooty haute couture type. You can get a mask that says "Prada" on it to impress your friends -- and if you think they're not selling accompanying satin travel mask pouches for the low price of $186.65, you don't know Prada. If you'd rather go the DIY route, there's an infinite number of tutorials out there to show you how to play Maskmaking: The Home Game.

The truth is, we JUST DON'T KNOW the science behind this 100% yet. That's a GOOD thing. We should count our blessings that crazy dangerous viruses don't roll thru town on the regular. We're inexperienced when it comes to pandemics, thank God. But what's the harm in being a little proactive? If there's even a chance that my wearing a mask could stop me from unknowingly passing the virus on to YOU, it's well worth it to me. It's well worth the knowledge of how bad my breath can be sometimes. Its well worth the elf ears I get from those straps tugging at them. It's well worth the horrible photos Todd Mizener might take of you.

I'm no medical expert, but I'm pretty good at being judgey. And when I see you out in public without a mask, I don't think you're a liberty-loving freedom fighter. I don't think you're taking a stand because someone on Facebook told you that the Illuminati is using masks to control us. I don't think you're an amateur medical expert who knows better. No offense, but I just think you're being a jerk.