As of July 18, there have been over 3,811,918 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and over 142,585 American deaths so far, the most in the world. In two months, March and April, the 22 million jobs created over the previous ten years were wiped out. Over the past 17 consecutive months, each month over 1 million people have filed for first-time unemployment benefits, resulting in 17,750,000 unemployed people in June. These statistics are all related and they are all devastating. And much of this misery could have been prevented.
The economic collapse is directly related to the impact of coronavirus. If aggressive steps had been taken early to control the coronavirus, these statistics would have been much smaller. One of the easiest measures to protect our health and our economy is to wear a face mask, which protects both the wearer and those around them.
On July 14, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control, said to the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association: “If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really do think over the next 4-6-8 weeks, I really think we can bring this under control.”
Other countries which enforced wearing masks have had very low death rates from coronavirus. They are opening up their economies successfully, including their schools, because they took early, aggressive action and their citizens cooperated.
Here in the U.S., we have a faction of people who are determined not to wear masks, insisting the whole thing is a hoax or whatever. They see wearing a mask as some kind of anti-Trump political statement. Their actions are endangering all of us and slowing down our economic recovery.
I recently read a comment that said, “Healthy people don’t need to wear masks.” The catch is, a person can be asymptomatic, feel just fine, and infect dozens of people before they themselves know they are sick. They may survive the illness just fine, but in the meantime, they could have infected others who will become very sick and maybe even die.
On the flip side, wearing a mask can protect dozens of people from becoming infected. In late May, a hair stylist in Springfield, Missouri, was diagnosed with COVID-19. While working, she had exposed 84 customers. A second stylist, also diagnosed positive, had worked with 56 clients. Everyone was terrified that these 140 customers would turn up sick with the virus. But because of regulations, both stylists had worn face masks. And every customer tested came back negative. The face masks had potentially saved dozens of lives.
My son Nathan Strong had an up-close-and-personal episode regarding masks and coronavirus. He was with friends when a young woman whom I’ll call Mary came to visit. Mary is a responsible, educated professional woman. Even though she was visiting family and felt fine, she wore her mask the whole time. A few days later, she became very ill with coronavirus. The people she visited were tested, including Nathan, and all came back negative. Mary’s chronically ill grandmother wasn’t tested, but she never developed the disease. Mary’s mask had protected everyone.
Around the same time, Mary’s fiancé, Bill, visited a friend. Bill didn’t wear a mask because he felt fine. He then became very sick with coronavirus. In the meantime, Bill had infected his friend, who then infected several members of his family, including an uncle receiving chemotherapy. Bill had felt healthy, but he had inadvertently endangered his friends.
Here in Churchill County, we’ve gone from 11 COVID-19 cases on June 30, to 34 cases on July 18, with one death. A friend recently heard a young woman say she thought the cases were going away. They’re not; they’re increasing.
Hospitals around the country are being overwhelmed. Health care workers are on the verge of collapse. And the anti-maskers say it’s nobody’s business if they refuse to wear a mask. They show every day that they Just. Don’t. Care. They don’t care how many people die because of their behavior, they don’t care if children get sick and possibly develop life-long disabilities, they don’t care who gets hurt as long as they get to parade around flaunting their “freedom” to endanger the rest of us. They would rather be “Trump-politically-correct” than protect the lives of those around them.
Karen Keith, a Tulsa, Okla., County Commissioner summed it up perfectly: “Good Lord, people, you have to wear a seatbelt. You have to have a driver’s license. You can’t drive while you’re drunk. There are all sorts of rules and regulations that you have to follow every single day. This is not some infringement on anybody’s rights.”
When you see someone without a mask, you can tell how much they believe in the Golden Rule. They don’t. And everyone is suffering because of that.
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