It has been over a year since the world cracked. We, yourselves, have changed.
The world feels emptier than I remember. You walk into a once teeming store with people laughing and talking, and it is now quiet. Few of the other shoppers make eye contact. Those shoppers are on a mission to get in and out of the store as fast as possible.
While waiting in line to check out your items, standing six feet apart, you can feel the bubbles around people that beg you not to talk to them. People do not hold open doors for others. If you need help or get stuck, you are on your own. If you do help someone, the look of surprise on their face breaks my heart.
What I have noticed in the last month while having to go out in public for various reasons is how tired everyone is. The people working in healthcare centers are tired of hearing how much you hate to wear a mask. They do not like wearing a face mask every day any more than you do. They had to figure out fast how not to fog-up their glasses for eight hours a day.
Healthcare workers, store employees, and public workers have taken the brunt of disgruntled, scared humans. It is a hell of a price to pay to keep your job. To be thankful, you still have a position where you go to work each day knowing someone will walk in and complain about wearing a face mask.
People in the United States of America, and maybe elsewhere in the world, argue that being told to wear a mask for your safety and those around you goes against our constitutional rights. We are free people and should be able to make our own decisions on what is essential.
Yet
When I was an infant in a car, I sat on my mother's lap. Once I became too big to sit on her lap, I was put in the back seat with no seat belt and left to play on my own while we drove.
Long trips driving down South for a golfing vacation, my brother and I played, slept, and fought in the backseat of a car with no seatbelt choking my neck. I survived thirty years of my life driving in a car without a seatbelt, as did many people my age and older.
Yet
When the government passed the mandatory seatbelt law, no one complained. Young and old just started wearing their seatbelts. The government told the United States of America's citizens that it was safer for them to wear a seatbelt, so they did.
We complied with the law because we wanted to save lives.
So I ask you: Why do you put on a seatbelt but do not wear a mask?
These are my thoughts from being out in public for the last month.
Help someone smile today. It can not hurt you.
Snook
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Thank You!
I know Hive users who don't wear seatbelts as a protest. I cannot get them to see reason. Wearing a mask isn't about protecting us, but protecting others whose immune systems aren't as strong.
There are many anti vaxxers here, usually as an extension of the anti government, anti science, anti medicine mindset.
I live in a part of the world (Adelaide, South Australia) where we had a 2 month lockdown, and mask mandates.
We went from 200 cases a day to zero for a long time.
Occasionally there's a flair up to double digits, but nowhere near what is going on in the USA.
I sincerely hope that we get this thing under control.
The numbers have skyrocketed in India.
I SO agree with this!!
I also agree with this. But this virus was designed to kill off those with weak immune systems. This entire thing has been planned for years.
No one should complain about wearinga. seatbelt... yet, growing up in the 80s, I was surrounded by people constantly complaining about having to wear a seatbelt, not wearing one in protest and being pulled over by a cop—no ticket, but being told to wear one—and complaining about that. Maybe that's just an Indiana thing.... I sincerely hope no one there complains about it anymore.
Yet...
I know people in Japan who complain about being required to wear a seatbelt, and many who refuse to do so. Unfortunately the cops here usually just ignore it if the people doing the protesting are over a certain age.
Anyway, I don't see what all the fuss in the states is about masks. In Japan like... everyone wears masks every spring to avoid allergies (they don't really work for this, and doctors in Japan always say as much, but most people are so desperate to avoid allergies that they wear them anyway, just in case). At least a few people wear masks at other times when they are sick in order to protect others, and a fair percentage of people just always wear masks to avoid being recognised when going out. So here wearing masks is pretty normal. This covid mask thing is nothing new.
Yet people in the states seem to be freaking out over it.
Thinking back to how everyone complaining about seatbelts when I was a kid, I think people complaining about masks now is less about them being uncomfortable or inconvenient and more about not liking to be told what to do. A fairly selfish reason, but there we go.
But we do have that here too. Which is funny, because almost no one in Japan had a problem with masks until covid and masks becoming "required" then suddenly anti-maskers started appearing.
Watch as I sadly shake my head. We should all be willing to abide a little discomfort if it is for the common good. I think some people are just jerks. That's all.
This is the key.
Interesting how the world over we are all the same. I wish more people realized this.
I wear a seat belt to protect myself. I've been in 2 major accidents. The first was head-on. The second we T-boned a truck. Both I walked away from unscathed for the most part thanks to my seat belt. Yet I refuse to wear a mask. Why? Easy. The threat of a car crash is real. Corona is a hoax.
I know too many people that have died from it to call it a hoax. Planned yes but not a hoax. As for the mask I wear one when I am in places that say to wear one. Why cause trouble for the workers? Plus I do not want a 90-year-olds death on my conscience. I am lucky in the fact I do not have to go out much and have a nice city backyard.
Oh and I do not wear a seatbelt. If I died from not wearing one it is my fault....
I call the media response the hoax. The virus is real. We developed it. But the mask does nothing. Offers zero protection. The mask is about controlling those they can't kill off. Just like the "vaccine" #Plandemic
If you don't wear a seatbelt, your vehicle will remind you. It will. It dings. And dings. And dings. And dings. Some even talk to you, like those old fancy New Yorkers that said, "Your door is ajar." Never could figure out why they thought it was a jar.
the jar is a reminder it could be your urn......
:D Thanks for making me smile with the gif
Luna been into those movies lately. I guess all my pirate treasure is rubbing off. Love you sis!
They complained like mad in the UK about having to wear them. My dad still complained about 20 years after it.
Then they complained about not being allowed to smoke in pubs and restaurants.
Now there are complaints that rights are being quashed over masks. They seem to gloss over the not dangering others part, Its a bit wearing isn't it?
It IS!
I worked in the ICU last year a couple of months and that was no joke. Not for me it was heavy, but the disease was just very brutal I found.
This year still in my normal job in surgery we see a lot of the consequences from covid like clots which doesnt really make the news but is still an impressive disease which takes a whole lot lives as well but is called a surgical complication.
I dont like to wear a mask as well, even though i have been wearing one in surgery already for 15 years. But still I do, because I see the disease. I do understand for a lot of people who dont see it that it is way too abstract and that they feel like these measures are out of balance.
Solidarity to one and another seems far away sometimes. I stopped arguing with people about the difference in our perspective because reasoning gets so difficult. I am just happy me an my family got our vaccinations and at the moment that seems all we can be accountable for unfortunately
(damn this all sounds negative and I dont mean it that way, hahaha. But you get what I mean!)
this post wasn't to sound negative either but in the end, it kind of does.........
It is just sad to see how the world has changed so much. I do not get out much so this last month was a real eye-opener.
Last Thursday I just got my 2nd shot and am getting over the side effects still..
Anyway, Thank YOU for all you do!!
I know the feeling. My first shot also gave me 3 days of couch time but still.. small investment.
Yeah the world.. i dunno..