Wearing A Mask Won’t Kill You, But Not Wearing One Could

Yea I’m gonna rant now because I’ve hit my limit of listening to the great mask debates and as a healthcare provider I’m going to weigh in.

This is why it matters: hospitals are running out of beds. God forbid you or someone you love become ill during the time when hospitals don’t have room for you (COVID related or not). It IS happening and as the St. Louis Task Force said today “the time to act was yesterday.”

The consequences of “letting it just run it’s course” or “letting everyone get it so this can be over ” are greater than just 240,000 people dying because I’ve heard too many times that the number calculated into a percent compared to the total number of cases is low and apparently acceptable which is awful in and of itself.

So spreading COVID when you are asymptomatic and giving it to compromised people who will then die by COVID or potentially have months and months of post COVID syndrome or worse yet no underlying conditions but their bodies respond as if they do is not the only risk you take when you decide masks are an infringement on your freedoms. You won’t have access to healthcare when you need it; think emergency procedures like getting appendicitis and needing surgery now or having a heart attack or stroke and needing treatment right now because time is tissue and emergencies don’t stop just because we are in the midst of a pandemic.

Your healthcare workers are tired- actually we need a new word for tired- and we have so much further to go. Please just give us a break and stop acting like we have to get back to normal life. We should return to normal life when life is back to normal- and being in the middle of a global pandemic while cases are on the rise is NOT normal.

There are worse things than wearing a mask: like burying your child, spouse, or parent or having to drop them off at the ER only to never see them again because visitors are limited because COVID and why should you have to be in that position before you decide that wearing a mask isn’t about the politics but rather basic human compassion and realize that a mask could’ve made the difference between their funeral and their life and isn’t it worth it just to try and slow down this beast and give us a chance.

And if you think it’s all a lie or a hoax or a conspiracy or not that bad then I don’t even know because I’m too exhausted to try and justify why you should care about other people.✌🏼