To Mask, or not to Mask, that is the Question

Ol' Hobbs's Sunday Sermon

Since the Coronavirus emerged in the U.S. in January of 2020, around 32.9 million Americans have been infected, while approximately 585,000 American souls have died from the dreaded disease. Sadly, this death toll is greater than the number of American military members killed during four years of fighting during World War II!

While nearly 56% of eligible Americans are now fully vaccinated from the disease, scientists report that those so inoculated still stand the risk of catching the original strain of Covid-19—and mutant strains that have shown some resistance to vaccines. This last point was proved this past Friday when HBO comedian/pundit Bill Maher canceled his shows for the next two weeks after revealing that he had contracted the virus despite being fully vaccinated. 

Despite these grim statistics and the potential for a new wave emerging, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) last week reversed field and declared it safe for vaccinated people to go maskless. This new CDC edict was met with cheers from many Americans, while it was also met with caution from those who now ponder "to mask, or not to mask?" With a nod to the Bard William Shakespeare, indeed, that is the question and my personal answer is, "yes;" I will mask up despite having completed two courses of the Moderna vaccine weeks ago!

Real Patriots wear masks!

I will continue to mask up because I have lost friends and kin to this dreaded disease—friends and kin who were buried or cremated with no funeral services to commemorate their lives. Friends and kin, mind you, whose families will never be the same because of a phantom menace that means less to some politicians than the pursuit of money.

You see, with trillions of dollars in stimulus and PPP loans having been dished out since March of 2020, there is a prevailing sense among the political class and their business lobby benefactors that it is time for folks to do more than just shop online, but to get out and sit their behinds in restaurants, theaters, theme parks, planes, trains, and automobiles. 

As a small businessman for the past 20 plus years, trust when I say that I get the need to invigorate the economy—I do. Such is why even as the Tallahassee Democrat listed local businesses that received millions in PPP Loans, including several helmed by staunch conservatives that I know who besmirch "welfare" or denounce "socialism" (all the while being first in line to get some of that socialistic corporate welfare via the loans), I understood (and still understand) the need to prime the economic pump to free the flow of commerce. I also understand, though, that the flow of commerce will work with safety precautions like virtual staff meetings instead of in-person talk-a-thons, face time with physicians instead of sitting in offices for hours waiting to be checked out, and Zoom court hearings where cases and controversies are resolved without germs being exchanged. Some of these workplace tweaks are long overdue and quite seriously should remain in one form or another even after the Coronavirus Pandemic abates. 

But I also understand the fact that if victory regarding Covid-19 is declared too early, and if a simple accommodation like wearing a mask is fully discarded by the majority in our country, that a new and far deadlier wave of the disease could have our nation struggling like India, another industrial power that is being crippled by an even deadlier second wave that threatens its immediate future.

The simple truth of the matter is that while the CDC is a critically important Agency, each of us is endowed with the liberty to exercise our common sense to decide whether to mask up—or not—regardless of its recommendations. Indeed, the very concept of "liberty," one that this nation's Founders claimed was ordained by God, has always been a dialectical mendacity of sorts in that the foundation of America's economy was built upon the enslaved labor of millions of Blacks dragged from Africa in chains, and millions of other poor whites and Asians who worked in various industries to build a powerful economic engine with no equitable stake in the profits. The indifference that the American political and robber baron classes have held towards the health and welfare of the average worker is in the country's very DNA, thus the need for serious dialogue about whether the CDC's new pronouncement on mask wearing is fueled by scientific fact, or the economic fact that the summer travel season—and spending season—are upon us? My gut instinct believes it to be the latter, thus my insistence that we make wise decisions about personal safety in the days ahead!

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