Today California “re-opened” officially.
If you are vaccinated you can enter stores without a mask. I did so this morning, and it felt wonderful.
To wear a facemask for some twenty minutes while at the grocery store is not the end of the world, and in the larger scheme of things it is a minor inconvenience. But how nice it was to be in a grocery store without a mask for the first time in fifteen months! To see the faces of other people, and even maybe to get their germs. I will take it all!
So this is what happened this morning: I walked into a Ralph’s grocery store and asked the manager if I had to wear a mask. She said if I was vaccinated it was optional, and I took my mask off right then and there. Almost everyone else in the store was wearing a mask, although I suspect most of them were vaccinated. But there was one other lady without a mask, and we made eye contact while in line to pay for our groceries. “Enough of this mask stupidity. That is over!” We understood each other without words.
I suspect plenty of other fully-vaccinated Californians in stores today are still wearing their facemasks because of inertia — they have worn masks for a year and a half, and so they are cautious in taking it off. They have grown used to masks. My 14-year old daughter was scared to take off her mask because she had internalized the rules about wearing one for so long. But she grew animated and almost ecstatic when I told her the time for masks was past if you were fully-vaccinated, as she will be in one more week. Others are scared to have others look at them without a mask and judge them for being “insensitive” to the health challenges of others. It does not matter if vaccinated persons do not shed dangerous amounts of SARS-CoV-2 virus or pose any serious risk in spreading disease — people are scared, and they don’t want to be publicly shamed. Better to keep the mask on. For now at least.
I don’t care about that. I took my mask off immediately when I could. It won’t be back on, if I have any say in it.
At Easter Mass on April 20, 2021 I asked my nephew why we were wearing masks at an outdoor service in the parking lot of St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Irvine, California. I had had my second Pfizer shot several weeks before that date already and was fully-vaccinated. My nephew responded that we were protecting others from getting COVID which we might spread. But I told him the best science we knew at the time strongly suggests that vaccinated persons don’t spread the disease.
“Why am I wearing this mask right now? What then is the purpose?”
“To be respectful of the feelings of others and to show respect,” he finally claimed.
Ah.
That was more like it. The wearing of facemasks at the end of the pandemic was a sort of theater to reassure the fearful and to keep the societal expectations clear for those who were still unvaccinated: wear a mask. California had some of the strictest disease restrictions in the country. For fully-vaccinated individuals the mandatory wearing of a facemask in public was a sort of kabuki performance meant to comfort the frightened.
I wore a mask for two long months at work as a high school teacher after that, trying to lecture to my students without at the same time chewing on my facemask. It was a nightmare. Was it necessary?
Once I actually took off my facemask in front of my students and asked them why I was wearing a mask in class if I was already long since fully-vaccinated. Why was I still participating in this mask charade? Students were shocked that I took off my mask in class. We discussed the science. We acknowledged that the science showed that the vaccinated did not spread COVID, so why then?
“To set a good example for us?” one of the students answered speculatively.
I would wear a facemask indoors, if I were unvaccinated, to help stop the spread of disease. But after I was vaccinated? There is no value in a fully-vaccinated person wearing a mask in a “virtue-signaling” attempt at being a “good example.” There was no scientific point. It was a pantomime. It has nothing to do with being a role model. It was a performative act.
I asked some of my fellow teachers why we fully-vaccinated teachers were still wearing masks in our classrooms. I received numerous responses running something like this:
“Because of the virus variants out there.”
“Because we don’t know everything yet about the virus and vaccines, and how COVID is transmitted.”
What they were essentially saying is it is better to be safe than sorry. But even months ago we pretty much knew that the fully-vaccinated posed no substantial risk of spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Fear — and its kissing cousin — hysteria, were at it again. Irrational fear.
A few weeks later on May 13, 2021 the CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and President Joe Biden acknowledged what most of us already knew — that the vaccinated could take off their masks — it was safe. This was partly, at long last, an acknowledgement of the science which said that COVID was not spread by the fully-vaccinated, and partly it was an attempt to induce the unvaccinated to get their shots and so live a life unencumbered by social distancing and masking restrictions. That was smart.
Then the government gave everyone a few weeks to get used to the idea of being in public again without a mask before the restrictions ended. This was also a smart move. The most dysregulated among us would have time to process emotionally a return to maskless life. I was more than ready.
But I would have to wait several more weeks until California officially “re-opened” and eased COVID restrictions on June 15, 2021. I waited patiently, more or less. I would wear a mask in stores, even as I knew it was pointless. By this point it was all political theater, a stupid charade, for the fearful. It would only be a few more weeks. I could give my fellow Californians who were anxious that much.
Well, today is June 15th.
No more masks.
The neurotic can stare at me in stores as long as they want. “He’s not wearing a mask!” they might think.
No, I’m not.
And neither is the lady behind me and that guy over there.
Pretty soon most everyone will adjust and life will continue. Others can choose to wear a mask as much as they want. It’s a free country, or at least usually it is. But you can’t make everyone else wear one. One cynical student told me he thought the fully-vaccinated were being forced to wear masks because “it was a question of control. They want us to know who is in control.”
But I better not be made to wear a mask when I start teaching again next August!
Have you ever tried lecturing to an audience each day for hours while wearing a facemask?
Enough!
Time to get back to learning and teaching at a deep level. No more pantomime “distance learning.” Enough of the kabuki show which has been education since the pandemic started. No more excuses. No more pretending to try by students. No more filtered “online teaching” over the Internet by teachers. I was basically a part-time teacher for a year and a half because of COVID, whether I liked it or not. I want to teach full-time again.
So let’s roll up our sleeves and get back to work. Let’s return to teaching and learning for real. Any education worth the name requires payment in blood, sweat, and tears; there is no other way, there are no short-cuts. It is hard to have any of that intense classroom connection take place with “social distancing.” The damage done to young people and their education in the name of disease mitigation has been severe. Let’s try and remediate some of that damage. It is hard to believe we have allowed a single respiratory virus to bring the long-term development our of youth to a halt over a period of months and even years. Enough already!
Time for all of us to congregate back into normal classrooms for hours everyday. Maybe even time for us to pass the usual colds and coughs to each other like normal at school. I have taught for 27-years and know how it should go. I am eager to get started! Let’s sharply reduce the time spent staring into screens alone and in its place vastly increase face-to-face interaction with others.
Down with “social distancing” (and everything it entails)!
Bring back normal society and human interaction. This virus is not going away. Grow up, be an adult, and move on. In a post-vaccine America, we have bigger problems than COVID.
Today, June 15th, 2021 is our day of independence from COVID restrictions — in California, at least, although other states have gone there already.
And if, for whatever reason, you choose not to get vaccinated, feel free to stay home and/or wear a mask when outside, even when the COVID numbers in the community are miniscule. I’m sure we will see some wearing masks indefinitely.
But don’t insist that everyone else do the same.
You control-freak, mofos.
