I spent the Fourth of July weekend in a rental space with a money mask.
Talk about needing a vacation from my vacation.
After my return, I did everything I could not to write about it. I didn’t need to work hard to get sick. Now, of course, I’ve made the decision to say something and give a voice to an example of why america is so fucked up when it comes to this pandemic.
I’m a 51-year-old white male, registered independent, who tends to have a fairly tempered view on most things. The coronavirus is not one of them. It scares the hell out of me, and it’s ravaging this country physically, economically and psychologically. I wear a mask because it’s the only defense we have right now. I wear it to protect others and myself. I wear it so I can visit my 85-year-old mother, even though she won’t let me in her house. That’s a topic for another article.
I know not everyone agrees with me. A July-related Press-NORC Public Affairs Center research ballot found that 3 out of four Americans the fact that other people deserve to wear a mask in public. But, frankly, I believed that if the efforts were to materialize, in my case, if they shared a space with a total of six other people, we could locate non-unusual land.
These other six people included a married couple from San Francisco and a woman I’ve been dating for a few months (yes, we met in the middle of a pandemic). We live in The Other Two Angels, a lifelong friend and her new boyfriend, arrived from outside the state.
We rented a space in Napa, California. I’m not asking to complain. The Californians would drive. However, a few days before our arrival, it happened to me, in the haze of the pandemic haze, “Wait, those other two are flying in a genuine plane to this shared space without quarantine and with no time to be tested.”
Teacher: I’m a reluctant Trump voter. The coronavirus is the end of my Republican identity.
I texted the married couple because he’s our closest friend. Array “Can you make sure they know we’re afraid?”
She promised she would. She as worried as IArray
I was surprised by the text I won in return. The open-air couple, the state, told her they wouldn’t wear a mask in the house, they said. They’ll use them when they cook food for others and expect us to perceive their position, just as they said they understood ours.
How does that perceive our position? We don’t think we deserve to put other people at risk, do you? I can almost perceive the debate on the mask in the macro point as a policy on freedom and non-public freedom, but at a non-public point with six other people, where 4 other people will wear masks and two will not, what happened to the majority government in our (old?) democracy?
I evacuated. My friend and I take a deep breath. We convinced ourselves once we saw each other face to face, the human logic and decency of masked dresses would prevail.
That’s not the case.
White strike at the weekend
They arrived on an Uber from San Francisco Airport. Almost two hours away, they proudly told us they were not dressed in masks. I asked them about their flight. They had flown American. Fully full, the airline with no social distance. They had gone to two airports that day with a stopover in Dallas.
We also learned that the new boyfriend tried every two weeks because his paintings were considered high risk. It’s been almost two weeks since your last test. Several of his colleagues had tested positive since the beginning of this nightmare. “Oh my God!” I thought, “organizes the wine tasting and I hope the president of Belarus is right.”
In 72 hours, when I followed the recommendation of the Belarusian president to fight the virus with alcohol; they never wore a mask at home, whether they cooked or not. We have heard all kinds of conflicting theories about COVID-19. He himself was an expert in specificity because he had played golf with an 80-year-old doctor who had been hospitalized for the virus and had not yet died.
Report for the United States: When COVID-19 was forced to close, child hunger exploded in West Virginia
The coup de grace took place at Friday’s dinner. We toasted, however, the table did not allow for a smart social distance. The married couple moved to an aspect domain about 3 metres away. When the new boyfriend left the space and saw how we had set up the dining experience, he insulted him and retreated to his room to sleep his wine day, setting the tone for the rest of the weekend.
We, the masked wearers, were intimidated and submissive through those who refused to wear masks. Similarly, the vocal minority of mask caregivers in the United States is winning. They are one of the main reasons why this virus spreads to much of the country. And they don’t feel any legal responsibility for the social contract that unites us like other people and as a country to avoid it.
After two weeks of sweating, I am relieved with my roommates and I am still healthy, however, this is not the case. I went through the first few days of closure because I think the nascent pandemic would bring us closer. Nevertheless, we would have an unusual cause in our divisions and our reluctance to sacrifice ourselves for our neighbor or the greatest good.
Maybe I was more wrong. But at least mask manufacturers have completed something about it: by prolonging and exacerbating the crisis, they have given us all more time to prevent madness and do the right thing.
Paul Ruehl is a writer, manufacturer and entrepreneur in Los Angeles.