It's a mask. It's not like you're being taken away in shackles and sold to someone.
Covid-19 cases have skyrocketed in Marquette County the past few days. I personally know three people who have tested positive, and and I'm aware of almost half a dozen others through friends. An outbreak hit the guard staff at Marquette Branch Prison so bad that they had to move a bunch of inmates to Newberry, because there's no one left here to watch over them.
Over the weekend, one out of every seven new cases reported in the entire state of Michigan came from Marquette County. THAT'S how bad it is at the moment.
And yet there are still people complaining about having to wear a mask, saying that it's “infringing upon their rights” to have to wear something that science proves slows down the transmission of the disease. For those of you not in Michigan, the reason it's so bad here right now is because we're physically attached to Wisconsin, a state whose Governor has tried to enforce mask use but has been shot down every single time by lawsuits filed by members of the opposing political party. Because of that, Wisconsin is the American epicenter of the pandemic, with record numbers of cases on a daily basis and hospitals strained beyond capacity. And since we're physically attached to the parts of Wisconsin where it's the worst, the virus is spreading across the entire UP like wildfire. At first, it was just along the border counties; now, it's hit us here.
Thanks, Wisconsin. What did we ever do to you?
Most epidemiologists say that if 90% of Americans wore a mask for a month that Covid could be wiped out, or at least brought down to a level where it could be easily handled. That's not every American wearing a mask; that's just 90% of us. And yet mask use has been so politicized that there's the 60-40 split that seems to (pardon the pun) infect everything in American life these days. 60% of us are for something, and 40% are reflexively against it, even if it could save their lives.
I don't know what has happened to this country in the past few years. I'm even more terrified that there might not be a way to fix it.
I wrote in here a few weeks ago about how being part-Vulcan is sometimes a help and sometimes a hindrance. Right now it's the latter. After all, by doing one small thing a lot of people could be spared infection. Therefore, it's logical that Americans would want to do that one thing. I mean, if you could do a tiny action to help others, why wouldn't you? It's the Vulcan—and the human—thing to do. Yet there are people who refuse to do it, just because they don't want to. They don't care how their actions affect other people; they don't care how many others might get put at risk. Either because they were told not to or they just don't care about others, they refuse to take the one small step that could help everyone out.
Where's the logic in that?
The Michigan Department of Health & Human Services publishes the previous day's case numbers every afternoon at 3, and it's getting to the point that I'm almost afraid to look and see what they are. But because it's my job and because I want to see how bad things are getting, I do. I'm just hoping that one day soon a). Wisconsin gets its head out of its rectum and starts taking precautions and 2). people up here will realize that there's something they can do about it, and that that action in no way infringes upon their “rights” or their “freedoms”.
I'm hoping to see that some day soon. I'm just not counting on it.
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