From Facebook 1 year ago

John Coffey shared a memory.

From David Khong:
It's been difficult to come up with the words to help me rationalize how we're in the situation we're in without it just being pure anger. How is it we are so callous and selfish that wearing a mask is something that is political?

I've thought of arguments of how we wear seat belts to mitigate risks of injury. The chances of accidents are thankfully low but yet we buckle up. We place our kids in car seats to do the same. We are leveraging things we can do to decrease risk. It's even a law, yet we didn't make it a political statement that we must wear seat belts.

I tried to think of how we can listen and take advice from medical professionals to remain healthy, to cure ailments, but somehow we draw a line at masks.

I tried to think to myself how to counter the comments that this mainly impacts the older population. Yet, Benjamin Franklin was 70 when he signed the Declaration to help found this country, or Gandhi was 60 when he made his Salt March in pursuit of India's independence. What makes an older person more expendable than a younger person.

The last argument I tried to make is maybe if we use numbers, over 400 Utah deaths, 200k US deaths, would possibly be enough to make an argument that we should be able to bare a minor inconvenience and wear a mask. None of that has mattered it seems.

In the end, the only number that actually matters is 1. All it takes that one person close to you. Imagine one of those 400, one of those 200k, is one person close to you. My wife, several of my family members, their friends, their colleagues are all medical professionals trying to do their jobs to help those that seek medical help. People not wearing masks endangers their health. It is this anger that I can't fully work through. Risking the health of my wife now also endangers my daughters, and this brings me beyond boiling. When people say stay home if you're afraid, what if all health professionals stay home because they are afraid for their health and the health of their families. You can try to justify all you want with the numbers, that it's less than however much the fatality rate can be to give you warm fuzzies. I can guarantee you, each one of those 400, those 200k, had someone that knew how important that one person was to them, regardless of the 'low' percentage of risk.