Wearing a mask could save a life

Published 12:45 pm Friday, July 17, 2020

Carter County Mayor Rusty Barnett last week issued a face mask mandate, effective this past Friday. Mask mandates are in effect in neighboring Washington and Sullivan counties, and if you go to Wal-Mart, come Monday you must wear a mask.

Ever since the Carter County Car Club car season opened, the downtown area has been packed on Saturday evenings with car enthusiasts and people looking for a good time. Few wear face masks and social distance. When you’re having a good time, who thinks of getting gravely ill or dying. It’s a popular event and it’s good for our community. But, sometimes we just don’t think.

In 2019, no one would fault them for having a good time and for getting together. In 2020, they could be spreading a deadly disease.

Across the country, Tennessee included, cases of COVID-19 are on the rise. In early March, when this pandemic took a life of its own in Tennessee, Carter County for weeks reported only two, three, five cases. As of Thursday, there were 69 active COVID-19 cases in Carter County. Among those cases are 23 employees at Sycamore Shoals Hospital in addition to six patients. The number of COVID-19 cases in the county has more than doubled in two weeks, and the number of new cases is steadily rising.

Thus far, only two coronavirus deaths have been reported in the county.

Some are not taking the virus seriously. Some say it is a hoax. Nevertheless, we need to take precautions to keep the virus from spreading, even it it means wearing a mask, social distancing, and staying home. Like protection greatly reducing a woman’s chance of pregnancy, a mask greatly reduces one’s chances of getting the virus, but even more so of spreading it.

Individuals should take the responsibility to protect themselves from the virus and from potentially spreading it to others by wearing a mask. It has become clear that more businesses — especially those where more than a couple of customers would be in a store at the same time — should require a mask.

There is so much unknown about how the virus acts. Many epidemiologists thought warmer weather would bring about a decline in cases and lull until late fall. But so far that has not proven to be the case, and positive tests are on the rise. Young people who were once thought to be more immune to the virus are testing positive in growing numbers.

But masks? They’re not infallible, but we know they work and can save lives. To those who refuse to wear a mask — and it not a political issue — it is not only being reckless with their own health, but being selfish. The mask is far less protective of them than it is the rest of us who must pass them in a grocery store aisle, the sidewalk, or in the post office.

In some ways, it is hard to blame them, when state and federal lawmakers have been and are still pushing full steam ahead to open schools and colleges in the fall, despite a predicted resurgence of cases nationwide.

After all, our president refuses to wear a mask, and makes fun of social distancing. He doesn’t even want to hear about the virus anymore.

Our country has already logged more than 3.54 million cases and 138,000 deaths. The virus is surging big time in places like Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, California and other places. Florida has become the new epicenter of the virus. It is worse now than it was in March and April.

As commercials produced by the American Lung Association used to remind us, “It’s a matter of life and breath.” Wear a mask!