“Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored!” – Aldous Huxley

I’m not a doctor, and neither are you, if you don’t believe wearing a mask will help against COVID 19. That being said, I get that people don’t want to wear masks. Nobody wants to wear these things. They are annoying. I can’t wait for the day that I don’t have to mask up, glove up and sanitize every single thing I’ve come in contact with at the grocery store. The amount of OCD diagnoses that are going to come out of all this will be interesting to see.

I would love to go to the bar again, to watch football with my friends, or basketball or baseball. Heck, right now I would happily watch golf with my friends if it were safe. (We all know watching golf is not safe, it’s a gateway drug. First, you’re dabbling in the PGA tour and then before you know it you’re mainlining CSPAN and then it’s over.) I want to go back to normal, as we all do, but now is not that time. We will get there, or at least to some form of normalcy if we take the proper precautions.

Wishing this away or calling it a hoax is not only dangerous, it’s extremely disrespectful to the men and women who are working day and night to save our lives while the dead pile up all around them. Right now, Death is filling his coffers, getting rich off our ignorance, and the abominable failure of our president.

We Americans take great pride in our founding fathers’ words, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and rightfully so, but as it turns out, you need to be alive to have liberty and to pursue your happiness. Flouting the guidelines by the medical experts isn’t just irresponsible, it’s laziness. The anti-mask crowd likes to squawk about their rights and free speech, but this isn’t about that. They’re lazy. They don’t want to have to change a single thing in their lives. Imagine what that mindset would have been like during WWII. What if the great women of this country then had said, “Nah, I don’t want to build airplanes for the war effort. It’s my right to stay home and watch TV.”

The world would likely be vastly different if that had happened. It is going to be different this time, because people who are too lazy to put a mask on or observe the kindergarten level guidelines to help stop the spread of infection are killing others.

If you think wearing a mask infringes on your freedom, try thinking of the people your decision will affect. Chances are you or someone you know has diabetes, a heart condition, or some other medical condition that thanks to advances in medicine has become relatively livable. People can live with these conditions because of doctors and scientists.

Doctors, scientists, and nurses are the heroes now. All the rest of us have to do is get out of the way.

Think about all the years of school that someone who gets a medical degree has to go through. If you want to be fully licensed as a medical practitioner you have to go through 10-14 years of schooling. You have four years as an undergraduate, then four years in medical school and then three to seven in a residency program. That’s 10-14 years of your life spent in the toughest of schooling programs and all so you can get out and help others.

How about we help them now? We can by doing the following:

1. Wear a mask. (If you get a black one you can look like a bandit and wouldn’t that be fun?)
2. Observe social distancing, (It’s a great excuse to not hang out with people if you don’t want to. “Sorry man can’t come over, COVID.”)
3. Wash your hands and sanitize frequently touched surfaces. (No not that frequently touched surface!)

These things are not difficult. Asking you to wear a mask is not asking you to storm a beach under machine gun fire. Social distancing is not being deployed in hostile territory. It’s not that hard.

I think of all the times I’ve ever heard someone talk about how veterans fought and died for our freedoms in America, and they did, well now it’s our turn. We can honor them by taking up this chance to fight for our own freedoms, and by that I mean, the freedom to be alive.

Wear a mask. For those who still don’t want to, I’m sure there’s a refrigerated trailer with a spot waiting for you…or your mom, or your dad, or your grandparents, maybe an uncle, or an aunt, or a cousin, a neighbor, or a friend.