On Wearing A Mask
I had to go to Target yesterday to get some supplies and masked up in the car.
I was uncomfortable before I even got through the parking lot to the store entrance….it’s hot here and the air is “thick”. By the time I picked up a few things and got back to the car, I was close to being in respiratory distress. I had to sit and recover in the air conditioning for a bit before I drove home.
Wearing a mask is really hard on me.
It’s not just the discomfort that I find difficult…it’s hard to communicate. I have a hard time understanding what people are saying and they have a hard time understanding me. Attitudes are hard to discern. Without a mask I’m not exactly a ray of sunshine…with one, I appear to be present to collect your soul.
Like I said, wearing a mask is hard on me.
I wear one in public places anyway.
Some would say I do this out of fear. I would say you’re damn right I’m afraid. I’m afraid to catch the virus and even more afraid I might pass it on to someone else. Last time I checked we’re in a pandemic and the numbers here are on the rise.
There are doctors online that say I do not need to wear a mask. There are folks who say that it’s all political. My doctors say I should stay home, but wear one if I go out. The governor says I have to wear one. I’m listening to all these voices, but I’m hearing the voices of my 135,000 dead countrymen and their voices are a bit louder. I think they’re suggesting I go ahead and wear one.
Some of you are angry about the mandate to wear a mask. To be honest, I have a hard time understanding this. I can understand being angry over the economic loss, the loss of life, and the loss of health of those who have survived the virus. I’m not angry, but I mourn. It seems a waste of needed energy to be angry at a virus that doesn’t care about my emotional state or political affiliations. I don’t know about you, but I find energy hard to come by these days…
Some of you want to argue about the particulars of the pandemic and how we have responded to it.
I don’t.
You might be right…I may be wrong. Or vice versa…or maybe we’re both right and wrong.
Again, I don’t have the energy or the desire to fight over this. It won’t heal anybody or fix anything.
So…I’m going to wear a mask when I go out to public places.
I’m going to pray every day for people who have to work all day wearing one and have to deal with angry people and those who have the personality of the Grim Reaper.
I’m going to pray that our politicians act in wisdom and compassion.
I’m going to pray that our medical experts come up with another miracle of modern science.
I’m going to pray for protection for those on the front lines…clerks and nurses and doctors and anybody at risk from public contact.
I’m going to love people who think me a deluded fool and hope that they’re right.
I’m going to put on my mask and follow Jesus.
He’ll take care of my “rights”.
I’d tell you to make your own application, but that would probably start argument about the applications…
i wrar an N95 when i go into our “village” except for a couple clerks, i am the only one masked… Yes, they are difficult to breath through…. Our local hospital is now receiving Covid patients from other hospitals iin towns as far away as 200 miles. Today my nurse daughter is dialysing 2 from one of those hospitals
Oddly i am scheduled for 2 surgeries next Thurs and Fri and the hospital won’t admit me if my covid test next Tues should come back positive. If all is well, I’ll be gone from here for a month or two as i won’t be able to wear my glasses…. Hmmm maybe I’ll listen to those dreaded TV Evangelicals 🙉 or… My mac will “read” the Phoenix Preacher to me
Wear your mask – not too hard to find them… finally
“Without a mask I’m not exactly a ray of sunshine…with one, I appear to be present to collect your soul.”
That made me smile inside my mask.
With all the competing voices, I don’t know who to believe. So I err on the side of caution and, out of respect for others, wear my mask, use hand sanitizer and stay home as much as possible.
Em,
Remind me before you go so we can be praying.
It will be very odd to have you gone for a bit…and not in a good way.
Praying for a swift recovery…
CK,
I’m right there with you…
Vikes mask!
I am seeing a slight or not-so-slight uptick in mask-wearing at some locations thankfully here in Georgia, but my sampling-size is rather small. Really small. Nevertheless some people are taking it seriously. Most people in the Best Buy’s I’ve been to in the last week are wearing masks (Best Buy is one my happy places…), but seems like The Home Depot is opposite. Wife and I will wear them regardless of what some stranger online sez.
Btw….here is how I was dressed today to visit a Best Buy….black jeans, black Under Armour shirt, black socks,…..black mask. Grim reaper? I am 6’1”…maybe a bit imposing but wasn’t sporting a sickle.
Lastly, I am on one of those “neighborhood” blogs that are for residents. Once again, a post was removed because people couldn’t be civil to one another in regards to masks. Geeez.
Dan,
I have a black one too…but I may blow some birthday money on that Vikes mask…
People are mostly compliant here the last few days…mostly…
Timely post. Someone at work just tested positive. We wear masks while on the job. Now I need to decide to get tested or not. I’m supposed to go to a family dinner in a week, i won’t go unless I test out as negative. To big a risk.
Jlo,
Good to see you!
Get tested…for your peace of mind, if nothing else.
We need to decide to send the kids to school in 5 weeks on that hybrid model (sometimes onsite, the rest at home) or 100% remote. I’m leaning remote. S10 wants to stay home, D8 wants to go back. They have no issues wearing masks.
I really don’t get the anger. I see it no different than no shirt, no shoes, no service. Yet in the past decade, there’s been a trend of people bringing non- service dogs into stores, so maybe the NS/NS/NS is lost in the 20th Century.
The increasing lack of respect for authority and institutions is saddening. I would add also, common human decency.
TNV,
We did remote for two years…will finish next year…best move we ever made.
I don’t get the anger either, but I’m getting old and angry takes too much energy…
For those who want a taste of the hard-core computational dynamics and numeral analysis of how coronavirus droplets disperse in the air between people I present this:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021850220300744?via%3Dihub
Michael at 6pm yesterday
I’d really appreciate prayer cover for this Monday and Tuesday as i have to drive myself in to see a new primary care doctor and then back in again Tuesday for my covid test…
Wenatchee is worse than Seattle traffic-wise as the westsiders have begun flocking to this side of the Cascades for some reason and they drive like they’re in a stockcar race… of some kind…. same thing on the river road up here.. . GO HOME 😇
Math geek here…CM I have to admit that I went to that link you posted and scrolled right to the equations!
heck! I still have a life people.
Em,
We’ll have you covered…
I chose to do distance learning for the kids. I told their mother after the fact but I knew she would agree.
Em, we will pray for you.
Michael and TNV, thank you – makes me feel more confident. 🙏
I wear a mask when required to do so. It isn’t worth the hassle not to, I’m not going to lie to avoid it, and to keep my business open we have to wear masks when dealing with the public. Like it or not, approve of it or not, it is the name of the game right now. What makes it easier is the many comments here that underscore the doing-it-for-others angle. I can do it for someone else’s peace of mind.
Dan from GA,
There are plenty from where that comes I can find in the various technical journals and proceedings.
CM,
Before I got into college for Meteorology, I had no idea what kind of math was involved. The met. journals are ripe with stuff I have never seen before.
What is your field of expertise in engineering?
Dan from GA,
My background is in materials science and engineering (have both a BS and an MS in that field). I am guessing quite a bit of computational fluid dynamics and non-linear dynamics is involved in meteorology.
Dan from GA,
As part of my coursework in mechanics of materials, mechanical metallurgy, I did dabble in some finite element analysis (FEA) and continuum mechanics with some high level math (4th orders tensors that sort of thing). Continuum mechanics was brutal, I was glad to be done with it.
Yikes tensors! We were required 1yr single-variable calculus and 1 class on differential equations. HOWEVER, the atmospheric dynamics course that we had to take involved much higher math…partial differential equations for one. Because math nerd here took multi-variable and vector calculus and linear algebra, I was able to understand some material that went over other’s heads. Our atmospheric dynamics course was basically a fluid dynamics course, with air being a fluid, so to speak.
That’s what I figured. I was not a math geek (being the good engineer I saw math as a tool of science ;-)). Ugh Partial Diffy Q’s. Another class I was happy to finish and escape from with some of my sanity intact.
Ever take any heat transfer classes?
Our college had a course on PDE’s but I don’t think it was offered all that often. My college may have had a heat transfer course, or maybe it was covered in some of the core engineering courses. That topic is heavy on PDE’s right?
Dan from GA,
FWIW it is worth it is good to converse with you as you have a technical/STEM background. What is tragic is that so many people of science in the past were Christans, but nowadays you it seems so much of American Christianity is anti-science, anti-intellectual, and anti-scholarship.
Heat Transfer. Some, not as hard-core as other topics. I didn’t have to take it, but I knew some Mechanical and Chemical Engineering students that hated Heat Transfer with a passion.
A hurricane is nothing more than really big heat engine with a Carnot cycle (found this little gem in a quick internet search for the math geek in you):
https://www.math.nyu.edu/caos_teaching/hurricanes/emanuel91.pdf
I majored in civil engineering. Took fluid dynamics, strength of materials, multi variable calc, dif.eq. all of that.
It was a long time ago though.
Everstudy.
I just want to know where I can get those infinite flat plates, elastic-perfectly plastic materials, frictionless pulleys, etc. 😀
CM and Everstudy….
In meteorology, derivation of the equations of motion is justified by the earth’s motion being in relation to a fixed point in space. That is, In relation to a very distant point in space, assumed to be motionless in relation to planet earth. This would essentially simplify the equations and remove one degree of motion.
At my little parish, which I think will be closed for business again for a while as we live in Monterey County which has a high Covid rate, most of us wear masks, more or less. I am not sure I count letting your nose hang out as exactly compliant, but at least their mouths are covered. All except two ornery women who believe masks are the mark of anti-christ or some variation thereof. My problem is that I am so irritated by these two that my joy of being in Church is marred by my mental grumbling. They think they are being super-pious but the fact is, they are going against the wishes of our priest and our bishop.
Speaking of our bishop, Archbishop Kyrill of San Francisco and Western America, recently wrote an open letter to Gov. Newsom that while he’s been encouraging his parishes to follow all the rules, he has noticed that the same rules don’t apply to protesters, causing him to wonder about the governor’s motives. He also noted that in Communist Russia the state used health rules to permanently close down churches.
Personally, I don’t think our governor is trying to stamp out Christianity; I rather think he is trying to save our lives. Imagine a scenario where everything was closed except churches and church people began dying by the hundreds…. People would then say he was crowding Christians together with the intent of killing us. I seriously believe he is trying to look out for the health of us all and is having to make hard decisions.
But allowing the protests/ riots to continue shows there is definitely political motivation involved. All the dems want to be seen on the “right” [actually, wrong] side of the current unrest so they are scared of either BLM/ antifa violence or of their peers calling them racists. We have seen that even if a mayor bows down to the mob, if he or she makes one “mistep” the mob is upon them so they can’t do anything “right” and it’s their own damn fault for going down this dark path in the first place.
It’s hard to know what to believe about most of this. I know some things are bad for sure, I think some things are probably good, and I am in confusion about many things. Over here at our house we are back to curbside groceries again and I guess it will be Internet Church again for a while. One thing I know for sure is that the devil is behind most of this and it’s our own fault here in America for becoming such a degenerate society that we’ve given him an open door to do his worst.
Xenia,
You said a lot of what’s on my mind.
I’ve been saying this for weeks…allowing the continual protests while shutting down churches and businesses was the single most damaging thing done in terms of gaining public acceptance of our situation.
CM,
Good talking with you too about science and engineering! Probably lost a few people along the way…but Michael provides a good forum here!
Dan from GA,
Same here and I agree with you. Considering how many Christians buy into conspiracy theories, who are in many ways ignorant about any STEM topics (whether relativity, virology, or civil engineering) this forum is a bresh of fresh air. Especially when there so many Christian bloggers and pastors who push all the conspiracy nonsense.
Conspiracy? If that means boogyman that is paranoia. But……
How can an intelligent adult and CM and Dan are intelligent, look at the turmoil breaking loose and not ask, “What’s goin on here? Is somebody or power takeover – ala Venezuela – at work to bring down the nation’s infrastructure?
Too bad we aren’t all more like the citizens of Bothell, WA – IMO, of course
Em,
My cousin and his son were diagnosed with Coronavirus over a month ago. They are doing well thank you. Not sure what you are getting at, and I have a hard time believing that the pandemic is a plot/conspiracy. Again, I am not sure that is what you are saying. That would mean that all the nations of the world are in on it, health care workers are in on it, patients (dead and alive) are in on it, and most of all, all this done without one person/nation/agency spilling the beans. The pandemic is not just about the U.S..
One primary reason people succumb to conspiracy theories is because it gives them control over their lives in regards to events that trouble them. It gives them something concrete to blame. I recently read an article about a lady whose husband was dying of cancer, and she started to buy into a conspiracy theory about how he fell ill. She wrote about it after conceding that, indeed, some things happen because, well, that is the world we live in.
To paraphrase Sigmund Freud (who may or may not have coined the origin phrase)…
Sometimes a pandemic is just a pandemic.
Em,
My post above, I need to reiterate, is more of just me getting something off my chest in regards to how some people think that the pandemic is a conspiracy to bring down Trump or our nation. When Coronavirus hits home, you think differently about it and don’t see it as something far off or academic. I’ve always appreciated your comments here, even if we don’t see eye to eye all the time, and I appreciate your candor and honesty. This site is good in that most of the time we are civil to each other, something that isn’t present on most blogs.
Dan,
I give you multiple “well saids”…sometimes stuff happens in a fallen world…
Em,
For starters, conspiracy theories require someone to ignore 3 basic rational tenets:
1) Occam’s Razor (aka Law of Parsimony): “Other things being equal, the simplest solution is most likely the right one.”
Tied into this is a quote by Thomas Aquinas: “It is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many.”
2) Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”‘
3) Correlation does not imply causation
Conspiracy theories fail due to numerous logical fallacies as well, with post hoc ergo propter hoc being one common example.
The South Part episode “Mystery of the Urinal Deuce” (which dealt with 9/11 conspiracies) sheds light into why people believe conspiracies. Here are some pertinent quotes:
BUSH: “For a government to have power, they must appear to have complete control. What better way to make people fear them than to convince them they are capable of the most elaborate plan on earth?”
BUSH: “Boys, you don’t understand. People need to think we are all-powerful. That we control the world. If they know we weren’t in charge of 9/11 then… we appear to control nothing.”
KYLE: “Well why don’t you just tell people the truth?!”
BUSH: “We do that too. And most people believe the truth. But one fourth of the population is retarded. If they wanna believe we control everything with intricate plans, why not let them?”
Em,
This is why if the coronavirus was released from the Wuhan Research Lab, it was most likely an accident, rather than deliberate. It is known that facility has had safety and proper hazmat handling issues in the past. (Hanlon’s Razor)