I have a
complicated relationship with fear. Before I learned the truth, I used to think
I was brave. In my twenties, I did stand-up comedy. In my 40s, I took up
downhill ski racing. In my 50s I took up Aikido. After 30 good years at it, I
gave up a successful career as a lawyer to go back to school and start over, and
now I write novels for young adults.
Some of these
activities require even more bravery
if you do them with
my personal high-enthusiasm-to-skill ratio.
But it
turns out—sadly—none of that was actually bravery. I have some PTSD from a
complicated childhood that I wrote about
here, and my PTSD manifests through
what’s called a counter-phobic mechanism: I don’t like feeling afraid or
vulnerable, so—paradoxically—I move
toward scary or dangerous things, in
order to not stew in that discomfort:
And I’m drawn to things that
involve a practice of mastering fear, because the feeling—fear,
vulnerability—seems more important for me to vanquish than the risk of physical
injury itself. I’m literally more afraid of being afraid than I am of getting
hurt.
I spent most of my life not knowing
about this stuff, but in therapy I’ve figured out some of it, and I’m working on
some of the rest. In my latest YA novel-in-progress, Just Deal, my teen
protagonist has a traumatic background and the same kind of counter-phobic
mechanism I do, but (like me at his age) doesn’t know it. That makes the book
fun to write, because I have a sense, as he wrestles with his stuff, that in
the process I’m also wrestling with some of mine.
So you’d think I’d have just a
teensy more sympathy for the people who, even in a deadly pandemic, won’t wear
a mask.
(*Sigh*.) No.
The most common way the Covid-19 virus is
transmitted between people is by droplets sprayed when we sneeze, cough or—especially,
because it’s more common—speak. When we speak, we spray 2600 tiny
droplets per second.
Here’s the captured
droplet pattern from the “th” sound when you say, “Stay healthy”
Two studies have now found that
about 40% of the people infected by Covid-19 are asymptomatic, but still
transmit as much virus as those with severe symptoms. Even if you don’t have a
fever or dry cough, you may kill people if you go out without a mask.
There’s a simple solution to our
current pandemic: If almost everyone wears mask in public, the transmission
rate of Covid-19 drops sharply, and each case results in fewer than one new
case. When that happens, the epidemic dies out. It already has in places like New
Zealand and Iceland.
It could also help some of us branch out from novel-writing to freelance stage coach robbery
And the coronavirus dies out without more
extreme—and less-effective—measure that hurt the economy. In Japan, where
there’s a tradition of widespread mask wearing, their incidence of Covid-19 is
less than 1/50th of ours, per population—even though they haven’t shut
Tokyo subways or even closed karaoke bars.
As a whole, the U.S. has done
terribly in this pandemic—with 4.4% of the world’s population, we have 26% of
the Covid-19 cases, and our infection rates are getting worse, unlike other
first world countries.
In U.S. states where masks have
been required, however, Covid-19 cases are down 25%. In states where no masks
are required, Covid-19 cases are up 84%.
In the hard-hit Northeast, where
mask and stay at home measures were introduced—and are being widely followed
now—deaths and new infections are down, as they are in Europe. But the U.S.
South, with the effort to “reopen” early and only limited mask use, cases are
spiking, looking more like Brazil.
The messaging around masks has been
confusing—initially, the CDC didn’t recommend masks for the public because
there weren’t enough masks for critically-needed health care workers. But the
science is clear. Masks prevent transmission. Masks save lives.
There are several reasons, however,
many people in the U.S. still don’t wear masks.
First, at least until you get used
to wearing them, masks are a mild hassle—new, different, and your glasses fog
up. As those of us who write fiction know, change is hard for people—that’s why
such terrible things happen to protagonists: It takes a lot to make us change.
But we’re there—in the U.S. this pandemic has already killed more than we lost
in all of WWI. Wear a mask.
Second, masks remind us there is a
deadly pandemic. That’s scary and emotionally difficult. They remind us about
danger and mortality, and our culture is especially terrible at thinking about
death. But the one thing we should have learned by now from Trump’s White House
is that just pretending the pandemic will go away is the worst, deadliest
response. Plan to wear a mask instead.
Third, there are the folks who
think selfishness and entitlement are virtues enshrined in our Constitution, so
they can’t be required to do something for the public good. (“FreeDUMB!”) Yes,
there’s a First Amendment right to peaceably assemble, but it doesn’t mean you can
stumble into Safeway during a pandemic without a mask, any more than the Second
Amendment allows you to fire rifles into crowded apartments. That’s compounded,
especially among some insecure men, by the need not to appear “weak” by visibly
acknowledging the pandemic. You know it’s bad when even Dick freaking Cheney—in
between shooting lawyers in the face—pauses to put on a cowboy hat and a mask for
his daughter tweet out with the hashtag #realmenwearmasks:
(In fairness, I was always
going to wear a mask around Dick Cheney.
I didn’t want him to
recognize me as a former lawyer and shoot me in the face.)
Finally and unfortunately, mask
wearing has been politicized by many Republicans. Our alleged President has
downplayed the extent of the crisis—and his failure to respond to it—and much
of his party followed that lead. Trump doesn’t wear a mask in public even when
legally required, and he has encouraged his followers not to wear masks, which
he claimed this month were used “to signal disapproval” of him.
Today the Texas GOP announced
they’re going ahead with their 6,000-person state convention next month in
Covid-19 hotspot Houston and will not require masks. Thursday night, Republicans
in the North Carolina GOP legislature revived a statute criminalizing wearing
masks in public, effective August 1.
A crisis like this is a test of
culture, a test the U.S. may fail. We have a less inclusive, and more employer-dependent,
health care system than many other countries, and less of a safety net. Making
that worse, this week the Trump administration filed a brief seeking to
terminate the Affordable Care Act, under which 20 million of us Americans get
their health insurance—including those like me, who no longer have an employer.
And we have a cult of selfish entitlement that makes it harder for us all to follow guidelines to help others.
Wearing masks only works if most of us do it.
Some of the people we love
are—because of pre-existing conditions—puddles of gasoline in this pandemic,
and those of you who don’t wear masks are juggling flaming torches around them.
But people
aren’t persuaded by facts, they’re persuaded by stories, so I’ll tell you one.
There’s an E.R. doc, Tanya, the first member of her family to go to college,
let alone medical school. She has $220,000 of student debt her parents have
personally guaranteed, although without her income, they’ll never be able to
pay it.
If you go without a mask, the guy
you infect will end up in Tanya’s hospital, and if she has to do an emergency intubation
to keep him alive, she will.
And when she dies of Covid-19 three
weeks later, after her parents bury her, they’ll have to pay that $220,000
back.
Because this is America.
Wear a mask, please.
I get that we’re afraid, that we’re
uncomfortable, but we have to do better. For each other. The world needs us to
behave as grownups, regardless of our stuff. The world needs us to behave as
decent humans.
Wear a mask.
Unless you do, I’m afraid a lot of
us won’t make it.
Heroes wear masks.
Be a hero. Wear a mask.
Dean Gloster has an MFA in writing for
children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is a former
stand-up comedian and a former law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court. His debut
YA novel DESSERT FIRST is out from Merit Press/Simon Pulse. School Library
Journal called it “a sweet, sorrowful, and simply divine debut novel that teens
will be sinking their teeth into. This wonderful story…will be a hit with fans
of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars and Jesse Andrews's Me and Earl and the
Dying Girl.” His current novel is about two funny brothers who have to team up
with their friend Claire to save the world. It has all the usual Gloster
novel ingredients: Death, humor, the question of whether it’s possible to save
someone, a love interest to root for, dysfunctional parenting, and a slightly
off-kilter sensibility. Also a mergers and acquisitions lawyer dad who is
missing 74 percent of his soul. You know: stuff happens.
When Dean is not
studying Aikido or downhill ski racing--and, let's face it, there's not as much of that going on right now--he’s on Twitter: @deangloster
