How to Win over an Anti-Masker

by Madeleine Kando

Why are some people so resistant to wearing face masks, even though there is ample scientific evidence that they prevent the Covid19 virus from spreading? It’s easy to say: ‘Well, they are misinformed. They are just plain stupid. They are selfish and not thinking of others.’ But covering your face to protect yourself from an enemy that you cannot see, smell, hear or feel is like trying to punch someone in the dark. Some of us have no problem following the recommendations of the medical experts, but to others, it seems pointless and not worth the inconvenience it creates.

The only ‘proof’ that this faceless, odorless, silent enemy exists at all, is the reported number of infected individuals and the many deaths, but even this horrible truth is not enough for some Americans.

These same Americans gladly don a gas mask when they see toxic fumes emanate from a chemical site. They don’t shout: “If God had wanted me to wear a gas mask, I would have been born with a gas mask.” They have no problem wearing a diving mask when they go deep sea diving in Belize (unless they are suicidal, of course). The welders among them do not invoke their ‘individual rights to choose’, when they are sent on a job, where highly concentrated ultraviolet and infrared rays would cost them their eyesight.

These same anti-maskers wear ski masks to prevent frost bite. Were they to visit Saudi Arabia, (which they never will, since it is Satan’s country) they would wear a Bedouin scarf to protect them from swallowing sand and coming back home the color of a cooked lobster. Their right to choose in those situations is as relevant as asking a starving person if they would rather eat now, or wait till next week.
To anti-maskers, the face mask has become the whipping boy of the Coronavirus, like the princes of yore, who had a whipping boy receive corporal punishment in their stead. They cannot tell the virus to take a hike so they refuse to wear a mask instead.
They argue that masks are useless, cumbersome, inefficient, dangerous, and at times even illegal. It is true that, on rare occasions, masks are some of all of the above. Believe it or not, 18 states and Washington DC have laws against wearing face coverings. These laws date back to the mid-20th century, to stop the violent activities of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members typically wore hoods of white linen to conceal their identities.

Even in Europe, there are strict anti-mask laws, including a ban on Islamic face coverings. In France, where this ban originated, the government has recently made wearing a Covid19 mask mandatory, which creates somewhat of a contradiction.

But of course, none of this intellectual mumbo jumbo matters to someone who believes that masks are the devil’s work and that they can kill you. As one Florida anti-masker so loudly expressed during a council meeting: ‘In the beginning God formed man out of the earth and breathed his breath into him and he gave him a living soul. Where do you derive the authority to regulate human breathing?’ She asks the panelists.

But doesn’t she realize, that according to Dr. Pangloss, in Voltaire's Candide, ‘we live in the best of all possible worlds, where there is no effect without a cause, for all things have been created for some end?’

The good doctor would have patiently explained to her, that even if God breathed his breath into man, he also endowed him with ears, which obviously were formed to have straps wrapped around them.

And what is the use of straps aimlessly dangling from the ears? They are meant to be attached to a face mask, therefore we wear facemasks. Obviously, chins were made to hold the mask when not in use.

Would an anti-masker have a sudden urge to go outdoors without wearing pants, because we live in a free country, there is a perfectly reasonable answer: Legs are visibly designed for pant wearing; accordingly we wear pants.

Some anti-maskers might also constitutionally object to having breaks installed in their car, but again we make them see the error of their ways by pointing out that feet were created to press down on a pedal, therefore we have breaks in our car.

I hope this brief post will help you the next time you meet someone who insists on spitting and sneezing on you because it is their constitutional right. leave comment here