I would have a hard time wearing a mask even if I wanted to.  I’m pretty significantly claustrophobic, almost exclusively due to being paranoid of suffocating.  I am a naturally shallow breather, and never breathe through my mouth without conscious effort, despite having difficulty taking deep enough breaths otherwise.  I can’t wear a scarf over my face in winter.  I can’t cover my head with a blanket.  I can’t even sleep with my face at all sunk into a pillow.  I had to don a mask for maybe two minutes at the dentist’s office today and I couldn’t have handled any longer.  But, I don’t have asthma, nor any other medical condition that I’m aware of that others would consider a “legitimate” reason for not wearing a mask.  As though wearing a mask is only unreasonable when a medical condition deems it so.

But, as I said, I wouldn’t be able to wear one even if I thought it was pointful.  I don’t.  I have read the details of several masking studies out there, and even when one ignores the many factors that are never taken into consideration (accumulation of virus on inside of mask, thus increasing viral load of the wearer; transfer from mask to hand to other objects to other people… a damp mask would be akin to licking your fIngers…;amount a person has to inhale of virus-infected droplets to become infected themselves…every study that addresses this concludes close proximity for a half hour or more is necessary…) the efficacy of masks In preventing viral spread is not shown to be anything  incredibly significant.  And then, even if it were, by and large, our bodies are made to be able to combat viruses.  In fact, one reason elderly people are having more difficulties with this is because they weren’t exposed to it when they were young when their bodies would have had a better chance of forming a defense (there is actually a specific biological function that this type of virus is combatted by, I just don’t recall the nitty gritty details)…so we are preventing the young and healthy from getting the virus when their (our?) bodies have a good fighting chance, in favor of resting all our eggs in the theoretical, some-day, untested vaccination possibility.

I get it, there are elderly and immunocompromised individuals we want to keep safe.  But the answer can not be to force an entire nation (world?) to “mask-up” every time they want to venture outside their home.  How about letting people choose for themselves?  A person who is concerned about getting sick can stay home and pretty easily mitigate what they come in contact with.  Even with a mask on, one can’t presume a risk-less experience when venturing into crowded spaces anyway, so why not let this thing run its course in less time (since almost no healthcare systems apart from NYC have been overrun at any point during this pandemic).
The “flatten the curve” mantra has been replaced by a notion of eradication.  It’s a dangerous notion, both in the costs it will incur now (which do include some severe health costs, too, by the way) and in what it means for our future when anything other than a virus-free existence warrants extreme prevention measures and justifies unchecked governmental dictates.
That is not a future I want.

I’m writing because I need to have some way to express my frustrations with this world.  I might not post this.  I don’t know.  If you read this, you might be bothered by what I have to say.  I guess, at this point, I don’t care.  But I don’t want to just spew my thoughts here, so I am going to avoid virus talk right now and just write about the race issues that are flooding our nation, the media, and I assume, many homes and thoughts.

First and foremost?  The horrific police brutality that resulted in the senseless murder of George Floyd, and many others over the years, is obviously and sickeningly wrong.  It is mind-boggling to me that such attitudes and actions have any place in our society and world.  Beyond that, though, are other realities that suggest that this behavior is not really a race issue, at least not solely and not even necessarily primarily.  Looking at the statistics for police shootings, there are many more unarmed white men (as well as armed white men) being killed by cops than there are unarmed black men (or armed black men).  And though the argument is that this isn’t significant because a much smaller percentage of the population is black, I’ve never heard anyone decrying the atrocity that well over half of all violent crime in our country is committed by blacks…which means police officers are much more often responding to crimes where the offender is black than those where the offender is white.  Additionally, the majority of police homicide against blacks is actually at the hands of black officers, not white.  What’s more, police officers are more likely to be killed by a black man than a black man is likely to be killed by a police officer.  While not justification for unlawful actions, this does give rationale for why police officers might have a heightened sense of fear when dealing with a black person, and might be prone to racial profiling.  An unfortunate, but truly necessary aspect of human nature is that we form heuristics – shortcuts, or generalizations – to save brain power and allow for quicker thought patterns in our everyday life.  In this case, a generalization might be seen as racist, but might also be based in the reality that an officer who faces a larger percentage of black criminals has to have shortcuts of thought to make what can be split-second decisions.  Obviously, this is not always the case, but my point is simply that it makes sense that the demographic with the highest crime rates might have a higher rate of police shootings.  No, this doesn’t justify outright heinous behavior from police officers, but it does suggest that it is likely that the large majority of police shootings are not the product of racist actions.  And as a side note, despite the much larger number of whites being shot by police, they have rarely (if ever?) made national news, have never fueled riots, and have never erupted in demands that the nation, if not the world, make the injustice a top priority in every individual’s thoughts and political position.

On a broader scale, though, there are a lot of voices raising issues of white privilege, exclaiming that a white person can’t ever understand a black person’s experience, and therefore has no right to any position other than to completely and blindly support whatever a black person says.  Do I believe racism still exists in our country?  Yes, without a doubt.  Do I think that racism is the only form of discrimination that results in fear, closed opportunity, financial hardship, and divided societies? Emphatically, NO.  Human nature, it seems, gravitates to similarities and belittles differences.  Ask  a conservative Christian walking around a liberal college campus how welcomed and embraced they feel by their liberal peers.  Ask the kid in high school wearing dirty second-hand clothes how people respond to him (or her) when they walk down the hall.  Ask the nerdy, socially awkward pre-teen who is getting beaten up and bullied why the school and parents stay silent and let it keep happening.  Ask the person who finally recognizes a cult for what it is why their “friends” won’t talk to them anymore.  Yes, ask the minority, but also the woman, and the elderly man, and the less attractive girl, and yes, even that privileged white man, why they got passed over for a job they were most qualified for.  Ask the introvert why their well-thought out input was overlooked in favor of the zealous input of the extrovert.  Ask the extrovert why they’ve been labeled as too shallow or too shoot-from-the-hip.  Ask the rich white boy about his father’s reaction when he doesn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer.  Ask the kid from the boonies growing up on welfare with an alcoholic father and depressed mother how much opportunity he thinks life holds for him.

We live in a world that’s full of broken relationships, broken ideals, broken dreams.  There are large groups of people that have animosity for other large groups of people (I can’t be the only person who has seen how painfully obvious this has been in our world lately?).  Sometimes it has to do with race, but I think much more often it has nothing to do with race.  So for a person who says “all lives matter” to be the subject of ridicule is absurd.  There ARE deep and troubling issues that many, if not most, people face…issues that are as much deserving of concern and action as the race issue…that will never get even a fraction of the attention that the race issue has.  Issues that hinder and scar and frighten people from all walks of life.  Just because these issues don’t necessarily manifest the same way that race issues manifest doesn’t mean they are any less harmful…or prevalent.

I am fully supportive of efforts to prosecute criminal racist acts.  I would love for people of all races and nationalities to feel comfortable walking in any neighborhood they might find themselves in (incidentally, I have had an experience or two being the only white person in a large group, and racism is definitely not just white to black…there is a cultural and social divide that is perpetuated both ways).   It would also be nice, however, if the narrative taught to every upcoming generation of black children wasn’t one of racism overarching everything, or at least not without the recognition that there are all kinds of discrimination in our world today and focusing on the marginalization that comes from racism without acknowledging that there are other people experiencing similar hardship in life for countless other reasons.  In short, demanding compassion from others who you think can never understand without purposing to extend compassion to others whose situations you don’t understand is hypocritical and narrow-minded.  I know that’s not everyone who is voicing concern over the racism that exists in our world, but it is still happening, and I find the one-sided nature of so many perspectives more harmful than helpful.

That’s all.