The Many Faces Of COVID19-3
Part 3 of a 7 part series…
3) Isolation, wearing masks and what that does to the human psyche is profound, in my opinion. This is my personal opinion and my personal experience but the concept of mask wearing has definitely dehumanized us and caused a social and communal rift. Is it helpful to help curb the spread of COVID? I believe most assuredly. I’m not sure it is the best answer, however, as I don’t know if the effects of mask wearing might have a longer lasting problem with communal living. I have never read anything about this but I wonder how much we trust each other going forward. If and when we go back to societal norms what will be the long term affects? I don’t know. We could probably look to Asia and get a clue but I haven’t done that so I cannot even speculate. But, I do believe these are the types of questions we ought to be asking. As President Trump keeps saying (and it doesn’t matter if you like him, dislike him, love him or hate him this is a wise saying) ‘the cure cannot be worse than the disease.’ There are a whole bunch of unanswered questions but as is normal for human beings we follow bits and pieces of the science we like best and make massive decisions based upon that even though many very thoughtful people question the status quo thinking.
I laugh when Joe Biden says we will follow the science and the scientific community. The common opinion is that all scientists (who are in the know) agree. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Joe, my question to you is…which science? I often have this question in many areas of life. The common thought is that if the media gloms on to an opinion and says it enough it must be true. The fact of the matter is that this is simply a tactic that has been used for many many decades in our country (and probably more). The understanding is (and this plays out to be true most of the time) that if it is said enough times by enough people it becomes true in the eyes of the people. This is the same reasoning for getting campaign signs out with names on them. There is a certain familiarity with these things and we start believing things that may or may not have any foundation in truth simply because we see the name or issue, or hear about the name or issue over and over again. Anyhow, the issue of masks is a good example of something that is inherently helpful that might not be a good thing overall for us.