I received two new cloth face masks in the mail a couple of days ago; that gives me 7 cloth face masks, as well as a stash of paper/filter face masks. My lovely wife Valerie Dunne also has about that many cloth face masks, and we expected to buy more.
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| New masks, bought from the University of Wisconsin. |
It’s simple; we believe, and have been presented with more than enough evidence, that the best way to survive this COVID-19 pandemic is to protect ourselves and others the best way scientifically possible, by properly wearing face masks, practicing social distancing and taking other precautions. These are also some of the easiest, most elementary actions one can take to help decrease the spread and transmission of COVID-19.
Buffalo, Erie County and New York State have stricter face mask rules than many states, and it should be no surprise that after the rough start when the coronavirus first hit New York City and the state, we have done a better job than most of the country at following face mask and social distancing rules and have more than flattened the curve of COVID-19. The reality of the national daily cases of coronavirus increasing to records of about 65,000 now, after the scary, deadly higher deaths reported from NYC and NY State, shows that states such as Arizona, Florida, Texas and even California, which did a reportedly good job at first fighting the pandemic, are not taking face masks and social distancing serious during their “reopening.”
Nothing will flat-out stop COVID-19 in its tracks in a short period of time, and no one should be surprised if the daily cases reported continue to ruse through the holiday season. Medical professionals continue to report and fear the continued increase, and they and frontline medical personnel urge people to realize that not only are we in Buffalo and Western New York rushing reopening (with the tacit support, and sometimes urging, of way too many media outlets), but that we are not even done with the first wave of COVID-19.
I don’t mean to sound like a downer, but even though Erie County and New York State are doing better than so much of the country, we can still do better. Sorry, but we need to slow down the reopening; too many people and businesses are not even close to being good or even improved on face mask wearing and social distancing. Just shop at any grocery store or other large store, eat at a restaurant our even go to the Rath Building, where I work, and you’ll see numerous violations as well as other issues. Just because we did well enough to slow down the curve and adhere to rules at the start doesn’t mean that we have won and are through with the coronavirus or precautions. Some people seem to think that we are past the worst and have beaten COVID-19, when we have barely begun to stop the increase of the spread. It sucks that so many people are being affected financially but you need to be alive to operate your business and customers need to be alive to spend their money there.
Val and I will continue to get takeout food from restaurants, but there is absolutely no way at the present that we will eat at a restaurant, indoors or outdoors. We also will not be going to any concert venues, particularly indoor venues. We don’t even feel safe enough to be around people in the settings, and definitely don’t trust most people to practice social distancing, proper face mask wearing or take other precautions. We fear that COVID-19 will come back strong in Buffalo/Erie County, and while we hope we are wrong, talking actions to keep ourselves as safe as we can will continue to be taken.
Call me repetitious, call me scared, call me cautious; as long as you can call me alive and relatively well, I’m fine with a
ll of that.
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