Do You Still Wear Your Mask?

Are you someone who wants to travel, or someone who just wants to see their friends again? If so, are you still wearing a mask and following social distancing guidelines? There are many places where COVID cases are reaching high peaks, and people’s health is being greatly affected. Learning more about this issue and educating others about it may as well be the most important thing during a pandemic as large as this one. My general goal is learning more about how to fix the issue of public safety. I want to tell everyone about the importance of wearing masks. If we want to go back to living normally, traveling, meeting up with friends or colleagues, we need to make sure we’re still following social distancing guidelines and continuing to wear our masks.

I aspire to travel places around the world. This matters to me because there are many places I haven’t been. I’ve always seen pictures of places like Akihabara in Tokyo, Japan. It looks like such a nice place to me and it seems so fun to travel to. I share my interest in traveling with new people I meet and my friends, because someday I’ll hopefully be able to travel with them. Traveling isn’t the only thing that I’m so passionate about. Usually people have something they want to do and they’re passionate about it, and for me, at this point I’m just passionate about seeing people again! It has been so long since I have seen anyone from my old school in person, and since I have seen any of my friends. I don’t think that I’m the only one who feels this way about wearing masks, though. I feel like people in other parts of the world feel like this too, because of their area’s situations.

Recently, people have been talking about lifting mask mandates. Personally, I am not a fan of this idea. If people are thinking of lifting COVID-19 restrictions when there are still places where cases are high and staying high, even more of the population will be affected. One of the places that wanted to reopen, even, was Texas. Texas is one of the places where COVID cases are staying high, and only 12% of their population have gotten the vaccine. Almost 2.3 million people were affected, which is crazy. This issue is significant to everyone. Have you seen the charts of how many cases there are in places like South Dakota or Rhode Island? In this article, it shows this map:

Map of how high COVID cases in an area are depending on their color.

If we look close enough to the darker red areas, there is a key that specifies that those are the areas with the most cases of COVID-19. Fortunately, most areas are lighter which means there are less daily cases, but that does not blow past the places that do have many cases. Communities of people can’t grow and continue like this. It’s a health issue, and we need to focus our attention to it. Even though cases have slowed down in many other areas, us as a population, us as a community, should continue to follow social distancing rules.

In the article Guidance for Wearing Masks by the CDC (Center for Disease Control & Prevention), it says that the virus can be spread by even a few respiratory droplets from one person to another. When people gather and talk to each other without a mask, they can spread the virus so easily. The fact that it can spread like that is scary to imagine. When wearing one, it should fit snugly over your nose and your mouth, the input and output for the virus. We should prevent that from happening and cover these areas to stay safe. Everyone above the age of 2 should wear one around people they aren’t usually around to be careful. Within this article, there is another that goes more in depth about the safety of wearing one. In the article, they mention double masking. Double masking is proven to be more effective than single masking. When wearing a single mask, there are still those corners that can allow respiratory droplets in, which isn’t safe. Wearing more than one mask or double knotting your mask can help counter this issue.

During research, I’ve learned so many more issues within the issue. For example, overcrowding in prisons. Surprisingly, I wasn’t even thinking about how the virus impacted prisons because there are so many people there who are put together in small cells for years. I’ve watched TV shows that show prisons and crowds of people in the yards or in their cafeteria, and it makes me wonder how many people could be infected and spreading it to others. Some of these people could be even getting out soon, and if they are infected they will probably be put back into holding, like a hospital, but then hospitals already have many people who have illnesses. I keep wondering how people manage to separate prisoners and get them masks and socially distance them so they don’t spread the virus to new prisoners, or even who is guarding them.

I drew an image of 2 people who are 6 feet apart and wearing masks.

Wearing a mask is not optional, it is your duty! You might have the chore to do the laundry, or take out the trash. This is just like that. Even though it could seem annoying, it is very important for you to spread the word that this virus isn’t over. If we continue to wear our masks, we’ll be able to breathe in the fresh city air again and meet up with people sooner. So, this is a sign that you should go put on that mask!

Here is my annotated bibliography.