Here’s what I’ve learned so far through the pandemic:
- This pandemic has been politicized and has polarized communities.
- Nobody likes to wear masks. Point blank, period.
- Everybody wishes life could go back to the way it was before the pandemic.
But the two most illuminating things this pandemic has shown me are that people are going to do what they want and life is never going to go back to the way it was.
And from what I’ve learned through the pandemic, my argument is tri-fold:
- You should do what makes you feel safe and comfortable based upon comprehensive information and discourse.
- You should allow people to make their own informed decisions and not judge them.
- You should get vaccinated, and if you have not yet been vaccinated, you should continue to wear a mask.
Maybe you’ve been following every single CDC recommendation since March of 2020. Maybe every time you were in public you wore a mask, no matter what. Maybe you’ve done all of your research and you’ve been vaccinated and even boosted.
Or maybe you haven’t seen or heard any compelling reason to wear a mask. Perhaps you find it silly that people are scared of a virus that has been likened to the flu.
Perhaps you just have followed what those in your political party have done, or you might just be trying to do whatever you think is the right thing to do.
But here’s the issue that this pandemic has made strikingly clear; We don’t know how to talk to each other and we don’t know how to compromise. We’re all so concerned with getting our way, that we don’t even consider opposing reasons.
What happened to finding a common ground? Has it been so long since we’ve been on the same page about something that we don’t even remember how to open the same book?
What happened to letting people make their own informed decisions? And what in the hell happened to the idea of “live and let live?”
You might think I’m just copping out and not choosing a side, but you’re wrong.
It’s not even about choosing sides. It’s about choosing what’s right for you and what makes you feel safe, based on information and discourse, not fear or spite.
I’m making my own informed decision. I’m doing what makes me feel comfortable. I’ll be damned if I let someone else tell me what I can and can’t do.
And for those individuals who have chosen to not get vaccinated, you should still wear a mask.
While it’s reasonable to show caution about the vaccine, as I did initially, it is just as reasonable to do your own research.
If you’ve done your own research, you’ll have likely found little reason to be concerned.
If you’ve done your research, then you know that you can still spread the virus and that you’re the population in which the virus mutates and continues to be a danger. So, wear a mask.
At the end of the day, if I want to wear a mask because I feel uncomfortable around unvaccinated people, then I will, and that is okay.
If I want to go to a basketball game without a mask because I feel safe as a vaccinated individual, then I will, and that is okay.
Maybe you just want to keep people safe. Maybe you just want to live your life. Maybe you want to do both.
No matter who you are and why you made the decisions you have, you made them because you wanted to, and hopefully those decisions were informed.
But you don’t get to tell other people what they can or can’t do, and at the end of the day, you must live with the decisions you made.
