“Sir, can you put a mask on please.” And then the swearing and threatening began. Just because a 16-year old employee at Holland Ace Hardware asked you politely to put on a mask. For just doing their job? You are about four times older and should be four times more mature than the people you’re harassing, but you still feel the need to reveal your selfishness and threaten kids in public because they ask you to wear a mask. 

   My coworkers and I are not alone.

You, the parents at a school board meeting in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Laughing at a high school student asking people to wear a mask after he had to experience his Grandma’s battle and eventual death to Covid-19. Do you not have any feelings or maturity to put your political differences away for five minutes and not laugh at a grieving child?

   Are you that heartless?

Do you really feel the need to harass someone in public for trying to protect others? Is this what they teach you in church?

   From an outside view, it is just crazy how people can react so excessively over something that to most is something easy and harmless. But you anti-maskers always try to make wearing a mask political and label these childish acts as patriotic.

You tell me, is it patriotic to threaten a 16-year old employee? 

   Is it patriotic to cause even more people to die because you can not cover your face for a couple of minutes?

All the loss and devastation these past 2 years, the 650,000 families with a grandparent, parent, child missing from their home, and you are specifically angry and stubborn about one thing- masks. 

   Not the death or the economy, but having to wear a covering as thin as paper over your mouth and nose when you go out in public. 

This ignorance has become a problem in the country as the Delta Variant has torn through the U.S. We are now seeing an increase in average weekly positive cases of around 14,000 in late June, to more than 135,000 just last week, according to the CDC.

   Others who do understand that the pandemic is not over are frustrated that you people can’t respect others’ safety and health. How would you feel if you were trying to protect your family and someone tried to stop you? 

   Has your life been that easy and given to you that putting a piece of cloth over your face causes you to scream and harm others?

You plead that masks do nothing to stop the spread of Covid-19 and instead make the pandemic worse by “depriving the brain of oxygen.”

   Do you really believe that wearing a mask in a store for twenty to thirty minutes is going to damage your brain?

But then you bring your children into these agendas, referencing that they wear masks for a long time in school

   Why aren’t students outraged about wearing masks then?

How many times have you seen a student threaten someone in school because they have to wear a mask?

   What about the surgeons who have been wearing masks for multiple hours a day for years? Since the 1920s surgical masks have been worn in medical settings, so shouldn’t we be seeing the “terrible damage” affecting them? 

All the excuses need to stop and you need to look around you. What are the majority of people doing? What does the majority of the information about getting through the pandemic tell you? 

   For our community and country, you need to put your political agendas aside and do what is right: wearing masks.

How many more years do you want these restrictions and circumstances to last?