PUBLIC HEALTH, YOUR HEALTH, MY HEALTH, ALL AT ONCE

Public health was the topic of a well crafted ad calling for it to be the ‘biggest priority in the future.’

When a slick marketing man hypes his product so well, I’m interested. When health is mentioned, public health, I’m more interested.

The insurance ad linked the virus vaccine today to the extended history and created a reflective moment. Then it went forward the a healthy future. I was hooked.

A healthy future is something to look forward to, to live for, to wallow in anticipation of. Now we know the the way with masks, social distance, and hand washing. Does it need more breakdown for better understanding?

Yes, it does. But who does this sort of thing? Welcome aboard. Starting with the mask:

Dive masks don’t usually leak water at the window, it’s always at the fit with the head, I’ve heard. And it makes sense even if you’ve never strapped on tanks and took a dip in the ocean.

Gas masks leak around the edges too, but not enough, so Army drill sergeants pull masks off trainees in the gas chamber training for educational purposes. I had KP that day.

Face masks today leak at the edges too, where there’s a pucker on the sides that let air in.

Wearing two masks pulls more air through the sides, and more potential virus. So fit it right. I forget where I saw this, but it sounds like a public service announcement.

Social Distance For Public Health

Distance: I find I look ahead and cross the street if I’m on the same side as anyone, then ignore them. I’m doing more ignoring. I took a picture of a poster at the vaccine place yesterday and some nice man on the job stopped to watch.

“Ok, give me your phone and I’ll take your picture,” he said, as if I needed help with a selfie. Maybe he didn’t notice my long arm?

I give him a wave and a smile and walked off.

Wife says, “It wouldn’t hurt to be polite when someone offers to do a favor instead of walking off in a huff.”

She’s right, but I’m letting some stranger paw my phone at a potential spreader event? He ought to know better.

My inner WC Fields went off, “Get away from me kid, you bother me.” He was probably 45.

If public health is the biggest priority in the future, it’s going to be a future with masks and hand washing. How healthy will it be? Take a look around at the problems with mask-doubters. Let’s talk about it.

I’ll go first

There’s an American streak of ‘don’t tell me what to do’ that goes with ‘don’t tread on me’ and ‘I’ll take a crap on the capital rug if I want to’ (from rumors.)

The mask is part of it. I don’t know how or why, but the mask stresses them out.

Instead of talking about who’s got it worse, an asthmatic with obstructive breathing, or Karen at Trader Joe’s, the anti-maskers turn it into a stand on freedom, and it somehow includes guns?

There’s no dot to connect, but they do it.

We’ll share a future of masks and hand washing because that’s who will survive. No one tapped any of the hundreds of thousands of covid dead for their opinion; no one will tap the next to die. What if they did? Would they be up in arms about mask wearing?

Probably, because that’s the human spirit, also the gagging, thrashing, spewing, American spirit. Dylan Thomas fights against the dying of the light, and it still dies, every time.

Why so much resistance?

Are the covid denying anti-maskers doing their stuff because they’re panicking in the face of death? Is this you, too?

For public health to be the biggest priority, it will start with calming people down.

Calm Down. (It always works, right?)

Don’t they know we all feel the same fears and doubts about covid, but we don’t turn them into some weird ritual thing that plugs into God, guns, and “my rights?”

To start, the anti-mask, virus hoax, people need to know we all share the same spirit, the human spirit, if nothing else.

Not 1/2 the spirit, not 2/3, or 1/4 the spirit, not just one drop of the spirit. We all share 100% of the same human spirit. Once that gets through, public health gets better sooner.

Instead of bundling all of the frustrations and anxiety of a rampant disease ridden present, why not work together and move away from the aggressive ignorance, the agnorance, against proven science.

But, you say, the science of mask wearing, hand washing, and social distance isn’t proven enough for you?

If you carry bonafide science credentials and come down on the side of anti-mask and virus hoax, shame on you. You know better.

The biggest move to the future of public health is deciding to be a part of the solution, not the problem. That decision will follow you to the grave.

“Oh, to the grave, blogger? Aren’t you the dramatic one?” you say.

Like Dylan Thomas, who is not a scientist or doctor, says, “Fight against the dying of the light.”

What he doesn’t say is the light dies whether you fight or not, so why not fight for a better future now?

Leave a fighter’s comment.