A letter to defend the humble face coverings aka masks

Dear world,

I wear a face mask due to COVID19. I wear it when I have to enter buildings and when I feel crowded in open spaces. I’m usually the only one.

I’m 36, reasonably self conscious about my appearance and I suffer from severe claustrophobia, especially when it comes to face coverings. I also have temporarily treatable but unquestionably fatal secondary breast cancer. My treatment for that batters my immune system. Without radical changes to research, clinical trials and political priorities I’ll be dead before I’m 40.

I have a range of facial masks. Many of them are definitely what I’d call precious and cute. The gems in my collection have hedgehogs on and were from Brockworth Hedgehog Rescue. Hedgehogs are beautiful creatures struggling to survive so I like any way that I can help them. I also have boring and plain masks that do nothing for my appearance, apart from emphasising my chubby cheeks and neck. Oh well even terminal cancer doesn’t solve image issues, instead it makes them worse – typical 🙄. I even have some disposable surgical masks for when I visit medical centres. After all its where I feel most at risk so want my highest grade masks 😷

Non medical masks (the types the likes of us are asked to wear) provide minimal protection to their wearer. They don’t harm the wearer. Take it from me you can still whistle, shout, scream, talk and cry. I hear you can puke into them easily enough, but that doing so has gross side effects with the puke going everywhere! But they are there primarily to protect others. They reduce the risk of users being asymptomatic carriers infecting other people against their knowledge or will.

So if homemade face coverings don’t protect me that much, why do I wear them? It’s to protect other people. I’m shielding at home so there is limited risk of me being infected, but I could be. I visit medical centres for cancer care. I could become an accidental killer. It’s literally that simple.

I’ll admit I love some of my face coverings and my husband has a Star Wars mask he loves! They give us another way to express our personalities, so why wouldn’t we wear them?

Although I’m Buddhist there is a Jewish phrase I love:

“Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world”.

What can I say other than I love the idea of saving a world by doing something as easy as wearing a mask. Disaster movies always make it look so much more difficult! If nothing else I have to hope that I inspire others and give them confidence to wear masks. Who knows, maybe just maybe they could be asymptomatic carriers and by wearing a humble mask are prevented from infecting other people like me. I would, after all, like to live long enough to die of breast cancer.

Why wouldn’t you wear a mask (unless you are physically unable to do so?) Do you really want to destroy a life and the entire world?

A photo of me wearing a Panda mask.