To Mask Or Not To Mask?

That is the question of the times.

And really, there’s only one good answer.  

Here’s a little history as to how I got there.

There was a time, not so terribly long ago, when our daughter-in-law was in the  super-sick ICU of the University of Michigan Hospitals.  To put even a toe in her room, we not only masked, we gowned and gloved. We even slippered some days.  Not to protect ourselves but to insure that we would not infect her from our outside germs.

She contracted H1N1 , or Swine Flu as it was known, shortly after visiting us a few years back.  Her very healthy body rebelled vigorously and every organ responded, resulting in a total body melt-down.  The next three months were dicey, to say the least.  She was on full life support much of that time.

Fortunately, H1N1 was not the world-wide pandemic that COVID 19 is and the general public was not asked to take preventive measures against it. 

All that’s changed with this monster, of course.

But, back to Michigan for a moment.   We knew exactly what we were dealing with back then and we understood the consequences of non-compliance.  We weren’t afraid for ourselves but we were deathly afraid for our daughter-in-law. We would have done anything to get her back to healthy.  If that all that not-so-pretty, or not-so convenient, weird, papery, one-size-fits-all gear would make one tiny bit of difference, we were all in.

For me, masking is a no-brainer.  We don’t have access to the heavy-duty protective masks that we were issued in Michigan, but we can sure make do with alternatives. So, there’s my answer.  Anything that might possibly help, even a little bit, makes my answer a yes to masks.  A resounding yes.   

Oh, and, by the way, our now healthy daughter-in-law fully agrees.