Unmasked People, Unmasked in Their Own Way

I think masks separate us like the families in Tolstoy's famous opening line of Anna Karenina. You know the one: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Everyone I've met who wears a mask does it for more or less the same reasons: to protect themselves and others from a virus. But there appears to be a wide variety of reasons people won't wear a mask. 

NOTE: When I say masks, I mean NIOSH certified N95s or better - aka respirators. They do signficantly stop the spread of viruses.

I posted on twitter that I was starting to understand some concerns some people have raised about masks and that I think we need a new approach to get more people on board, and I was hit with an onslaught of comments along the line of, "They're playing you," and "I just can't bring myself to care at all about anti-maskers." I think this view is propagated because people against masks who are loudest on social media tend to be of a similar ilk: It's the pro-freedom, anti-everything group that bombards our posts, so they might colour the way mask advocates see anyone unmasked. But I've discovered there are others out there that don't fit the mold. And, if we want to get everyone in masks, then we have to care about anti-maskers enough to try to understand their position and bridge the divide. Instead, people got mad that I could have some compassion for them. 

It doesn't help anyone to lump them all together as sneaky and uncaring. I've argued before that anyone who is able to mask but won't is either misunderstanding the science and doesn't know they present a risk to others (which is totally on public health and our inept/corrupt premier), or they don't care they present a risk (sometimes, in part, because they don't know how serious the risk is, which is again on public health and our inept/corrupt premier). I still think those two different groups exist, but now, after getting tons of emails on masks as a trustee, I recognize there is huge diversity within each category. 

And I think I missed a category.

Privatization in Ontario

 It's vital in Ontario that we understand the problems with privatization because the shift of essential services from the public to private sphere is happening right under our noses. Brittlestar does a great job of explaining it here: 

The typical disaster capital scheme goes something like this: 

1. Wait for a crisis (or create one). Then people will be busy struggling to manage and won't have the resources to protest the government or, in all the chaos, will be otherwise willing to allow new sweeping changes to take place without a thorough democratic process. This Covid situation just fell into the laps of the uber-right-wing.