Living with an immune-suppressed person in a pandemic provides a viewpoint not shared by everyone. My wife is a two-time cancer survivor, one result of which (having her spleen removed) is a weakened immune system. She is always more susceptible to viruses and generally has one severe viral infection every year and a more than average number of “I feel like I’m coming down with something” days.
When the pandemic came out of the gate in March, we began wearing masks. I hit Kroger and Walmart early—when both were still enforcing social distancing before entering the store—taking advantage of the slim number of shoppers at 6:00 or 7:00am.
Unfortunately, as everyone now knows, the wearing of masks became politicized. People’s decision to wear a mask or not were often determined by what President Trump said or did, what the CDC did or did not recommend, or concerns of “death by carbon dioxide inhalation.” This in spite of the fact that science and experience tells us that something over one’s nose and mouth slows or stops the spray of aerosol droplets from one’s nose and mouth.
What? You thought Mom told you all those times to “Cover your mouth when you cough” because people didn’t want to see your tonsils?
The Second Degree
Remember the game Seven Steps to Kevin Bacon, or some variant? The game arose from the “seven degrees of separation” theory that any two people on earth are separated by a maximum of seven connections. “My sister (one degree) works for a guy (second) who’s aunt’s (third) youngest cousin (five) interned for Kyra Sedgwick (six) on The Closer. She’s Kevin Bacon’s wife (seven).”
Viruses know how to play that game. That’s what contact tracing is all about. You need not be around an immune suppressed person to infect them. You can be a few degrees away and still infect them. In Maine, an August wedding reception had in attendance one person who was Covid positive. As a result of the spread, seven people died who had not been around the initially infected person or even been at the reception. From the L.A. Times:
Only 55 people attended the Aug. 7 reception at the Big Moose Inn in Millinocket. But one of those guests arrived with a coronavirus infection. Over the next 38 days, the virus spread to 176 other people. Seven of them died.
None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.
A subsequent CDC investigation “revealed noncompliance with CDC’s recommended mitigation measures.” People who did not attend the party ultimately died because people who attended it did not follow the simple, now well-know guidelines, including wearing a mask.
Masking Up
So, it does not matter whether you think you can catch it or not or whether you are worried about catching it. “You gotta die from something,” some say as a reason not to wear a mask. It is cold comfort to the immune-suppressed people two- or three-degrees separated when people who do not feel personally vulnerable goes on their way never giving thought to whether they are potentially spreading coronavirus to folks they never even meet.
If someone was breaking into my home, or threatening my wife in a parking lot, or harassing her in some way, I would do everything in my power to keep her safe. With an invisible enemy like a virus, the strategies might differ, but I cannot see how my responsibility to try and protect her does. That includes asking people to mask up who would rather not.
It leaves me nonplussed when people who would drop everything to help someone being attacked—even someone they do not know and possibly at great risk to their personal safety—will not voluntarily wear a mask to help slow the spread of Covid-19 and protect the health of those around them. Christian ethicist Spence Spencer writes:
The moral duty in the case, is not simply to wear a mask, but to do so responsibly while maintaining other appropriate hygienic precautions, like frequent handwashing and maintaining personal space.
It’s an article worth reading in full.
The Weaker Brother or Sister
Assume for a moment that all Christians who wear masks and want everyone who legitimately can to do so desire it out of fear or a sense of over-cautiousness. This would be a spiritual weakness that would classify then as a “weaker” brother or sister. That is, their faith in the area of coronavirus is weak. Is the best solution telling them to “buck up” or “stop living in fear,” or is the best solution to remove their cause for fear by wearing a mask.
If the weaker Christian is struggling it is the responsibility of the stronger brother or sister to sacrifice on their behalf. “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” It is never the responsibility of the weaker brother to make the stronger sister more comfortable.
The greater possibility is all such Christians aren’t responding in fear; they are responding in self-care or out of concern for others who are more susceptible to this raging virus. The biblical position, it seems to me, can’t be reduced to personal preference. “Don’t allow your liberty to be a stumbling block to others,” Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 8:9).
Many have argued that wearing a mask is a way to love our neighbors. I agree. It’s about the least costly love we will ever show.
fides quaerens intellectum
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