Globe and Mail Opinion: When the pandemic is over we should continue wearing masks
Stock image Mika Baumeister
Jan. 1, 2021
Since late August, masks have been mandatory in public, outdoor spaces in Paris. The city streets are filled with half-covered, semi-anonymous faces, serving as an omnipresent reminder that we are living under threat of a deadly virus.
In quick time, grabbing a mask before heading out the door has become as normal as remembering our house keys before leaving home: a part of our daily routine. No longer is it an eccentric quirk exclusive to Asian countries, where masks were commonplace well before the appearance of COVID-19.
In China, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, it’s long been a simple common courtesy when sick to wear a mask as a means to protect others from your cold or flu. During days of peak air pollution and fine dust, it’s also common to don a mask to serve as a barrier against harmful particulate matter.
What if, even after the worst of the pandemic is behind us, face masks continue to be used as a tool in managing public health during the regular flu season, which the World Health Organization says kills as many as 650,000 people a year?
What if, even after most of the vaccines have been administered, the Western world sets aside its former snobbery against Asia’s widespread mask usage, and adopts the practice in its public health strategy for mitigating the adverse effects of air pollution, which causes the premature deaths of about 4.2 million people in smog-choked cities every year?
What if we stopped politicizing the face covering, which has been maligned as a muzzle and a violation of civil liberties, and normalize the mask as simply an effective barrier to keep our harmful germs in, and deadly particle pollution out?
