Pandemic has caused other issues of concern besides not wearing masks

Re: Really pulling together during a time of crisis (a rebuttal).

To preface things I’ll state I wear the mask, as does everyone I know. We don’t like it, and are convinced more than a little hypochondria is behind their mandate, but it isn’t the hill to die on either with COVID anxiety through the roof. A lot more of us are coming together than you think when you look at an antilockdown protest, and that demonstrates the problem that gives rise to these protesters.

You’ll note I say anti-lockdown instead of anti-mask because I think what’s really getting to people is being lost behind the mask topic. Many of us are meeting you halfway, but we aren’t getting much in return. Lockdowns have cost many of us our businesses, our careers, our sense of long-term security, and more. Even if COVID were to vanish right now, we still would be trying to pick up the pieces of our lives and what we lost in an economy that has lost thousands of small businesses and Alberta’s main source of revenue and employment. Coming out of COVID, if that can even happen, means a lot of us fighting over much fewer minimum-wage jobs before our EI dries up. You’re scared, but so are we.

Our fears were met with jeers even from the early onset of this pandemic. Economic concerns did seem trite when it was “14 days to slow the spread.” It’s now at nine months and climbing, and we really should have had some idea of what do to going forward by now. The economic anxiety is real, and it compounds with other fears and mental-health concerns that have grown in number since the pandemic started. We do need to come together, but that does not mean we need to completely come to heel without other concerns being addressed. That is what gives rise to protests as people fight back against people who seem unconcerned for what they have given up to solve the crisis. That we should be happy to have lost our careers and businesses if it makes you feel safer. We can’t treat COVID as the only problem to focus on and handwave ancillary impacts. Hard times are coming, and will be worse if we only focus on people not wearing masks.

I’ve met you halfway by going along with mask bylaws. Please meet us halfway by helping us feel we’ll have a future worth looking forward to once this is over.