If the mask fits…

It seems to crop up in fits and starts in the Atlantic region.

Sometimes, it’s a relatively small protest, like one at the legislature in Charlottetown, where a handful of people sometimes show up with signs saying they shouldn’t have to wear surgical masks even though it's not mandatory in P.E.I. as long you can keep socially distanced.

Sometimes, like one recent Friday in Nova Scotia, it’s a little stranger: posters appeared suggesting that there was going to be two-hour “maskless shopping experience” at a Halifax Walmart — “Cheering others is what our smiles are for.” (It was something neither organized by nor condoned by Walmart, but instead by a private citizen, apparently.)

Maybe it’s just a normal example of contrarian thought; maybe it’s yet another example that, for all the fact that we live in communities, there are still those who believe their personal comforts trump the need to protect others in the community.

The up side is that the protests are small, sporadic and hardly condoned by the majority of Atlantic Canadians.

There might not be anyone who is always completely comfortable wearing a mask, and there are those who cannot wear them for medical reasons, but as COVID-19 cases increase in neighbouring provinces, there are very good reasons for wearing them if you can.

Chief among them is keeping the larger freedoms we now enjoy, compared to say, March or April. As other parts of Canada are starting to look at returning to more serious lockdowns due to increased numbers of cases, we’ve at least been able to stand pat — and a big part of that is not only continuing those preventative measures, but actually doing them right.

There’s the recent troubling burst of cases in New Brunswick, and occasional — but fairly regular — small numbers of cases, primarily related to travel, popping up in different parts of this region.

In the right circumstances, any one of those cases could develop into something much larger. If travellers don’t obey self-isolation rules, if people don’t report possible exposures and get tested when they should, and if we don’t wear masks in close quarters — or even don’t wear them properly, we’re opening a door that we’ve successfully kept closed for months now.

And sometimes we don’t do very well.

Even among those who studiously show up at stores wearing their masks, there are those who haven’t figured out yet that your nose goes inside the mask — or else it’s pretty much useless. That a mask worn on your chin or neck is useless. That hands still need to be washed regularly, and other precautions taken.

Every loosening of pandemic rules hasn’t happened by magic — it’s been earned by the majority of us understanding that we have a part to play, even if a mask is uncomfortable, even if we don’t like it, and even if we have some concept that a human right is being violated when we’re asked to protect our health and the health of others.

It is that simple.