Failure to wear masks threatens ill 4-year-old

The Fayetteville City Council just passed an ordinance requiring people to wear face masks in some public settings. I understand for some of you, this feels like an inconvenience, and for others, it feels like an assault on your civil liberties. For our family, it is a matter of survival. Two years ago, our 4-year-old son was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

We did not know that instead of preparing for kindergarten, we would drive 5,000 miles for treatments between Northwest Arkansas and Little Rock. We did not know that instead of Cub Scout meetings, we would have 52 chemotherapy treatments (and counting). Instead of soccer practice, we would have 19 surgical procedures.

For many people with medical conditions, like our son or the elderly, covid-19 is a deadly risk. Our son, at the worst of his chemotherapy regimen, had just 7% of a functioning immune system, essentially the same as a person in the late stages of AIDS.

We also did not know how casually our fellow Americans and fellow Arkansans would treat this disease. Last Friday evening, we went for a drive down Dickson street and along the square and as a family game we counted masks. The final tally was 98 without masks, 11 with masks. That is only 10%.

Worse, our covid-19 numbers keep going up, and health officials in our area hospitals estimate we have had only 10% of the cases in Northwest Arkansas that we will have by the fall.

What the citizens of Fayetteville (and Arkansas) need to understand is just how much the vulnerable need them, and how much wearing a mask and social distancing can make a difference. Studies by the National Institutes of Health have proven that N95 and N99 masks are 97-98% effective, and data from the National Academy of Sciences has shown that even cheap surgical masks have reduced covid-19 transmission by almost 40%.

We understand social distancing is extremely hard. We know because we have been doing it, not for three months, but for two years. We’ve missed birthday parties. We’ve attended church online. We’ve even celebrated Thanksgiving alone due to low immune counts. Life is lonely for the immune compromised.

We also know what it feels like to wear a mask all the time. My mask is hard to breathe through, even though I am a runner. It pinches my face so tightly that after eight hours at Arkansas Children’s Hospital for chemotherapy, my nose looks like it has been punched by a boxer.

I think many of you do care about the vulnerable, and especially kids like our son. Yet if you are happy to donate to Arkansas Children’s Hospital, St. Jude’s, or Make A Wish, can’t you also wear a mask in public and help save their lives?

By passing this law, Fayetteville is trying to look after the most vulnerable, what the Bible calls “the least of these.”

Like our son.

Please remember that when you mask up to go out.

ZACH SPILLMAN Fayetteville