Englischkolumne Un Ballo in Maschera
Wearing a mask has become a bungled affair.
As you may have noticed, the number of Corona infections is rising again. Little clusters are popping up everywhere, even in Salzburg. This was to be expected as the strong measures taken from March until
May were relaxed, but some people are either too dumb or too arrogant to understand that this virus is here to stay. It will not go away just because the statistics look good. The situation has not been made better by contradictory or ambiguous messaging from the government. As I write this, masks have been made obligatory again in various places.
If the government is really trying to keep infection numbers down, it needs to get its messaging priorities right. If you tell people wearing a mask is no longer obligatory, then they feel like they have been given carte blanche to party and to forget all other measures. Hence the new clusters of infections. Politicians seem to be more concerned with making people feel comfortable. The SPÖ even wants a pardon for all those people fined for not obeying Corona rules. So they are basically encouraging people not to wear masks as there would no longer be any legal consequence! What a load of rubbish! Telling people the worst is over is misleading because not enough persons have been tested yet. Even worse some people are asymptomatic Corona carriers and do not know that they are spreading the virus.
Why has wearing a mask become such a hurdle here? In Germany people have not stopped wearing masks when going to a supermarket or a restaurant. Here, as soon as the government relaxed the mask measure, people started getting on buses without wearing one. Keeping your distance became a joke. Everyone but that baby elephant (which is not a forgetful creature as we know) forgot about keeping apart. Thank God wearing a mask has not become a stupid, nonsensical political issue as in the USA. So is it just a matter of presumed “inconvenience””? A surgeon, in a viral video on the social media, showed us that he wears a mask throughout his working hours and does not suffer from reduced oxygen intake. So why all the fuss about wearing a mask when shopping or riding a bus?
Angela Merkel (notably a scientist by profession) was clearer and more direct about this when talking to her own people. Three simple rules: keep your distance, wear a mask when going inside buildings and wash your hands regularly. Why is that so hard to follow? Have we become so whiny and spineless as to not even follow such simple rules? During the Second World War my parents spent endless months rushing to bomb shelters and eating cats and dogs, which their parents told them were rabbits. The food shortage was terrible. Did they ever complain? No, they did not! Other people’s parents and grandparents suffered huge losses during the war. They had to sign for food vouchers, stay in line for a bowl of soup and work unpaid to salvage personal belongings from bombed houses. There was no one to help them out. Comparing all the sacrifices they made to the need to wear a mask, disinfect your hands and keep your distance is like comparing the Untersberg to a small ant hill!
Our household never stopped wearing masks even when the government wrongly decided that they were not obligatory anymore. We knew that the drop in infection rates was just a temporary thing. Anyone with some common sense would have done the same. The whole thing reminds me of the fiasco surrounding the anti-smoking regulations. The Austrian government has turned wearing a mask into a masquerade. Mask on, mask off, mask on again! A real Ballo in Maschera!