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Opinion: Masks - at the edge of freedom and safety

We often take our safety as our own prerogative and responsibility. We choose to learn how to defend ourselves or to possess weapons. We hire monitoring agencies. We call the police if our safety is at risk.

We often take our safety as our own prerogative and responsibility.

We choose to learn how to defend ourselves or to possess weapons. We hire monitoring agencies. We call the police if our safety is at risk. We put on sunscreen to protect ourselves from the sun. We take vitamins to maintain health and protect ourselves from preventable health issues. We put seatbelts on and immure our kids in car seats when on the road. We buy insurance to protect ourselves from financial trouble.

At the same time, most of us agreed that our freedom ends where others' freedom begins. Which means, that we usually protect ourselves using whatever means we have. It may include paying for protection or hiring others to help protect us. It also includes building the system, which is supposed to protect society from individuals that violate others’ freedom.

But again, the main motivation and the focus of our survival instincts is ourselves and our loved ones.

In other words, when it comes to our safety, we do our best to ensure that we’ll survive using whatever means are available within our own reach and our own freedom. And that’s what most individuals do, at least in the contemporary world the way I’ve known it.

Not for the first time in history, but definitely for the first time in a long time, COVID-19 is putting us through a tricky challenge. The challenge is where we have to find a balance between the survival instincts and thirst for our personal freedom and rights.

This time the equation is more complicated, since we don’t have a say at securing our own safety, which now lays in the hands of others, but we are required to give up some of our freedoms to try and see if it will work at all.

Yes, I’m talking about masks, little rags, which have generated some vicious debates in communities all around the world.

We’ve been talking about working our way through the pandemic together since this new deadly virus has landed in Canada. But for many, “together” was more of a blurry motto. We were saying that we are all in this together and only together we can get through it. For a while, in Estevan, it meant showing support to whoever had to keep working to keep others going, plus staying at home (with no other options really available).

But the idea of togetherness now has come to an action, and at this time the action assumes doing something to my personal freedom to protect others which in the end is supposed to get back to me.

And it’s definitely not an easy action to take. First, there is so much unclarity with everything surrounding the virus. Even though we all are already really tired of it, it’s still pretty new. There is not enough research and experience to say almost anything for sure. Scientists assume, politicians echo, journalists report. But after trials and further research, a lot of the original information proves to be wrong.

I remember reporting on one of the first Dr. Saqib Shahab press-conferences at the beginning of the pandemic, when he explained that masks might be more harm than good because they provoke us to touch our faces even more, and thus we are at more risk of getting the virus into our system. Summary: masks won't protect us. But we are in the midst of a totally different story now and masks became an accessory that protects others from us, our sneezes and coughs.

And while still not doing much or anything at all for us, they are supposed to help the common goal of limiting the spread and allowing time for … Here the options vary: for the vaccine, for a steady spread in which the health systems are not overloaded and each person can get the treatment they need, or just for the possibility of a somewhat normal life where we keep distance and follow other precaution measures, but keep going with our lives.

Besides, we are asked and now often obliged to give up our personal freedom for the sake of others with no clarity about if we are gaining anything at all. And that's hard to take in and accept as well.

Yes, maybe masks don’t do that much, I don't know, but how much do they actually hurt? I couldn’t find a single valuable argument that they do at all (unless you have health issues, in which case seems that everyone agreed that not wearing a mask is fine).

But just think about it, even if masks are not working that great but if there is a slight chance that your loved ones and you will be protected if others agree to wear masks, isn’t it worth it?