I write this while having Bill Maher’s most recent HBO comedy special on pause, because while I cannot speak for everyone who continues to wear a mask in public even while having been vaccinated, I believe that I represent those who are on an immunosuppressant therapy that makes the vaccines much less effective. That said, not all immunosuppressant drugs inhibit the vaccines’ effectiveness that much; for many on immunosuppressants, the vaccines are still 77% effective in preventing severe disease (compared with over 90% effective for those who aren’t immunocompromised).
I happen to take a B cell antagonist for my Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and it actually works to the point that sometimes I am able to “crawl out of my hole” and rejoin the living, but it also means that vaccines tend to not be as effective. Thankfully, wearing an N-95 mask provides the added layer of protection I need. Hell, if Covid never happened, I would still wear a mask, but then I might not have been let into certain places. One great thing Covid did was it normalized mask wearing in public for immunocompromised people who had long been advised to wear them.
While I am fully vaccinated against Covid, I have had to skip the flu vaccine for a number of years due to an egg allergy and the lack of availability of the one eggless flu vaccine option in my area. My pharmacist assured me that next year, all vaccines will be made without egg, and I believe he may be right given the recent trials on plant-based vaccines. But even when I can get a flu vaccine, I will wear a mask because flu vaccines aren’t formulated to protect against every strain of influenza, and I also am at risk for so many other common illnesses becoming something serious. If not for N-95 masks that have been proven to mitigate the spread of disease (which is exactly why they have been used in hospitals), I would live in a bubble, and I agree with Bill Maher when he says that is no way to live. I don’t mean any offense toward the homebound; I am still homebound much of the time, but my quality of life is better when I get out of the house and spend time with others.
I can agree that masks are not necessary when you are taking a walk outside or by yourself in the car, but I will sometimes wear a mask if I am running a quick errand so that I already have the mask adjusted to my face and I don’t have to futz with it while standing outside of a building I plan to enter. The most effective masks involve proper positioning, and to make them comfortable with my trigeminal neuralgia, it takes some time.
On the subject of trigeminal neuralgia, wearing an N-95 mask before I had gamma knife surgery was pretty unbearable. It was hard to find masks that weren’t excruciating with this face pain condition, but I did find multi-layer cloth masks that felt okay. I used to insert filters into these, made from either cut up HEPA filtration vacuum cleaner bags, polypropylene, or antiviral Kleenex to make them more comparable to surgical and N-95 masks. Some of my cloth masks actually help alleviate the effects of wind on my face, which can still trigger the TN pain, so I sometimes wear those for that purpose. While I have a lot less pain in my face than I used to, windy days can still make it hard to want to get out and walk. Masks have actually helped me get off my fat ass and get the exercise and sunlight I need!
I don’t kid myself into believing that Bill Maher will ever see this because I am a nobody. But I am not going to be so crass as to say such a message couldn’t change his mind at least a little bit. Sure, some things he says piss me off, but I keep tuning in because he has admitted he was wrong from time to time. Admitting we’re wrong does get more difficult as we age due to a loss in neuroplasticity, but if someone has admitted they were wrong (especially in a public way) the way Maher has done on other issues, there is at least hope. He still needs to admit he was wrong about promoting fat shaming, a practice that has been shown to actually increase obesity. In fact, he needs to understand that overweight and obesity are sometimes problems that a person has little control over due to a variety of factors, but as I have stated in a previous post, increasingly so due to the effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) on the health of all living things.
The only time I ever heard Maher address that obesity might be outside of someone’s control (and this was a long time ago) was when referring to hypothyroidism, and while related to difficulty in maintaining a healthy weight, this condition is often caused by obesity rather than being the cause of obesity. Anyway, there are a lot of people who do not choose to be fat who are fat.
Vaccination is a choice for nearly everyone. Smoking is a choice for everyone. To compare getting to a “healthy weight” to getting vaccinated or quitting smoking is a false equivalency. A lot of people will never be able to get to the healthy weight range identified by so many health organizations.
The figure that Maher points to on a repeated basis is that 78% of people hospitalized due to Covid are overweight or obese. I have seen that figure quoted on news broadcasts and in publications that I hold with some esteem, so I fully accept that. I have also read that 80% of people who die of Covid are over age 65, which is a slightly higher percentage than what Maher quoted on a recent episode of Real Time, but okay. He opens his #adulting comedy special by saying people who are vaccinated don’t die of Covid, and while that is usually the case, there are people with underlying conditions (and please don’t say these people would have died anyway; everyone dies eventually, MS isn’t a death sentence, and many people-myself included-have survived cancer) who have died despite being vaccinated. It is rare. But just like it is rare to die from Covid despite being vaccinated, it is rare to be moderately to severely immunocompromised, and if I were to draw this out as a Venn diagram… well you know where the overlap occurs. So being rare, as I annoyingly am on so many levels, I am wearing a fucking mask and I am not going to be silent when someone insults me for doing so!
By the way, this isn’t meant to cancel anyone. I say what I say to try to enlighten and to add to the discourse rather than the discord. I would say it is a cheap shot to ridicule someone over a condition they have little to no control over, but sometimes a person is unaware this is the case. If that person learns more, atones by admitting they were wrong, we need to accept that! The real cancellation happens when we engage in static evaluation. That is not healthy for any of us.
Why I wear a mask
Great post! It's so crazy and sad to me that mask wearing has political implications in the US. It's like suddenly deciding that using a wheelchair is a political statement. "You're not army crawling around town? You asshole!"
The current culture in the US makes me worried about moving back. Adam is really worried about being around a lot of people not wearing masks. He's not immunocompromised, but it makes him angry that the immunocompromised are at higher risk because of healthy people spreading the disease.
Roxane Gay often says that cancel culture isn't real. The people who are supposedly "cancelled" like Louis CK or Dave Chapelle continue do very well in their careers, so how is that a cancellation? They're merely suffering from criticism. You're just as entitled to your words as they are to theirs.
Of course, I understand the intended message here is that listening is good, empathy is good, we should work toward respectful communication, not shut people down, I get that.
It would just make me really sad if you censored yourself out of fear that someone will criticize you for "canceling" someone. That's essentially self-cancelling. Your words are valuable and the world needs them.