Be a Man. Take Off the Mask.

October 14, 2020 – Washington, DC, United States: United States Senator Ted Cruz (Republican of Texas) holds his mask over his face during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Capitol Hill on October 14, 2020 in Washington, DC. Barrett was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill the vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who passed away in September. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images) (Samuel Corum / CNP / Polaris) (Newscom TagID: polspphotos730698.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]

It’s been a full year since the United States theater of the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest. From their peak in early January, seven-day averages of deaths and new cases have plummeted by around 50 and 75 percent respectively. States like Texas and Mississippi have repealed their statewide mask mandates and allowed businesses to operate at 100 percent capacity if they so choose.

Say what you will about the vaccine, but two million Americans are receiving it each day. Skepticism over its efficacy and risks has waned. We’re well on our way to having administered 100 million doses, and people are not suffering catastrophic side effects, let alone dropping like flies.

All this is to say that we’re approaching herd immunity and approaching it fast. Some project it will happen by April, some by the Fourth of July. Good news, right?

It is good news—but putting a damper on it are the “leading experts” who insist that we’ll need to continue masking and social distancing for the foreseeable future.

This is patently absurd. Remember that masks and social distancing were intended to be stopgaps until we had the infection rate under control, not measures to be rigorously enforced until we have absolute certainty that no one will die from the disease. The United States has never had the infection rate under more control than it does now. Given that fact, the trends described above, and the approaching of warmer months, there’s increasingly little justification to keep in place universal limitations on mobility and on the freedom to choose not cover your face with cloth everywhere you go.

A notable psychological feature of contemporary society is the incessant drive to push aside and ignore the inconvenient reality of death, so when the COVID-19 outbreak became a worldwide pandemic, we treated it like the Black Death. Of course, it didn’t help that the virus broke out under a totalitarian Chinese state whose extreme lockdown measures gave every other country carte blanche to impose similar measures on their own people.

As the philosopher Edward Feser put it, restricting the individual liberties of someone infected with bubonic plague used to be a necessary evil because bubonic plague once posed a grave and immediate threat to people in general. It is clear, however, that COVID-19 does not pose a grave and immediate threat to people in general. It is also unjust to impose burdens or inflict harm because someone will do something in the future or because they might do something in the future. Therefore, if you’re young and healthy, if you’re vaccinated, or if you’ve been sick with COVID-19 and have gotten better, consider taking your mask off, living a normal life once again, and not letting people push you around about your decisions.

In many places people only wear masks out of conformity. Consider the restaurants you eat at: you only wear the mask to get a table and then you take it off when you’re seated. If you’re fortunate enough to go to a gym that doesn’t employ roaming mask police, you’ll probably see people take their masks off when exercising, only to put them back on to walk around the gym floor. If you’re washing your clothes at a laundromat, you’re not socializing to begin with and you’re almost never within six feet of a stranger. Would you be taking a noticeably greater risk by simply not wearing a mask in any of these scenarios? Are you just doing it because it’s expected of you? Are you using your mask as more of a psychological security blanket than as a tool to avoid infection or asymptomatic spread, the latter of which is likely an exaggerated threat anyway?

The Washington Post recently ran an article about a study that found a tight correlation between the COVID death rate and the obesity rate of adults in many countries across the globe. Obesity has long been linked to more preexisting conditions and comorbidities, a greater risk of developing dozens of illnesses and diseases, and a greater impairment of the immune system. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has only functioned as a pandemic among the obese and the elderly. Among healthy people, young people, skinny people? Not even close. For them it’s not unreasonable to suggest that it’s much more reminiscent of an occasional bout of the flu or food poisoning—not a danger that warrants over a year’s worth of online learning, mass cancellation of campus events, and widespread closing of bars. COVID-19 in itself is not “just the flu, bro,” but it does feel like it to most people around the world.

There’s also a certain segment of the population that leans left in their political worldview and has turned COVID into a religion. COVIDianism, if you will. COVIDians are dogmatic in their belief that the virus represents a universally grave danger. COVIDians surrender and profess obedience to the priests and bishops known as scientists and experts. COVIDians are rigorous in the enforcement of their religious observances such as mask-wearing and physical separation. COVIDian evangelization takes place through in-person confrontations and the fearmongering of the mainstream media. The benefits of upsetting COVIDians far outweigh the chance of killing grandma by working out without a mask.

It’s one thing to wear a mask and be cautious about physical touch or distance if you’re immunocompromised or if you live with someone who’s immunocompromised. But if you’re a healthy person who reflects and finds that you’re only wearing a mask because the authorities or society writ large is telling you to, it’s time to be a man and take it off.