MASKED FACES :) :) :)

It seemed like eons ago when wearing a mask was considered weird.

The Chinese and South Koreans appear to be ahead of us because they’ve been wearing masks since the 2002-2004 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome is caused by SARS-COV.

COVID-19 is caused by SARS-COV-2. SARS-COV-2 is the third coronavirus to cause a global epidemic. The previous coronavirus epidemics were the SARS-COV and the MERS-COV. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) was first reported in 2012. The initial transmission of these three epidemics was from animal to humans. Most of the deaths from these epidemics were from respiratory causes.

Therefore, it’s no wonder that people from the Asian regions were donning face masks. Come back to 2020, in any part of the world it’s now weird if you are not donning a face mask in public spaces. The face masks could be surgical or textile grade. Scarves and handkerchiefs are also being used. You can also be denied entry to some offices and public transportation if you are not wearing a face mask.

In some countries, you can be fined for being in public without a face mask. However, while wearing of masks protects us against the virus, it blocks about 70 percent of our faces. Now, humans are sociable beings not counting the odd introverts here and there. Communication is mainly verbal but eighty percent of that communication is seen on the face and is non-verbal.

Imagine a mother calling her ten-year-old son to go and make his bed while he’s watching his favorite cartoon. “Sure!”, The child says, “Yes, mum.” But if you can read the child’s facial expression you can see from his face that he is not pleased at being called away from his favorite cartoon.

Take the lady that is accidentally stepped upon by a man in a hurry. The man apologizes but you can see from the lady’s face that she’s irritated. All these non-verbal cues are lost because we are wearing a mask. You also get to miss the beaming smile on a child’s face after her parents just bought her favorite toy. Then there are those who depend on lip reading. Suddenly, that part of communication has been cut off. Although we have some innovative fabric designers using transparent plastic over the area of the lips so that lip readers are not left out altogether.

Wearing of the mask is also psychologically beneficial to us. As humans, we want to assail our own personal fears about the virus and one of the least we can do is to don the facial mask or a face shield. Some are even donning both a face mask and a face shield. Face shield wearers are not being too careful because the louder an infected person speaks the more the virus load s/he releases. Since we are dealing with a virus with a long incubation period and asymptomatic for the most part, prevention is the way to go.

It’s not enough to wear a face mask, but some people want to make a bold statement. Some are printing face masks with their favorite cartoon characters, or texts on some attitudinal changes like “Where is the money?”. And some fashion designers are making profit from the moment and selling their fabric face masks for as much as eighty Euros. They’ve got buyers because they sell for twice that amount on some electronic platforms like e-bay.

Well, whether you’re wearing a face mask to make a statement or you’re wearing it to assail your fears, consider how you remove and dispose of that mask. You must carefully remove the face mask once worn and dispose properly if it’s the disposable type. Dispose in a tight grocery or trash bag so that it does not end up being “recycled” by garbage collectors.

If using fabric, after every use, it should be washed. It is not a bad idea to have several fabric face masks in different colors matching your outfits! Why not?

We all have to get accustomed to a new normal so we can as well get used to wearing face masks and make some beautiful statements while at it. Who knows? Post pandemic we can start celebrating a “wear your face mask day” in commemoration of the pandemic. No one knows when that day would come, but we must remain hopeful. Oh! Yes!!!