The grocery store my daughter works at is finally asking all customers to wear a mask. My daughter started wearing one at work at the start of summer and at first she was only one of two employees doing so. Now all employees must wear them and customers not wearing them are provided one at the door. She has only seen one customer refuse to wear one since requiring them to mask up, and that person was asked to practice social distancing. My daughter says this person did so.

I recently unfollowed someone on social media that went on an anti-mask rant. I knew I wasn’t close enough to the person to make a difference to their opinion, (others had already tried) and to me, creating a ‘scene’ on someone else’s ignorant post only draws more attention to the post… Engagement makes the post move higher in the priority of it being shared on other timeline recommendations.

In BC, Dr. Bonnie Henry, our Provincial Health Officer, has done a wonderful job, and she is deservingly well liked. I admire the job she is doing too! My one complaint is that she seems to have an aversion to insisting on masks. When I look at statistics and see countries that are bigger than Canada and doing better than Canada dealing with Covid-19, it seems we are doing many of the same things, except for insisting on masks in public places.

People respect the yellow line in the middle of the road and don’t drive into oncoming traffic, because it’s not safe to do so. It took a while to happen when it first became law, but almost everyone wears their seatbelts, because they save lives.

Masks and social distancing should be mandatory in public spaces. These two things actively create a barrier between people to reduce the spread of Covid-19. It’s no harder to do than remembering to put your seatbelt on… once you get used to it, it’s just what you do.