Essay Example: Why You Should Wear A Mask?

On March 13, 2020, the sudden outbreak of the coronavirus, or COVID-19, in the United States was officially announced as a national public health emergency by President Donald Trump. Chaos and panic erupted across the nation as people went into survival mode and prepared for the worst. With the abrupt arrival of this worldwide pandemic into our country, various questions also came about what could be done to protect ourselves and others from being infected with it. After much research, scientists determined that the best ways for people to help slow the devastating spread of the virus were to practice social distancing by remaining at least six feet apart from other people at all times, getting vaccinated as soon as a vaccine was developed and you were deemed eligible to receive to it, and most importantly, wearing a mask to cover your mouth and nose any time you go out in public. Today, with new and even more contagious variants of the coronavirus arising, the country continues to struggle to live under the strains of the coronavirus. This extremely challenging time has brought light to the question, “At what point during a public health crisis should masks be mandated?” I believe that the answer to this question is that the moment a public health crisis is announced, masks should be made mandatory because wearing them is critical to help keep you and the people around you healthy and safe, reduces an infected person’s chance of spreading the virus to others, and therefore, helps to put an end to the public health crisis by slowing the spread of disease and decreasing the number of people infected in an area.

Choosing to wear a mask increases your protection and safety and the protection and safety of everyone you come into contact with from the virus. Therefore, it keeps everyone safer and healthier. In my own opinion, masks should not be seen as a political statement or a taking away of our freedoms as Americans, but rather a way to respect the lives of the people around us. One great analogy I have heard about wearing a mask is that it is just like using a turn signal when you drive. When you use a turn signal, you are helping to prevent a possible accident that could leave you or those around you injured by letting the drivers around you know exactly what your intentions are. Using a turn signal is a choice people make to keep everyone on the roads safer, just like how wearing a mask is a choice people make to keep everyone around them safer. 

Scientific evidence has shown that wearing a mask can not only help protect yourself from breathing in the virus but also keep you from spreading the virus and infecting all those around you, especially when you are unaware that you are infected yourself. This is why it is vital to wear a mask at all times in public and not just when you are feeling sick, as studies have shown that people who never develop symptoms or are not yet showing symptoms of a virus can still infect others with it. The coronavirus and almost all other viruses are spread through airborne transmission. Droplets, or aerosols, travel through the air from person to person when someone coughs, sneezes, talks, sings, or breathes. According to Harvard, “Aerosols are infectious viral particles that can float or drift around in the air for up to three hours.” These droplets are then breathed in by the people that are somewhere near the person they came from or wander into that same area within the next three hours, or the droplets can just merely land directly in someone else’s mouth or nose. Masks worn over the mouth and nose act as a layer of protection to help stop the droplets from your mouth from ever reaching others’ mouths or noses or the droplets from another person’s mouth from ever reaching your mouth or nose, and that is why it is important to wear them. 

Statistics have proven that mask-wearing can make a huge difference in how quickly we can slow and eventually end a public health crisis by preventing the spread of disease which would lead to a drastic reduction in the number of people infected by the virus. On the other hand, choosing to not wear a mask would lead to just the opposite. During the beginning of this summer, the mask mandate was lifted in Kansas and many other states across America because the number of coronavirus cases had gone into a decline and more people were getting vaccinated. After this, people started to see the coronavirus as a thing of the past and stopped taking the necessary precautions of social distancing, wearing a mask, and getting vaccinated if they had not already, to help reduce the number of cases even further and put an end to this pandemic. Now, in the past couple of weeks, the Delta variant has rapidly emerged and led to a drastic increase in the number of coronavirus cases all over America. It is much more contagious than the original coronavirus and causes more severe symptoms. The best way to keep yourself safe from it is by getting vaccinated and wearing your mask because the vast majority of serious illness and death is occurring in people who have not been vaccinated and have not been wearing their masks. Variants like this are the reason why wearing a mask is vital to keeping things moving in the right direction. According to the University of California San Francisco, “Researchers predicted that eighty percent of the population wearing masks would do more to reduce COVID-19 spread than a strict lockdown.” This goes to show that if everyone above the age of two who can safely wear a mask chose to, then it would make a huge difference for our whole nation by helping to keep coronavirus cases to a minimum.

A public health crisis in which there is a significant outbreak of an infectious disease can negatively impact a nation’s overall health, number of deaths, economy, and its citizens as individuals, all of which we have observed for ourselves in recent years with the emergence of the coronavirus in the United States. If we are to end these unfortunate circumstances and the public health crisis as a whole, there are necessary safety measures that we all must take to turn things around, one of the most vital safety measures being to wear a mask everywhere you go. Mask-wearing is crucial to help maintain you and your fellow Americans’ well-being and security, decrease an infected individual’s risk of spreading the disease to others, and consequently, aid in placing an end to the national health emergency by slowing the spread of the virus and lowering the number of cases in our country. These are all reasons why I believe that as soon as a public health emergency is announced, masks should be made mandatory across the whole affected area. However, if a mask mandate is not implemented or is lifted, it is still ultimately up to you to make the smart choice and choose to wear your mask.