By Don Hall

Last year, the wife and I took a road trip to Flagstaff to chill out and spend some time with my brother-in-law. We were in the height of the Delta variant and we both wore our cloth masks diligently.

The hotel was practically abandoned. The in-house restaurant was closed. There were still people staying there but I'd guess the place was only at 15 percent capacity on a weekend. There was a gas station with a deli across the street so we headed over to grab some sandwiches.

In line, waiting for our turn, an older man (which for me, at fifty-six, is older) shifts on his feet in front of me. He turns and does a slight double-take and then his unmasked face becomes sour.

"You know," he says with an edge of disgust. "We don't have to wear those things here."

"Better safe than sorry, I suppose," I answer as neutrally as possible. I just want a sandwich, not a political debate.

This seems to rankle him even more. He looks as if he's going to throw me some heavy-lidded lecture on the pandemic, possibly the standard trope of a government conspiracy when it becomes is his turn to order. I gesture for him to go ahead. He shakes his head in frustration and proceeds.

A year before, I was working as an operations manager at a local dive casino. We had all the protocols in place recommended by those who recommend such things. We had a sanitizer gun, a mister that spewed clouds of disinfectant for the slot machines, hand sanitizer stations peppered throughout, sanitizing wipes in other places, and of course, the requirement to wear a mask.

For my last few months at the casino, I spent more time arguing with folks resistant to wearing masks than almost anything else. The fake ADA cards. The insistence that veterans with PTSD were exempt. The complaints about wearing masks when there was a drink present or if someone wanted to smoke.

We found out much later that, while stubbornly objecting to the government inconveniencing them, they weren't wrong. We never needed to sanitize the surfaces. The cloth masks did next to nothing to avoid the virus. Hand sanitizers aren't a net negative but they didn't do much to block an airborne disease.

Since Nevada lifted all the COVID restrictions, I've become spotty with my masking, I'll admit.

I vaxxed and boosted. I wore my (now found to be effectively useless) cloth mask everywhere I went. I did not wear it outdoors. In the gym, in the casinos, in the movie theaters. I was a responsible member of society. I believe the science.

The science has evolved and thus my response. That's how science works. Data is gathered and theories are formed. Recommendations become mandates. Then more data, different theories, new recommendations. Man's desperate attempt to feel that he is in control of the natural world.

In March of 2020, we knew next to nothing. We took serious precautions. Lots of people got sick, many died. This shit was real. Then came the vaccines. Despite the fact that Big Pharma is just shy of Breaking Bad level corrupt, I still believed these pushers of fentanyl and pills to make sure older guys get boners had cracked the code. As the virus went from an existential threat to a politicized bludgeon, the science grew more understanding of that which we faced.

We now know:

• 78% of everyone hospitalized and died were obese

• 75% were 65+ years old

• Cloth masks were no more effective against Omicron than wearing a veil made of lace panties you found in the dumpster behind Victoria's Secret

• Wearing a mask to enter a restaurant then taking it off when you sat down to eat is stupid

• The vaccines (and booster) do not prevent infection but significantly lessen the possibility of death (mostly for those fat 65+ year olds)

• COVID is likely a white supremacist disease due to the disproportionate numbers of black and brown people dying from it (although, to be fair, it may just be a fat shaming, ageist virus)

• Lockdowns are both ineffective and tend to make kids and teens off themselves at alarming rates

• With each variant, COVID becomes more infectious and less dire

So, now we have BA.2 and cases in China and Europe are creeping back up. Cases in the United States are increasing slightly. Still, we perform for one another.

Masks now represent less a protective measure and more a badge of progressivism, allegiance to a cause, the uniform of the leftist believer not dissimilar to the MAGA hats of old. 

I feel odd not wearing a mask as I'm likely to be assessed and judged as some libertarian idiot clinging to some hair-brained notion of freedom while aggressively supporting the abridgment of the freedoms of everyone else from pregnant women seeking an abortion to trans athletes looking to compete.

I also feel out of place wearing a mask. We know they are pointless in terms of blocking the virus and, in Nevada, I can feel the judgment of those libertarian zealots wondering if I am someone who believes that America is founded exclusively on white supremacy and that JK Rowling is the devil.

I think it's silly to over-indulge in the performative protective measures as well as eschew any protection because 'murica. 

Just a few days ago, I went into the Paris Casino to work on editing as I waited for my wife to finish up some modeling work. I didn't even have a mask on me. I forgot to throw one in my pocket (which became the personal protocol in the last months).

During a break from editing, I came out to the floor, plopped down in front of a Crazy Money machine, and fed my twenty-dollar bill in the validator. The woman right next to me was masked. She looked at me in the same way the old guy in Flagstaff did.

"Do you mind playing at a different machine if you're not going to wear a mask?" she asked. I say asked because those were the words but she was not asking.

I smiled. Nodded. Cashed out my unplayed twenty bucks and moved to another machine.

There's simply no profit in being a dick about this. Acknowledging how many people are wandering around looking for opportunities to police one another, I'm not one of them. It takes too much unnecessary energy to get worked up about what is no longer a protective measure but a virtue signal. A BLM t-shirt worn to be seen. A Greenpeace button to alert anyone in range of fealty to a cause. A MAGA hat or jacket with a Confederate flag stitched on the back.

I used to perform theater and the costume was an important part of creating the character. I'm not onstage, so I no longer need a costume but I often feel as if I wandered into a play filled with costumed actors, all demonstrating which tribe they each must cling to.

I'm not into tribes these days. Tribalism did not save one person who contracted COVID and died from it. It won't save the next, either.