Student Shares Perspective On Why Wearing a Mask Is Important

Wearing a mask has been a controversial topic for a while now. Still, even after almost five months, some people are still refusing to wear a mask properly, or even at all. Governor Ivey and Dr, Scott Harris issued Alabama’s first mask order in mid-July. On September 30, Governor Ivey extended the state mandate for masks until November 8th. 

Living with my mom who is high risk, just gave me a new perspective on this entire situation. We try to do everything we can to not get exposed, like always remembering to bring our masks with us, washing our hands as much as possible after being out of the house and keeping as much of a distance between others as we can. 

As a dancer, I still have to wear a mask in the studio. I honestly do not mind having to wear one for a few hours. I just have to make sure that if I do have to pull my mask down to breathe I need to do it in a corner where no one is around. 

Seeing that Sparkman High School has had positive cases, especially after students have been back at school, worries my mother. She knows that I want to have that high school experience, but for the sake of her and my own health, I have to stay at home. 

My sister moved to Orlando to work at Disney World at the beginning of May. She still talks to us about how people are not wearing masks properly. I just hope that sometime soon, people will realize that this is the new normal and will listen to the mask rule. I think it is crazy that people still are not wearing a mask when everywhere you go at all, you have to have a mask on. 

I am truly amazed at how people still refuse to wear a mask to simply go to the grocery store, or even through drive-thrus at fast-food restaurants. These small interactions with others while not wearing a mask, may appear minor, but are enough to become exposed or spread Covid even more. The more people that get exposed to the virus, the more people have to quarantine and have to stay at home longer. Shops will start to close down again and we will go back to the boring quarantine that we started in May.

I know that this is still very new and that people do not like change, but if they want to go back to the way things were before, then they are going to have to follow these new rules. A study published by Health Affairs compared the growth rate of Covid-19 before and after the mask mandate was set in over 15 states. After the first five days of this new mask law, the case growth slowed down 0.9%. In just three weeks, the daily growth rate dropped by 3%.