Wear Your Mask!

Covering your nose and mouth keeps you from spreading virus during the hours before you feel sick or if you are mildly infected. This is not just about you, it’s about caring for other people. Care for your family, care for your neighbor, care for the community member who does not need your germs.

I am a retired physician and public health specialist, and I am terrified. It scares the willies out of me to see so many folks in public without face coverings. COVID-19 is a very bad disease. Dying of respiratory failure is a particularly horrible way to suffer. 

This pandemic is going to get far worse here before it gets better. Decisions to “open” our community have been made more because of public pressure than epidemiological facts. The risks of catching the virus now are as bad or worse than during our earlier quarantine.

CDC and other guidelines about face coverings have wavered and been confusing, but the facts are now clear: Wearing a mask shows that you do care about other people and are willing to do your share in keeping our entire community healthy.

We are all in this together.

Please wear that mask. Do your part, too, to keep us all alive.

S. Hendrickson, M.D.

Eugene