What is the big deal with wearing your damn mask?

I'm frustrated. Strike that. Disappointed. No, strike that too.

I'm mad.

Amid my aimless wandering around my apartment, obsessive pickle-eating straight from the jar and endless people watching with a coffee in hand from my front porch, I've had a lot of people reach out to me this month through phone calls, text messages and video chats that I haven't heard from in quite some time. A message I received while still trying to push myself out of bed this morning has seriously pissed me off.

I was sent a video of my "friend," let's call him "Nick" making an appearance at a Walmart. In the video, he did a slow pan up from his face, which was without a mask, with older people walking in the background sporting masks. The video has a caption asking "how do you Walmart?" while he motions to cover his face and then moves it away.

What. Did. I. Just. Watch.

I can't believe he just did that.

Earlier this week, he told me he had been tested for COVID-19 and was waiting for his results. And today, he goes to Walmart without a mask and has the nerve to film it, to mock the circumstances. What the actual fuck!

I'm so mad.

I don't pretend that I know everything, because I don't. And I also don't think that I do everything right or that the way I do things is the only way to do them.

That being said, what is the big deal with wearing your damn mask? There is a global pandemic. All over the world, people have been affected by the coronavirus disease pandemic. Even if it doesn't eradicate the disease, if it helps to stop spreading this to someone else, isn't that enough?

Unlike the flu, we do not understand the pathology of this disease. We have lost 100,000 to coronavirus-related illnesses. People like 43-year-old Marylou Armer of Sonoma Valley, California, who was a veteran police detective; 81-year-old Regina D. Cullen of Shrewsbury, who was "small in stature, but strong in spirit," or 49-year-old Jesus Roman Melendez of New York, who was "famous in family circles for his birria beef stew." One hundred thousand people.

How, in good conscience, can you knowingly go into a store without a mask after an executive order was issued in your particular state, and you were waiting for test results for the disease that the mask is supposed to help stop the spread of? But please, stand in a packed Walmart to film your video.

On a rather minor note, this circumstance has since led to the death of a relationship.