Who’s afraid of catching COVID these days?
Not many people, I reckon. Especially if you’ve already had it.
For the vast majority of West Aussies who were double or even triple vaccinated, catching COVID the first time probably wasn’t a big deal.
Maybe you felt a bit rough for a few days, but you’ve probably heard that the flu that’s going around is much worse.
Certainly it wasn’t nearly as bad as all the pandemic doom and gloom we’ve been hearing about for two years.
So, you might be thinking that round two with the Rona is not worth getting worked up over.
And if you think like that then you probably also think that there’s no point bringing back the mask mandate.
Leave it up to the individual, right?
That’s all well and good, but there’s a bit more to unpack here.
For some reason, people really have their undies in a twist over having to wear a mask.
No one loves it, I get that, but West Aussies have done a fantastic job of donning a mask when required throughout the pandemic.
Sure, there were a few idiots who just refused to do it - and were proud of the fact - but most of us did the righty.
But now there’s this idea that it was mask wearing that brought the WA economy to a halt during the first wave of the omicron outbreak earlier this year.
It’s simply not true.
People didn’t work from home just because they had to wear a mask.
They worked from home because they didn’t want to catch COVID for the first time.
Now we know the Rona probably won’t kill us, that fear factor isn’t there any more.
But what IS still there, is the seven day isolation period if you catch COVID again.
What that means is that with cases going up again, because of the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariant, lots of workers will be rubbed out by the rona.
That’s what really hurts the economy, so from a strictly economic perspective, slowing the spread by wearing masks makes a lot of sense.
But do you think Betty Balga gives a rat’s clacker about the economy when she’s deciding… whether to put up with the hassle of wearing a mask when she’s walking around the shops.
Of course she doesn’t. That’s the value of a mandate, you’re not having to rely on what people do or DON’T feel like doing.
Right now, we’ve got chief health officers and doctors associations around the country, calling for mask mandates to be re-introduced, even if it’s just in some settings - like education.
You’ve got the prime minister and premier mark McGowan strongly urging all of us to wear masks indoors.
The pollies all know that a mandate would work better than appealing to our sense of doing the right thing.
But they don’t want to bite the bullet, because they know it’ll be unpopular.
So instead, cases will continue to go up, more people will be off work at the same time and the hit to the economy will grow.
And for what? Because we think it’s a bit uncomfortable to wear a mask for a few of weeks until this winter COVID spike passes.
Gotta say that doesn’t make much sense to me.
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