When out in public, wear a mask

Social distancing is hard.

Closing businesses is hard.

Closing schools is hard.

Having empty churches at Easter is beyond hard.

You know what’s not hard: Wearing a mask.

After some hesitation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that when folks go out in public they should wear a mask. It might be a surgical mask. It might be a cotton flannel mask made by one of the dozens and dozens of local volunteers who are cranking them out.

It might even be that scarf wrapped up around your face or a bandana or a gerry-rigged creation from an old t-shirt and some rubber bands. It’s still a mask.

And it doesn’t protect the wearer from COVID-19. Instead, it protects the rest of the community.

Since those infected by the virus often do not know it and show no symptoms, wearing a mask is an important precaution. It’s also — maybe more importantly — a way to demonstrate to others that you care about their well-being.

It’s a badge of community.

Put one on when you go to Walmart. Put one on when you go to Family Dollar or Dollar General or CVS or Walgreens. Put one on when you go to the post office.

It’s the least you can do, and in these helpless times it also may be the most you can do.

Heath Butz of the Jay County Health Department put it succinctly the other day: “Thank God we’re doing what we’re doing.”

As he has traced contacts by the county’s confirmed COVID-19 cases, he’s learned that the local outbreak would be dramatically worse if efforts at social distancing had not been taken.

The key now is to keep those efforts going and not let up.

Jay County’s low number of confirmed cases is something of a point of pride so far. But if we’re going to keep that number down as low as possible, we’re going to have to continue to take this seriously.

And you know what that means? It means, wear a mask. — J.R.