Pretending To Be The Invisible Man

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If you’re wearing a mask, glasses, a hat, and have a fleece that covers your neck you look like the invisible man. I have been thinking about that recently, as I look at my reflection. Imagine if I was completely transparent. Pandemic times would be an excellent moment to hide that we’ve had an accident in a lab that made us invisible.

Of course we are not invisible. We are just dressed for the weather, and the risk of being contaminated by Delta or Omicron, or the next variant of interest, whenever that may be.

En pleine 5ème vague de Covid-19, comment contrôler la transmission du virus chez les plus petits? Genève prend un décision inédite en Suisse romande: masquer les élèves dès 8 ans. Une mesure qui suscite la colère chez les parents et le corps enseignant. Fribourg de son côté préfère le dépistage massif dans les écoles à chaque apparition de cas dans une classe.
RTS, today

If a canton decides to make children safe, by asking to wear masks from 8 years old then parents should be happy. If they are angry then the RTS has failed to inform and educate Swiss television viewers, and so has the government. I am currently in Spain and I see plenty of children wearing masks to go to school, but also to sit at tables, and to play. The idea that masks are uncomfortable is rubbish, especially after you wear them a few times.

I think something else is uncomfortable. The idea that the pandemic, in Switzerland could go on for years at the current rate. We are five waves in, five. By now you would think that people had read a few articles, watched a few documentaries, and had a few conversations that had informed them about how this virus has worked. They don’t seem to. They seem as clueless as during the first wave.

We are in a pandemic, but people are not being given an accurate image of the situation. They are being massaged into thinking one thing, rather than another. They are being kept malleable. This malleability makes it hard to get everyone vaccinated, but also makes it hard to get people to mask up.

That is why Spain is so nice. You see that not everyone is wearing a mask, but whereas in Switzerland, you are an eccentric lunatic for wearing a mask in the street, in Spain you are almost normal. That feels pleasant. You see people walking alone, speaking on their phone, young people, not so young people, and others. You even see children playing while wearing a masks.

These are the images that Switzerland should show Swiss people. “Look, people do like wearing masks” or at least “look, life, with a mask, is almost normal.” I don’t understand the hatred of masks.

That is why emigrating from Switzerland might be worthwhile, to move to a nation where there is a hope of the pandemic ending sooner, rather than never.