Mateship doesn’t seem to exist when it comes to face masks

Supermarkets have become battle zones and strangers are falling out in the streets. This one thing will help end the pandemic, so why can’t Aussies do it?

OPINION

I have started to really hate the supermarket. Not because of the fluorescent lighting or the anaemic plastic-wrapped fruit or even the increasingly empty shelves, which feel like something reminiscent of Soviet Russia. (What next in ScoMo’s Australia in 2022? Beet queues and having to buy cabbage on the black market?)

No, navigating my local supermarket has become deeply stressful for one idiotic reason.

Face masks. Boring, annoying, and hot face masks.

No one likes them. They are not fun to wear and there is not a single person aside from a select few particularly deviant masochists who are enjoying the fact that life right now requires we don masks every time we walk into a shop or cafe.

But, what the f**k Australia?

Every day, to enter, say, a supermarket or post office or any shop is to be faced with a not insignificant number of people who seem to think they know better than the collective might of science, government bodies and the global medical community and who are selfishly flouting the current mask mandates.

A mask on the chin is good for nobody. Picture: iStock

So, I reiterate: What the hell Australia? When did we become so hideously self-centred? When did we become a nation of people looking out for themselves at the expense of the greater good?

For more than a century everyone from poets, writers, politicians and historians have banged on about the Aussie spirit of mateship but what this current phase of the pandemic has done is revealed what a collective delusion that notion really is.

We have always viewed ourselves as a community and country that pulls together in moments of disaster or trouble. Every bushfire or flood means a new set of heartstring-pulling and cockle-warming footage of neighbours gallantly waving hoses or helping yank the elderly out of their submerged living rooms.

But now? When we are in the midst of the greatest crisis in our history in more than a century?

Every day, a legion of people choose to prioritise their very minor discomfort over the wellbeing and safety of the community.

Time and time and time again now, I find myself having to ask people to put theirs on, or yank them up off their chins.

What p*sses me off here to such an extreme my head is liable to start spinning, Exorcist-style in anger, is the abject selfishness that underlines this mask antipathy.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to wear a mask in the supermarket. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gaye Gerard

There was the woman bitterly complaining about how she was tired of having to wear masks in the post office queue, a P95 number hanging uselessly from her ear.

Twice in as many days this week I have found myself, blood pressure rocketing in my local supermarket where the staff seem to have zero appetite to tackle the recalcitrant not-so-few who aren’t masking.

There was the outside supplier chatting to a staff member who, in the middle of packed self-service checkouts whipped off his mask because he seemed to find it uncomfortable. When I asked him, politely mind you, to put it back on he looked at me with barely concealed loathing.

Ditto the cleaner in the same supermarket who this morning was sanitising surfaces in the fruit and vegetable section with his mask on his chin. Asked to actually pull it up he begrudgingly and angrily yanked it up.

Or there is the local grandee in my neighbourhood who on more than one occasion I have seen making his way inside the supermarket, not a mask in sight, not even a tired, fraying one dangling from a wrist in some desultory nod to pretending to follow the rules.

On the first occasion, I asked him to put a mask on – a cordial request that was met with a blank stare laced with contempt. When he refused to do anything, I asked the supermarket’s staff to ask him to do so, which was met with an equally blank stare and finally, a lethargic proffering of a mask from some poor, embarrassed teenage cashier.

(It should not be anyone earning minimum wage’s responsibility to be on the frontline of getting Australians to follow very basic and simple rules.)

Wearing a face mask helps to protect yourself and others. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Naomi Jellicoe

In my apartment building, despite mask signs having been slapped on nearly every single surface, one out of every two residents I encounter don’t wear masks and will look pissed off when I decline to share a lift with them.

I now walk into the supermarket bracing myself for the uncomfortable and angry confrontation du jour. I hate having to do this but I feel even more keenly and fervently that we all have a responsibility right now.

How dare anyone put their own very one minor discomfort ahead of the safety and health of the most vulnerable in our community? How dare anyone be so cavalier with the lives of others?

On Monday, 28 Australians died of Covid. That is 28 families who are grieving today, families who have lost a mother, a father, a friend, a neighbour, someone who made them laugh or gave them hugs.

When I was recently discussing the figures with a friend they dismissively threw out, “Oh but they all had underlying conditions.” True, but so do 47.3 per cent of Australians, according to Disability Discrimination Commissioner Dr Ben Gauntlett. That equates to more than 12.1 million people in this country.

Expression matters, particularly in dealing with the #Covid19 pandemic. I like 47.3% of Australians have an "underlying health condition". If a person dies from #Covid when they otherwise would not have - they do not die from their health condition. A life is a life. #disability

— Ben Gauntlett (@BenGauntlettDDC) January 10, 2022

When you choose not to wear a mask, you are choosing to potentially endanger the lives of others.

It’s time to start getting mad. Really bloody mad.

Stuff the awkwardness of approaching strangers. People who choose to put their own selfish interests (and the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask) ahead of the safety and health of the community deserve to know they are not getting away with it. We see you and your pathetic self-serving priorities.

So, if you see someone who is not wearing a mask, smile amiably and say, “Excuse me, you need to be wearing a mask here.” (Raving banshee is decidedly not the go here.)

I don’t want to live in a country where we report on one another but one where look out for those who need it the most.

This pandemic is a moment when our choices and actions can have profound, even deadly, consequences for other people. It has also held a mirror up to who we are as a nation and the picture is really bloody disappointing.

Do better Australia.

Daniela Elser is a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.