I felt sorry for the young man, a lanky tall Caucasian in his 20’s. He was jogging up the trail passing by me along the Lincoln Golf Course by the Pacific Ocean.
He was gasping for air under his surgical mask that covered his mouth and nose. What an ignorant young fool! I shouted at him, in my head. For I didn’t want to be punched in the mouth. But what a confused soul! You’re shortening your precious young life by drowning your lungs in the dirty used air you just breathed out into your mask and forcing it right back down your throat and into your lungs!
Didn’t he feel the piercing pain in his poor lungs? They must be hissing hysterically crying for fresh air.
And there were hardly any people around as far as the eye could see. Whom are you afraid of “infecting” with your breath from your imaginary Covid-19 infected lungs?
What better time than this early Saturday morning to come outdoors to breathe the precious oxygen-filled fresh air. It’s a heavenly blessing that Americans have this luxury of sweet fragrant fresh air available. And what a precious gift it is to get lifesaving oxygen from so many luscious green vegetation, shrubs, beautiful flowers and majestic trees all aroundus. Picturesque nature is especial prevalent in the outer Richmond District, my San Francisco neighborhood where there’s all-year round ocean breeze, cool mist and refreshing fog that keeps the air exceptionally fresh.
One look at the young man gasping laboriously for air under his face mask with every running stride up the slope, I myself felt suffocated, even though I was walking down the slope of the trail and wasn’t wearing a mask.
How blindly trusting ignorant people like this young man are by following the City’s recent law ordering people to “cover up your face” at all times, in all places, due to the Wuhan virus, aka Covid-19.
Sure, to prevent the spread of the airborne Covid-19 virus, the law makes sense if there are large crowds outdoors, especially indoors. No one has to remind me to mask my face when I’m shopping inside the grocery store like the Grocery Outlet with no windows to let in the natural fresh air from outside and is often stuffed with crowds of people. You breathe out. I breathe in. People just swap each other’s dirty used air and stuff it down into their own lungs. And no one’s forehead is stamped: “Danger: Covid-19-infected lungs!”
When it comes to shutting off your lungs and denying them the nurturing outdoor fresh air, the law no doubt is a dumb one, evidently made by some out-of-touch-with-no-common-sense bureaucrats.
It’s a crime to mask off your mouth and nose to nurturing oxygen-filled fresh air when you’re outdoors with plenty of cold hair-whipping wind and refreshing misty fog but and you don’t get to see or pass by people every few blocks. That’s how our lungs will get weakened and sickened!
Smart Americans seem to have lost their marbles.
In early morning, the vastly long Clement Street is usually empty, dotted with only a couple of people here and there walking their dogs. It’s ridiculous to see the dog walker wearing a mask in such a crispy refreshing cold mist of the City.
Hey, how hypocritical of these dog walkers. Your dog’s poop you left on the sidewalk for all to tread on gives out more deadly sickening virus than your mere breath into the drafty air in the empty street! I feel like shouting at these people. If only the dog owners stop contaminating the sidewalks with piles of their dogs’ feces. On my daily walking to the Ocean Beach, I have to constantly look down instead of up to enjoy the scenery trying to dodge around the smeared dog mess, praying that I’ll find no freshly trampled-on dog do-do in front of my home today! Ugh.
Sometimes, I do see a few people who don’t wear face covering walking in my cool neighborhood. Yes! People with good common sense. So far I haven’t been bothered by any law-enforcers, when I walk to the Ocean Beach, the kingdom of fresh air.
After growing up in China’s dry, barren dusty bowl of yellow earth in the city of Taiyuan, I appreciate San Francisco’s year-long cool breeze and refreshing cold air. The fog looks mysterious and beautiful like a bride’s veil. Every time I see beautiful fog rolling in, I smile with a comforting feeling because it’d otherwise look like the dreadful waves of choking sandstorm in my childhood. And I’ll for sure take a deep breath just to remind myself that I now live in the paradise of fresh air.
To keep my lungs healthy, and boost up my immune system, I have to breathe in the lung-cleansing outdoors fresh air. It is heavenly sitting on the seawall looking out at the Ocean Beach and breathing in the refreshing salty Ocean breeze.
I feel sorry for people walking around with their faces covered, denying their lungs with refreshing sea breeze all around them at the Ocean Beach, the kingdom of fresh air. They are oblivious to the fact this was the time their lungs be given oxygen nutrients. What a waste of fresh air! What are these people thinking, I always wonder? They are killing their lungs with a face mask! Are they afraid that their breath is going to sicken the luscious green plants, majestic trees and the vast Pacific Ocean?
My heart is pained when I see how the dumb masking law is torturing little kids.
An eight or nine-year-old girl was crying, her face red with frustration and her mask muffling her pleading and sobbing. She didn’t want to wear the face mask. But, as her younger brother looked on, she was lectured by her parents that they had to follow the “law.”
One little boy was gasping for air and constantly lifting up his mask to let the fresh air in as he was running excitedly back and forth along the seawall.
It’s painful to watch teeny tiny toddlers and little kids with their mouth and nose covered with a mask while playing in the outdoor fresh air on the velvet carpeted lawns of fragrance in the park, where the only people around are their parents!
I worry. And it’s not Sky-is-falling kind of Chicken Little worry.
If people don’t give their lungs a break by breathing outdoor fresh air as necessary nutrients but keep breathing indoor stuffed air all day then drown their lungs in their own dirty used air under a suffocating mask when outdoors, there will be, in no time, a lot of sick people with diseased lungs.
Sickened lungs pandemic! I already see the headlines screaming. Scores of famed scientists are putting their heads together, trying to find an answer to this mysterious new pandemic breakout. And the scale of it, they exclaim, have never been seen before!
Ah, humans. So prone to create self-made crisis. And this time, with the face mask hysteria.
I agree with you totally. What I find even stranger is when people are driving alone in their cars wearing a face mask. What on earth? Thank you for writing what many common sense people already think. They want to silence and shame us for speaking common sense and truth.
I couldn’t agree with you more. As a new immigrant, well, not that new, 30+ years, I used to be a whole sale to America, adoring everything and everyone American because I thought they have to be superior to create such a great country!
Then I found out, over the years, a lot of people don’t have critical thinking ability but blindly following what the government tell them to do! Sad. The Chinese people were, and still are, NOT allowed to think differently, so naturally they act like wooden people with no brain cells of their own. But, here, in the free world, many Americans do that, too?? Very disappointing!
I want to thank you for visiting my site and apologize for replying this late – I didn’t think anyone would stop by my website at all! What a pleasant surprise! Thank you very much.
My deep gratitude.