Zed A. Shaw, Painter

I started wearing masks early on in the pandemic and I had the same reaction. People yelled at me that the mask was useless, why am I wearing that, looking at me like I'm a weirdo. They went out of their way to shame me in much the same way as when I wore gloves.

I can't explain why, but Americans have some kind of weird aversion to protective gear. If you wear earplugs at a concert you're a dork. If you wear gloves while you paint, put on a N95 mask, have your guitar at a comfortable height, all bring shaming and claims you're a dork.

Why I find this strange is the USA is also a culture of invention. We've been finding clever ways around problems for hundreds of years, and are known for this, so you'd think they'd be like "Wow cool hack! You should get patent." But when it comes to protective gear, nope.

Now if you compare that to a country like Japan you see that they have no problem wearing masks, following guidelines, and that doing this is perceived as being a good citizen. This may be the same in Sweden, where (I'll let a Swede tell me) maybe this is also a social good.

This experience just wearing gloves when I paint makes me think a severe quarantine lockdown in the US is actually pointless. Not because it wouldn't work, but because culturally Americans just think it's the worst thing ever and won't even follow it if it was mandatory.

This also tracks w/ why we have a quarantine in many places and it's just not working. I walk outside and people just DGAF, no mask, no distance, just fuck it. NYC reports people still go running ffs. They lined up by the thousands to watch a boat pull in and still had concerts.

So, I sadly believe that the US quarantine will be worse than doing nothing. Not only will it basically be like doing nothing because people won't listen, but it will also destroy the economy and take a decade to recover. All because Americans don't want to look like dorks.