by Kerry Dougherty
Every writer has a favorite place to sit and create.
Mine is my screened porch. Most days I grab my laptop and coffee to head outside for most of the day. I’m there now, in fact, enjoying a drizzly, warm and quiet Sunday afternoon. There are no high-spirited beachgoers walking by with kids and beach chairs today. Just unseen birds singing in the trees and the occasional dog walker sloshing by in squishy boots.
I like to watch the world while I write.
Lately, working on my porch has provided me with a new distraction: I find myself pausing numerous times a day to watch the construction of a new house just across the street. The old place that stood there for at least 75 years was charmless and dilapidated. It was razed several years ago.
In its place, a gabled, three-story home is rising. I’m in awe of the skill it takes to build such a structure.
Since early spring, that property has been buzzing with workers. First there were the guys pouring the foundation, then the framers, the electricians, the carpenters and the roofers. I watched men blowing in insulation one day. Guys installing windows the next.
And I think of these hard-working men — skilled and unskilled — every time I hear Joe Biden mindlessly yapping about a “national mask mandate” — and the need for everyone in America to wear a mask outside for “at least” the next three months.
That’s insane.
Folks who work outside in the elements should not be forced into masks. In fact, no one should be ordered into a face covering while out of doors.
It’s unhealthy and in summer months it would be torture.
Virginia Beach just experienced the hottest July since 1993, with at least four consecutive days of temps above 100. The mercury has been bouncing between 90 and 95 almost every single day.
Yet the roofers next door were hard at work in the most punishing heat. Add a mask to that task and it would become unbearable and dangerous for men on ladders.
Suddenly Biden, a man who’s spent his entire life leisurely working in comfy air-conditioned, taxpayer-funded offices, believes it’s good public policy for roofers, lifeguards, letter carriers, game wardens, road construction crews and other outdoor workers to be wearing face coverings in blistering temperatures.
Nonsense. These workers aren’t sick. They aren’t making anyone else sick. They’re generally not in close proximity to other people while diligently performing their tasks.
Ordering them to wear masks smacks of some sort of creepy government experiment in social control rather than public health policy.
Biden keeps parroting some “experts” — perhaps the same discredited knobheads who predicted 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. if we didn’t shut it all down back in March — who claim that if everyone in the country wore a mask all the time for three months it would save 40,000 lives.
Clever. That prediction impossible to prove or disprove. And if you argue against it, the mask cultists accuse you of not taking the virus seriously. Or not caring about others.
You know what, I’ll risk that accusation. Masks outside ought to be a hard NO.
Two weekends ago Biden was photographed bike riding with a couple of aides. For reasons known only to the former vice president, Biden neglected to wear the one piece of equipment that might protect him while biking — a helmet — and was the only member of his little band wearing a face mask.
Yep, outside on a beautiful day.
That’s either virtue signaling or a fear so irrational that it’s devoured whatever was left of Biden’s common sense.
Let me be clear, I don’t care if Joe Biden or other terrified people want to wear masks every time they step into the fresh air.
But stop trying to force the rest of the country into this sort of moronic behavior.
This column was republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed & Unedited.
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