Minding Your Business Is Good
The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region.
Associate Editor Cherise Letson shares her thoughts this week with Mark Leger on vacation, running on rural trails and roads, and driving his son to baseball games and practices. It’s published first as a Saturday morning newsletter – sign up and receive our free daily newsletter too.
On the afternoon of Saturday, July 31, I was sitting in my car in a Shoppers Drug Mart parking lot.
The night before, I had the opportunity to see Atlantic Canadian music legend Alan Doyle play the Saint John’s Long Wharf as part of Area 506’s Waterfront Concert Series. For this year’s event, attendees booked pods of six or ten people where they could enjoy the performance, unmasked. But, of course, to leave their pod a mask was required. A pretty standard rule we’ve all become accustomed to over the last 16 months.
But the next morning we woke up to that rule, along with others, gone.
The province had lifted its state of emergency, eliminating most of its Covid-19 restrictions, the most notable being mandatory masks in all indoor public spaces. We were officially in “The Green Phase.” This came as a surprise to a lot of New Brunswickers since the original plan was to lift these restrictions when 75 percent of the province’s eligible population was fully vaccinated. As I write this, only 68.6 percent of eligible New Brunswickers are.
As I sat in my car, I watched intently at the customers coming in and out. Were they wearing masks? How comfortable are people feeling about this? Mask wearing had become entrenched in our daily lives. How many of us will be truly able to just ditch it like it never happened?
From my very unscientific observation, about half.
Knowing this would inevitably be the topic of my column this week, I decided to do a little experiment. I would wear my mask into one store and not wear one in the next and take notes on how people reacted and interacted, if at all.
I wore my mask into Shoppers on Saturday. Sure, part of it was for this column, but who am I kidding? I was a little nervous too. Not necessarily because I was worried about getting Covid (I am fully vaccinated), but more because of the potential judgement, mask or not. I think it’s safe to say that most of us don’t want to do the “wrong thing” and make people upset or uncomfortable.
As I browsed the aisles, I’d say about half of the customers wore masks. I paid attention to how people were reacting to each other and to me, one of the masked ones.
Honestly, people were just minding their own business.
I didn’t notice any weird glances, rude comments, or stares. People were just doing their shopping and being polite.
“Ok,” I thought. “This ain’t bad.”
The next stop on my Saturday errands was Costco. This was going to be interesting.
To my pleasant surprise, the people inside Costco, too, were minding their own business.
Like at Shoppers, I would say about half of the customers were wearing masks. In fact, some Costco staff were not wearing them either. As I frantically walked through the aisles trying to find where they moved the Starbucks Iced Coffee, I saw couples where one person was wearing a mask and the other wasn’t. I saw mask and unmasked customers talking to each other, friendly as ever. In the lineup, people were keeping a distance.
I was pleasantly surprised. Call me cynical, but I really didn’t know how it was going to play out.
I was even more surprised as I browsed through social media throughout the weekend, including Twitter, where people are the worst. I saw other local businesses post about how pleasant the weekend was, and how everyone was (mostly) respectful of other’s choice to wear a mask or not. I saw one shop owner comment on how they notice people’s overall attitudes change for the better with the restrictions lifted.
Of course, I read some accounts of individuals getting rude comments yelled at them, getting called “snowflakes” and such for choosing to still wear a mask. It’s not cool, but unfortunately, it’s to be expected. Some people just can’t mind their business and resist the urge to make themselves feel superior to strangers. It’s not a cute look, but OK.
Whether you choose to continue wearing a mask or not, you have valid reasons.
On one hand, the province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Jennifer Russell, and her team have determined it’s safe to lift these restrictions now. Objectively, she’s done a pretty great job getting the province through this thing and people are well in their right to trust her. Plus, if you, your friends, and your close family are vaccinated, the risk is much less. We’ve been wearing masks for 18 months now, so when the health authority says it’s safe to remove them, of course, many people are going to feel comfortable doing it. Just be respectful of other people’s space and boundaries. You’ve done it for over a year, you can continue to do so.
On the other hand, Covid-19 is not gone, in fact, it’s still a very real threat. As the Delta variant is running rampant in the U.S. and cases are rising again in other provinces like Alberta (who are deciding to lift restrictions anyway), New Brunswick has loosened its travel rules. Someone still wanting to wear a mask in the face of that, to me, is totally understandable.
I’ve also seen posts from parents whose children are under 12 and are unable to be vaccinated. There are also some people who have members of their families who are unable to get vaccinated. The risk is still very real, especially for these people in our community. If they want to wear a mask, let them and leave them be.
Nobody knows how this is going to play out. As the weeks go by and the vaccination rate climbs, perhaps more people will feel comfortable going maskless. Maybe cases will skyrocket again and masks will need to be reinstated. We don’t know.
But one thing we’ve done as a province (well, most of us) throughout this whole thing is shown compassion and respect for each other.
Let’s keep that going, and if you see someone still wearing a mask – mind your business.