Wear a mask; but seriously you don't have to...

An article yesterday quoted Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah as informing the public during his daily press conference on Covid-19 that Malaysians are encouraged to wear face masks, though it was not made compulsory.

I reacted to the article with a smirk.

“Encouraged but not compulsory”. What does that mean?

I asked my friends and their response was: “It’s good if you decide to wear it. But if you don’t, that’s okay.”

Err, if it is good to wear a face mask, why then make it okay not to wear it?

I wasn’t quite satisfied with their answer, so I asked my kids, and their reply was: “It just means you can wear it if you want to. But if you don’t, it’s okay.”

Well, if it is completely up to us to decide, why even bother mentioning it?

Urgh.

Take for example the recent new regulation under the conditional movement control order, where four family members from the same house are allowed to travel in one vehicle. The announcement did not say, “The public is allowed to travel in fours but it is not compulsory for them to travel in fours.” Kan?

The thing is this - regulations should be clear and precise. It helps the public to act accordingly if the regulations are easily understood.

No wonder-lah that Malaysians are quite blur with most MCO and conditional MCO regulations.

Wear mask but seriously you don’t have to ... 

I saw a man the other day, outside a spice store. He placed his shopping bags full of groceries onto the floor, pulled his face mask down and covered his mouth with his two bare hands as he sneezed. He then wiped his hands on his shirt before putting on his mask, grabbing his shopping bags and walking into the spice store.

I saw another woman busy pushing her trolley at a supermarket, ever so frequently pulling her face mask down to her neck in order to unlock her handphone which uses facial recognition.

There are many people who wear face masks but not actually "wearing" them. These are the people who leave their masks on their chins – only to pull them back up to cover their noses and mouths as and when necessary.

I guess these people understood the Health Ministry regulation pretty well – wear the mask but don’t wear the mask.

But then again, if the decision to wear a face mask is totally up to our own discretion, why then did the police at the roadblock ask me if I had a face mask when I told her I was going grocery shopping?

Why did the Rela officers, who were guarding the wet market, inform me and everyone else there on their loudhailers to put on our masks or be denied entry into the market?

Why are there signboards placed outside many stores which inform customers that they are not permitted to enter the premises without a face mask – like the few bakeries I went to?

Please make up your mind, can or not?

Seriously, to wear a face mask or not to wear a face mask isn’t something we should be discussing at this point in time – not when we have spent more than a month-and-a-half cooped up inside our homes trying to beat this pandemic.

The thing about being cooped up way too long is that you also tend to lose your ability to think wisely. This is why regulations, which say "encouraged but not compulsory", don’t work. What we need is a clear statement.

After all, wearing face masks has been made compulsory in many countries. Why then are we not enforcing the same regulation in Malaysia? We are fighting against the same pandemic, are we not?

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FA ABDUL is a passionate storyteller, a media trainer, an aspiring playwright, a director, a struggling producer, a photographer, an expert Facebooker, a lazy blogger, a part-time queen and a full-time vainpot. - Mkini