Sunday, 24 January 2021, 4:32 pm
One crackling theme streaking through the US elections of
2020 was the issue of mask wearing. Critics initially felt
that facemasks were of the too important category in
combating the novel coronavirus: purchasing and using them
was tantamount to prizing valuable protective equipment from
doctors and frontline workers. But COVID-19 continued to
rage, and various public health bodies including the World
Health Organization revised their initially cautious
approach. Masks, manufactured in abundance, could be an
affordable non-pharmacological method of halting the spread
of the pandemic.
The facemask became the symbol of the
now departed Donald Trump’s view of the world: to don such