The March of the Mucus Zombies

Amici, 

Regarding the mandatory wearing of face masks, especially as the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the resulting COVID-19 dies down:

There's a lot of folk with mental health issues who just cannot wear a mask. It is impossible for them. It puts them under tremendous stress, which by itself makes breathing difficult. My wife is like that. Wearing a mask makes her choke, or it is as though she has serious asthma and can't breath. A whole slew of people with a wide range of mental health issues, from minor to major, just can't manage the mask. (And that's only in terms of wearing one; looking at them is another matter, discussed below.) Then there's the actual asthmatics and others who have breathing troubles. I have COPD, and I notice that if I am wearing a mask (as on a bus or in a grocery) there's a definite limit to how long I can wear it without  gagging. 

Meanwhile, on top of all that, there's the constant monstrous image of people in masks. Masks were worn in pandemics in previous times, ones with long noses, etc., and they were hideous. World War I gas masks are hideous. Such masks look like skulls, or demons. All this is in the subconscious, of course, but it starts bubbling up. My wife pointed out to me that people in this various Covid masks look like they have huge blobs of mucus hanging from their faces, white mucus or blue. What an image! Then there's the black masks, like Biden the Demented wore over Memorial Weekend. He looked like a walking corpse; one just knows that if one pulls his mask off, his lower face will be a hideously grinning skeleton.

For the mental healthy (to the extent such exist, certainly none of us is spiritually healthy), none of this is obvious; but to those of use with an over-vivid imagination, we're walking about in a world of mucus-globbed zombies. The ghost of H.P. Lovecraft must be having a field day.

An Préachán