Wednesday, August 11, 2021 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
MASKS: Delta variant
has caused return to
masking for some
Continued from page 3
recommends that everyone
in grade schools wear masks
indoors, including teachers,
staff, students, and visitors,
regardless of vaccination
status.=
On July 29, responding to
the Delta variant of COVID-
19, Governor Kate Brown
ordered the Oregon Health
Authority and the Oregon
Department of Education
(ODE) to create a rule
requiring masks for anyone
in an indoor school setting
this fall. Once the rule is cre-
ated, it will also affect sum-
mer programming, according
to ODE.
The Nugget has observed
a considerable increase in
mask wearing in public in the
last two weeks. When we vis-
ited Ray9s Food Place, where
masking is not required,
17 of 29 customers coming
through the doors that ran-
dom hour were masked. To
a person, they all seemed to
know the store9s layout with-
out hesitancy suggesting that
they were not tourists.
Locals often make sport
of guessing who on the street
is a tourist.
<Caps are a giveaway,=
said Morgan Forbes, who
was maskless along with all
13 customers at Sno-Cap
when we stopped by. <You
can spot them by their usu-
ally all-black outfits and the
sayings on their duds, or
wearing wool hats when it9s
95 degrees,= he joked.
<The masks are a dead
giveaway, too,= said his side-
kick, Danny Krause.
Shopkeepers tell The
Nugget that mask-wearing
by tourists is more preva-
lent than among locals, and
becoming a source of some
of the increased tension. A
manager at a local gallery
said, <I get city people walk-
ing in from out of town, see
me without a mask and give
me that 8what9s wrong with
you people9 look.=
A shopper in the gal-
lery, Melanie Morris from
Silverton, wore her mask and
said, <You9re damned if you
do and damned if you don9t.
It9s a lose/lose but I figure
wearing it gets me fewer
stares.=
But as noted in the Ray9s
sample, not all the masked
are visitors.
Some of the vaccinated
have lost faith that the vac-
cine will protect them,
especially against variants.
A number of vax holdouts
seem a bit less confident
in the face of the Delta and
Lamda strains. Not yet will-
ing to get jabbed, they figure
a mask can9t hurt. Others,
like Morris, just don9t want
the aggravation of arguing
the point or appearing to be
selfish.
Legacy media and the
Administration have taken
more and more to using
shame and name-calling to
induce the unvaccinated.
Last week, New Jersey
Governor Phil Murphy
called the unvaxxed <the
ultimate knuckleheads.=
The politics of the issue are
becoming less civil and seem
to run contrary to the goal of
incentivizing more vaccina-
tions. An August 2 podcast
of the Los Angeles Times
has experts <concluding that
shaming does not work, so
why do it?=
Sisters is a long way from
Washington, DC. People
here tend to pride themselves
on common sense or what
some characterize as a small-
town, laissez-faire attitude.
That might be changing.
Richard, a retired doctor in
Sisters (last name intention-
ally withheld), is staunchly
against COVID-19 4 not
all 4 vaccinations and can
eloquently make his case,
which he admits is in the nar-
row minority. He says he no
You’re damned if you do
and damned if you don’t. It’s a
lose/lose but I figure wearing
it gets me fewer stares.
— Melanie Morris
longer feels welcome in his
church as the only unvaxxed
congregant, although he
still attends, masked, with
regularity.
Sandy and Moira King,
who moved to Sisters from
Seattle in May, were the only
two of 57 indoor and outdoor
patrons at Sisters Coffee Co.
who were masked Saturday
morning when we vis-
ited. After some coaxing
they were able to admit the
tension they experienced,
feeling conspicuous in
choosing to mask up.
<Nobody says any-
thing to us,= Moira said,
<but I assume everybody
thinks we9re some kind of
nutcases.=
21
Gabe Ellis, a plumber,
said that he no longer arrives
on a service call without first
checking with the customer
about their mask wishes. He
sees more and more custom-
ers greeting him at the door
in a mask. He has his on for
every call and only removes
it when invited, a change in
only the past two weeks.
The Paper Place was full
of a mixed lot of masked and
unmasked shoppers. Those
willing to engage used the
word <frustration= almost
unanimously when describ-
ing the changing masking
environment.
<Mask fatigue might be
reaching its boiling point,=
said a frustrated Jan Gibson
from Bend, trying her best
to wrangle the masks on her
three pre-teen girls.
The frustration shows no
sign of ebbing any time soon
as cases and hospitalizations
mount.
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