The faces of summer are masked once again
Aug. 8—HEY! HO! LET'S GO!
Not so fast.
I thought my Ramones facemask was finally going to wind down its days and become the COVID-19 souvenir I always intended it to be.
The mask features a cartoon picture of the punk band as featured on the album "Road to Ruin."
I thought we would be veering off that road this summer for a better path, but it looks like we're going to be dodging pandemic potholes for a while.
Right now, the Ramones garb sits in a kitchen desk next to the Bruce Springsteen "Born to Run" mask and the "Live Free or Fly" mask that promotes Manchester-Boston Regional Airport.
Those face coverings might be getting more use than I expected in the months ahead. Over the past week, national retailers including Home Depot, Dunkin', Lowe's, Target, Kohl's and McDonald's announced changes to their mask policies.
Some are requiring employees and customers to wear masks regardless of whether they have been vaccinated. Some are changing policies only in areas where the delta variant has led to a spike in COVID cases.
Meanwhile, local businesses are biding their time, reluctant to revert to policies that have curbed customer traffic and cut into their profit margins — and ability to survive.
After a trip to Colorado on Memorial Day weekend, I made light of a popular Denver record store that was slow to lift its mask mandate. Twist & Shout was still requiring customers and employees to wear masks — and limiting the number of people inside the store — days after local grocery chains had ended mask requirements.
Last week, the record store demonstrated its cautious adherence to guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control, announcing it was bringing masks back.
"This change is in response to the CDC's new indoor mask guidelines for counties with 'high' and 'substantial' transmission, spurred by the recent spread of the delta variant of COVID-19 and the low vaccination rates across the country," the company said on its Facebook page, noting the Denver area was in that category.
The Colorado trip to visit my son and daughter-in-law had been postponed from a year ago, when the pandemic forced my wife and me to cancel our plans. Now I wonder if we made the window for this year just in time.
The rapid spread of the new virus strain and the stall in the number of people who have been vaccinated are upending what we all hoped would be a return to some sense of normalcy.
Instead, we're prepping for the great vaccine battle, where companies are facing off with employees who have thus far resisted the call to get vaccinated.
Last week, United Airlines announced it would be requiring its 67,000 U.S. employees to be vaccinated by this fall. Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health said vaccines will be a condition of employment for its nearly 13,000 employees in New Hampshire. Long-term care facilities in the Granite State are also mandating vaccinations for employees.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock CEO Dr. Joanne Conroy hopes the decision of the state's largest private employer to require vaccinations will inspire other businesses to do the same.
"We are going to see an uptick in vaccinations, which kind of plateaued," she told the Union Leader last week.
Whether that uptick is big enough and fast enough to deliver the impact we need to curb COVID-19 will determine whether we remember 2021 as the year we emerged from our cocoons — or the one we ran back inside for cover.
In the meantime, "I Wanna Be Sedated" will be in heavy rotation on my summer Spotify playlist.
Blood and Ramones
While searching for a photo to illustrate this column, I found a Facebook post from a year ago, when I wore my Ramones facemask while giving blood during the Gail Singer Memorial Blood Drive. This year's drive is Aug. 17 and 18 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Doubletree hotel in Manchester. Visit gailsingermemorial.org. for details.
Mike Cote is senior editor for news and business. Contact him at mcote@unionleader.com or (603) 206-7724.
