It is not so beautiful from an educational point of view. We were always taught as a kid that you should ask for something kindly, or better yet, not ask at all, just point a little and make suggestive comments. But now we are starting to realize that urgent advice is more effective: “Mom, I urgently recommend getting me a new PlayStation.” ‘Different….?’ “Just do it, it’s really urgent advice.”
Because we are herd animals who like to imitate, mimic, retweet, share and like each other, after that urgent advice you soon saw some docile consumers shopping around in Albert Heijn with masks, unaware that they are the hip early adopters of a mass movement now underway. But even individuals who a few weeks ago stated firmly that they could not ‘breathe freely’ (‘free the penis!’) With a mouth mask in front, can suddenly do so anyway, and columnists who previously joked that their glasses were fogged up, are from now on mouth masks adepts. Anyone who walks in a public space without a mask in a week or so will feel like a man in swimming trunks on a nudist beach.
The next phase will be the development of a face mask fashion, because you can also turn an ‘urgent advice’ into something fun. All kinds of artistic designs have been available for months, and you see tips everywhere to make your own design, but when they are worn en masse it is even more important to distinguish yourself with your mouth mask, because herd animals are all individuals too. Striped face masks, speckled face masks, face masks with wide legs, silk face masks, electrically cooled face masks, butt caps, mouth packs, basket cups, face masks with a QR code, so that the catering industry immediately knows who you are, and where is the ‘hate beard’ model, for example?
And for RIVM boss Jaap van Dissel, there is the ‘Jaap van Dissel’ model, so that no one sees that he is also wearing a mouth mask. Because even when almost all Dutch people, all over the place, happily do their shopping, he will still sulkily push his disinfected shopping cart through the supermarket. From a meter and a half away you can hear him muttering behind the Jaap van Dissel cap: ‘It’s a political decision but it doesn’t help, haven’t I been saying it for six months? This has an extremely minor effect. ‘ Fortunately, the aerosols that are released end up in his beard.
Van Dissel will secretly hope that the number of infections will continue to increase after this urgent advice, so that he can rip off his cap at a dark purple corona card and say triumphantly: “You see, I was right after all.” Because for scientists, being right is the highest and admitting wrong is the worst.
The coming months in the public space it is not about being right, but about courtesy. Anyone who now goes to aerosol at the bakery or in the supermarket out of equality, may have Jaap van Dissel by his side at a meter and a half, but he is a lomperic. Taking the fear of corona into account isn’t mandatory, but it really shouldn’t require urgent advice.
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