Some have, though, and the parallels are instructive.Īmericans are figuring out how to live with a deadly new virus now, just as gay men did in the early years of AIDS. But long-standing habits-such as not wearing a mask to the grocery store-are difficult to break, and until recently few American adults have been called upon to do so. Instead, they played right into his notions about the finger-wagging, “elitist” public-health experts who want to take away the freedoms of ordinary Americans.ĭuring a health crisis, some people quickly accommodate a major shift in behavioral norms. Yet those responses did nothing to persuade Huff to wear a mask. The anger toward mask naysayers is understandable, and shaming can feel relieving in the moment.
Many called him a social disgrace for disrespecting his community, abdicating his civic duty, and putting Grandma at risk. “Let’s make this bullshit stop now! Who’s with me?” In a video that went viral the following day, he said his critics had tried to shame him for “threatening the lives of millions of innocent people” and insisted that he considered dying from the coronavirus preferable to “wearing a damn mask.” “It’s unconstitutional to enforce,” he wrote. Last week, the former Major League Baseball player Aubrey Huff announced on Twitter that he was no longer going to wear a mask inside any business.
