Tossed masks, gloves reveal the disgusting side of human nature under COVID-19

Thestar.com
March 30, 2020
Jack Lakey

It’s not just toilet paper hoarders that are bringing out the worst in people right now. You can add users of disposable gloves and face masks to the list.

With so much fear in the air, people are trying to protect themselves by wearing gloves and breathing masks when they venture into stores or any place where they come into contact with others.

Most masks aren’t much good at filtering COVID-19 germs. Synthetic gloves definitely prevent contact with germs, so they’re more likely to be effective than masks.

All those masks and gloves on faces and hands raise a question: Where do people get them? They’re at least as hard to find as toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

But if the source of the gloves and masks is a puzzle, there is no mystery about what people do once they’re finished with them. They toss them to the ground and leave them wherever they land.

I hadn’t noticed until I saw an outrageous video posted on Facebook by Josh Pennock, in which he revealed a huge number of discarded gloves and masks in a Walmart parking lot in Vaughan.

To say it’s revolting doesn’t capture it. Clearly, the people who used those gloves and masks to protect themselves have no regard for the health and safety of others, or the environment.

“The lot seems to just be littered with gloves, plastic gloves everywhere, masks everywhere,” said Pennock in the video, while panning across the accumulated mess in the parking lot.

“This is not containing the virus, people. This is pollution. This is disgusting. The whole parking lot is covered with gloves and masks, and this is gross.”

His 90-second video, which was posted March 22 and has since been viewed nearly one million times on Facebook, had me wondering if it’s as bad elsewhere. So I drove to several mall parking lots Wednesday and found the same thing.

Pennock, who’s an arborist, said in an interview that “I was doing my isolation drive after being cooped up all day, and I just happened to notice all these gloves in the parking lot.

“This stuff is bio-hazardous waste, not just garbage or pollution. It was a shocking thing to see,” which is why he decided to make a video, he said.

“I did it because I’m trying to wake people up. Maybe we all die from this, but let’s leave a clean planet for the animals.”

The creeps who toss away their gloves and masks absolutely know they are littering, and that if prophylactics are needed to protect them from the virus, then they should be extremely careful in disposing of them.

Couldn’t glove and mask wearers carry a plastic bag with them, in which they can deposit their germ-laden refuse and properly dispose of it? Is it too much to ask them to respect their community and the environment?

The problem for me now is that every time I see someone hiding behind a mask or wearing gloves, I think, ‘There goes one of the pigs.’ And they can blame themselves if other people are thinking the same.