The Psychology Behind Why People Won’t Wear Masks

The reason why so many “karens” won’t cover up goes deeper than entitlement

Lin
4 min readJul 27, 2020
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I’ve always known people were ridiculous, but it took a global pandemic for me to realize how much. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, are dying each day, and there’s no real cure. All you can do is try not to get it, and hope that your immune system is strong enough to hold out if you do get it.

I think it’s safe to say one of our biggest defenses against the spread of COVID-19 is masks. Wear a cloth mask out in public, and you protect other people from catching the virus from you.

It’s not a tall order — I’d rank it up there with covering your cough or not sneezing on people.

Yet, people have turned mask-wearing into a big deal. I’m sure we all remember some of the anti-mask protests in May and June — where people across the country railed against legal mandates to wear face masks (in fact, some of those protestors were even armed, but they still got better treatment from law enforcement than anybody protesting for BLM).

More recently, one woman freaked out when her dentist refused to treat her without a mask. Another maskless-man got turned away at a Walmart, and still tried to fight his way inside.

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Lin

When I’m not writing, you can usually find me hanging out with my cats