Busta Rhymes

It’s disappointing, but unsurprising, that so many celebrities are so vehemently anti-mask and anti-vaccinations. When your livelihood revolves around public appreciation, the common-sense safety measures that have been put into place (albeit haphazardly) like lockdowns and vaccination checks are bound to feel limiting and unnecessary. So, the rich and famous have my empathy.

But when they use their platforms to spread misinformation or outright encourage their fans to selfishly dismiss public safety measures for their own personal comfort, that empathy pretty much goes out the window. Busta Rhymes did just that recently during a show in St. Louis, Missouri — a state where vaccination rates lag while new COVID cases surge — in a video which is beginning to make the rounds on Twitter, rallying the usual array of responses from dismay to smug, misguided satisfaction.

“This is my second show in front of human life in the last 15 f*cking months,” he says in the clip. “COVID could suck a d*ck.” However, while his introduction might be relatable, the rest of his speech turned out to be pretty irresponsible. “All these little weird-ass government policies and mandates… suck a d*ck!” he shouts. “Stop trying to take our civil liberties away… No human being is supposed to tell you [that] you can’t even breathe freely! F*ck your mask.”

So, there are a few reasons why this statement is, let’s just say “misguided.” For one, masks don’t prevent people from breathing — tests have shown you get the same amount of oxygen whether you wear one or not. However, wearing a mask DOES prevent droplets of moisture where the virus lives from leaving your mouth and nose when you sneeze, talk, cough, or even breathe, which helps prevent the SPREAD of the virus. It’s not for you, it’s for other people. Since you don’t know if you have it or not, it’s better to be safe than to kill someone’s grandma.

Finally, there’s no real civil liberty being violated here. People in other countries wear masks during flu season without being asked because they don’t want to spread the flu and they have baseline respect for other people in society. Busta’s argument, that masks make it more difficult to rhyme, eat food, or see people smile, pales in comparison to the threat of over half a million deaths from COVID — and potentially more, as the virus could mutate and become more deadly the longer it circulates through an unvaccinated population.

So yeah, just wear the damn mask. Be uncomfortable now so we can all breathe more freely later.

Watch Busta’s anti-mask rant above.