face masks

Wednesday March 10, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 10, 2021

Humans are using around 129 billion masks per month

We know that personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks and face shields is important in protecting people against COVID-19.

April 22, 2020

But who’s protecting Mother Earth?

According to a study by the Environmental Science & Technology journal, humans around the globe are using approximately 129 billion disposable face masks and 65 billion plastic gloves every month.

And many of those masks have become litter in streets, beaches and oceans.

That waste is cause for concern for environmentalists like Rebecca Prince-Ruiz.

“There’s been an extraordinary rise in single-use plastics used in PPE,” said Prince-Ruiz, founder and executive director of Plastic Free Foundation, an organization aimed at limiting single-use plastics across the world.

“It’s the issue on top of everyone’s mind.”

Disposable masks are extremely important for front-line workers such as doctors and nurses.

Stopping their use isn’t an option.

But there are small things everyone can do to reduce waste, Prince-Ruiz said, such as wearing reusable masks.

Kids can also encourage adults to reduce their use of plastic gloves.

There are also companies finding creative solutions to this environmental issue. (Continued: CBC Kids) 

 

Saturday September 12, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday September 12, 2020

How will Covid-19 affect Christmas 2020?

October 29, 2019

Premier Doug Ford says that the thought of children heading out trick or treating next month amid a global pandemic makes him “nervous” but he is cautioning residents that a lot can still change between now and Halloween.

Speaking with reporters during his daily COVID-19 briefing on Thursday, Ford said that it is too early to make a decision about what will be done about Halloween in Ontario but he conceded that the idea of trick or treating does worry him.

“Let’s play it by ear and see what happens over the next month-and-a-half but it makes me nervous, kids going door-to-door with this. I would prefer not to,” he said. (CTV) 

Meanwhile, with the coronavirus pandemic having already led to so many of 2020’s planned events and celebrations being shelved, there’s now concern that it could also ruin Christmas, amid fresh restrictions being imposed on gatherings in England.

August 6, 2020

New rules banning gatherings of more than six people are set to come into force from September 14, with Chris Whitty warning that the rules won’t be changing in the next few weeks – which could potentially impact those festive family get-togethers and parties.

Although Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said he ‘hopes’ they can turn things around before Christmas, Dr Hilary Jones has warned that this year’s festive season will ‘not happen unless we change what we are doing’. 

So could Christmas really be cancelled courtesy of Covid this year – and just how much of an impact will the virus have on the festivities?

Like most of the other festivals which have taken place in the shadow of the pandemic – including Ramadan, Eid and Passover – Christmas will of course happen on December 25 this year as usual.

And while Covid might not stop you from putting up your tree, tucking into your turkey dinner, watching those festive movies or listening to Merry Christmas Everybody on a never-ending loop, there are other aspects of the festive season which will almost certainly feel the impact. 

Here’s what a Covid-19 Christmas might look like this year.

December 18, 2019

Festive celebrations in December are as big a part of Christmas as the big day itself – but these are likely to be under threat this year unless the rules on gatherings of more than six people are lifted before the festive season rolls around.

Have pantomimes been cancelled? Oh yes they have. Theatres across the UK have shelved plans for their usual festive pantos this year.

What about a trip to Santa’s grotto? Well that might be off the cards too – Harrods have said on their website, for example, that their traditional grotto won’t be happening this year (but that they will be announcing Covid-safe festive plans very soon)

December 18, 2018

That doesn’t mean grottos are off the cards completely – even if your little ones have to keep their distance and Santa has to don a face mask.

Dr Atkinson explained: ‘Santa’s Grotto will be a socially distanced affair. So sitting on Santa’s lap isn’t likely, because it is likely to put children, but moreover Santa, at increased risk of transmission.

The day itself dawns, and you’re normally looking forward to a big family gathering with everybody round the table for lunch before curling up in front of festive telly. But with gatherings restricted to six people – and the possibility that could extend beyond Christmas – could that trip to see the folks be out this year?

2021 may seem like a long way off still, but no sooner is Christmas done and dusted than New Year celebrations come along – but we can expect them to be a bit more muted than usual this year. (Metro UK) 

My encounter with an ex-President

The Ayatollah, by Graeme MacKay, c1980

The first time I gained an audience after delivering my earliest offering of political satire I was 12-years-old. It was 1980, and I was part of a generation of youth growing upon a constant diet of television news and Saturday morning mass marketing. The gag was a pop bottle being held up by the infamous leader of Iran alongside the caption “Drink Ayatollah Cola.” With the daily fear reminder of an angry, eyebrowed dude in strange garb from halfway around the world holding hostages and leading mobs in chants about death to America, the cartoon was instantly hailed by my classmates and was allowed to hang on the wall.

President Carter, by MacKay, c1980

From a Canadian kid’s vantage point in 1980, the world was clearly divided by good and bad. The Soviets, led by a wheezing, uni-browed autocrat named Brezhnev had his billing for the evilest bad guy challenged by the Ayatollah Khomeini, a real-life Darth Vader.  The good guys were the Americans led by President Jimmy Carter.

Plains, Georgia peanut

Being the leader of the free world brought with it the customary ordeal of ridicule and derision by comedians, satirists and editorial cartoonists. It was thanks to them that a brief moment of history was culturally defined by a big, toothy presidential grin on giant peanuts, caricatures by Dan Akroyd on SNL and across newspaper editorial pages. It was a golden time for an aspiring cartoonist to begin honing his skills.

I was too young to delve deeply or understand much about the details of domestic turmoil the USA faced during the Carter years. I do recall picking up bits of gloom about an energy crisis, of stagflation, of malaise and the fact that the youngest Kennedy brother had an ax to grind about an unpopular President.

The lasting memories of the Carter years for this 12-year-old-foreigner’s mind are the global events of a never-ending hostage crisis, a Summer Olympic Games boycott and a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Jimmy Carter wearing a Jimmy Carter mask

Fast forward 40 years later and that same President was photographed amidst a pandemic wearing a toothy grinning Jimmy Carter face mask, designed by yours truly.

The news of this came through a series of tweets beginning with a question to followers by the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists Twitter account asking if anyone among us designed face masks. Since I do run an online shop of history caricatures I replied. That led a cryptic reply with a photo of a senior wearing a mask under the handle @peanut_brigade. Then, to a Google search of a July 31 article in the Las Vegas Review Journal. 

David Osborne, an accomplished musician who plays piano at Las Vegas’ Bellagio hotel, is also known as “Pianist to the Presidents”, for the number of White House performances he’s made over the past several decades. He and Carter have built a friendship over the years. On the eve of Osborne receiving a music award in his home state of Oklahoma, the pianist received a texted photo of the masked ex-President by Jimmy Carter himself. He then shared the photo with the Las Vegas newspaper. 

Jimmy Carter swag

If only I could go back in time and tell my 12-year-old self that I would one day draw a cartoon of Jimmy Carter’s smile and Jimmy Carter would wear it on his face!

Jimmy Carter has built a very respectable standing in his post-presidency years. Unlike others, he hasn’t used public life to enrich himself financially. Instead, he’s lived a long life advancing human rights and helping to improve the quality of life for people around the world.

Even in their mid-90s Jimmy Carter and the former First Lady Rosalyn, continue to devote themselves to public service by doing what a sitting President is loathe to do, promote the use of face masks in the time of a deadly pandemic.

That’s a noble cause to put pen to paper to, or in this case, Presidential pearly whites.

Jimmy Carter smile masks are available through Graeme’s online store www.mackaycartoons.net, $2 from each sale goes to Habitat for Humanity Hamilton.

Jimmy Carter Face Masks are available through Graeme’s shop on Redbubble

MacKay’s Carter Editorial Cartoons

May 16, 2002

 

May 2, 2012

Facing Face Masks

(Graeme is currently enjoying a Summertime respite from his usual duties drawing editorial cartoons. In the meantime, please enjoy this illustration highlight of things on offer for purchase through his Redbubble online shop. Graeme’s daily satire returns on September 1, 2020.)

Redbubble introduced face masks as a new product available for artists to design and sell a month of two after the WHO declared a COVID-19 pandemic. At first I held off adding them to my shop, skeptical knowing they aren’t medical grade PPE and wondering if they only provide false senses of security. The evolving opinions oscillating among varying degrees of effectiveness delayed my enthusiasm until the push back began against a solidifying scientific consensus that they actually do work in controlling the spread of the virus. A mouth covering whether medical grade, homemade, or in the form of a novelty mask as in the case of what’s on offer at Redbubble, the bottom line is that any mask that covers the nose and mouth will be of benefit. 

April 14, 2020

I’m firmly in the trust science camp when it comes to my own existence living through a pandemic. Experts have been for years predicting the scale of what’s happening right now in the world and there have been plenty of recent scares to prepare us for these times from SARS, H1N1, swine flu, and Ebola to name a few.

The biggest one of all in modern history was the Great Pandemic of 1918, with an uncanny number of similarities to the Pandemic of 2020 as I pointed out in this post of newspaper clippings from a hundred years ago. Then as now, were the skeptics, the contrarians, the religious zealots, the anti-science kooks, and the lunatic political fringe, all rallying against public health & safety measures, calling them a conspiracy, a hoax, a plot against rights & freedoms, an over-reaction leading to the destruction of the economy. 

To me the pandemic skeptics delight in showing themselves as skeptics by acting like stubborn refuseniks shunning face masks in public. One sees them all the time when out and about, with their masks hanging below their ears and chins in shows of defiance of mandatory rules.

Meanwhile, people are dying because of this infection.

If any authority is going to realize those deaths more than any other authority it’s going to be government. It’s government (most of them, anyway) that’s telling us to keep a distance from one another, and government is telling us we need to wear masks, because they are being guided by scientists. There’s always an inclination to mistrust government in many other areas, but advice on how to protect oneself during a pandemic isn’t one of them.

My answer is masks are going to be here for a while, so as we’re using them to protect us and others, why not get on the growing bandwagon to express ourselves?  I am happy to help, and here’s a few to consider:

JFK mask
Shakespeare
Washington mask
Oscar Wilde
Pope of Mope
Nixon mask
Darwin
HRH

Please have a look to see the many more masks of this particular style on offer through the MacKaycartoons store with quotes and without. If you think you have a particular statement that might go well with one of the personalities I’ve drawn do let me know and I’ll post it up.

Did you hear about the famous person who shared a photo of themselves wearing one of my mask designs? Oh, well let me tell you…

Wednesday July 29, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday July 29, 2020

NHL returns after months-long hiatus due to coronavirus pandemic

May 15, 2020

NHL hockey returns Tuesday after a months-long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Montreal Canadiens are in Toronto to take on the Maple Leafs and the Edmonton Oilers meet the Calgary Flames at Rogers Place as part of Tuesday’s three-game exhibition schedule that kicks off Phase 4 of the league’s return-to-play plan.

The Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers square off in Toronto in Tuesday’s other game.

Edmonton and Toronto are serving as hub cities for the 24 NHL teams that are returning to action, though the Canadiens and Flames are listed as the home teams Tuesday night.

Each team will play an exhibition game at Scotiabank Arena or Rogers Place between Tuesday and Thursday before the playoff qualification round begin on Saturday.

The NHL suspended its season March 12 due to the spreading global pandemic and announced its four-stage return plan May 26. (Global)