Joseph Sabino Mistick: What can you do for your country? Wear a mask.

The most tragic problems with this pandemic are the result of Americans who don’t seem to get it or don’t seem to care that they are putting others at risk. Without masks or social distancing, they crowd into bars and onto beaches, and even try to force themselves into stores. And then they go home to their loved ones.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has said, “I think if we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I think in four, six, eight weeks we could bring this epidemic under control.” That was two weeks ago, and we could have been halfway there, but things have only gotten worse.

One person in the United States dies nearly every minute from this plague. Our national death toll surpassed 160,000 last week. Hospitals and health care workers are overwhelmed, local economies are shutting down again and schools that planned in-person attendance will now be online.

America is in retreat. And, according to the scientists and public health officials, this could have been avoided. But some Americans have turned a small piece of cloth and the slight inconvenience of wearing it into a ridiculous political symbol. And others, mostly younger, are recklessly nonchalant.

If your own sense of liberty is linked to your refusal to wear a face mask in public, you are not a trailblazer. There were “mask slackers” during the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed around 675,000 Americans over two years, but most people complied with mask and distancing requirements.

It was patriotic to wear a mask then, and it was sold as a way to protect American troops. It is still patriotic. We must slow the spread before America can come back from this — before businesses can reopen and kids can get back to school and our economy can recover — and masks and distancing are all we got.

Those young Americans we see in the news packing parties and bars without masks are not making a political statement. They are the bad exception, a small and stupid part of a very smart and responsible and hardworking generation, and they are clueless. They are thinking of themselves and nobody else.

What has happened to us? If our parents and grandparents could have shortened the Great Depression or defeated our enemies in World War II or avoided war in Korea or Vietnam by wearing a cloth face mask or taking some other simple measure, they would have jumped at that. But it wasn’t that simple for them, and they made the big sacrifices.

In 1960, President John F. Kennedy challenged his fellow citizens to do even better for the nation and the world. At his inauguration, the young president called upon his fellow Americans to, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

And now there is something simple that we can all do for our country. We can do it for our families and friends and neighbors, for the businesses and store clerks where we shop, and for the health care workers and first responders who protect us. Just wear a mask.