In parts of our country, there is a
controversy about whether government – Federal, state, or local – has the right
to force a citizen to wear a mask. Steve believes that governments do have this
right, but defends any citizen’s inalienable right to be an idiot...as long as
it is in the privacy of their own home.
Einstein provided that great
definition of insanity, which is to “do the same thing over and over again and
expect a different outcome.” Perhaps Einstein would have been pleased by this
definition of stupidity: being told exactly what steps you must take to solve
your catastrophic problem, and then completely ignoring them.
Yes, governors in states that are
losing the battle with coronavirus, you are being told exactly what steps to
take to essentially guarantee that your COVID-19 problem will be wrestled to
the ground, and too many of you are willfully ignoring them. Entire countries – and a number of states in
the Northeast U.S. – have proven that if you follow these steps, you can safely
re-open. But you are ignoring them. What's that word, Einstein?
The cure is, as they say, hard
but not complicated. Implement sheltering-in-place, social distancing,
mandatory masks, and the operation of only essential businesses for 45 to 60
days and it is pretty much guaranteed that your state will look a helluva lot
more like New Zealand than Brazil. Can we be any more clear?
Of course I should not be so
insulting. To Brazil, that is.The truth is that a number of states look
worse than Brazil. One of the most telling measures of the level of contagion
of the coronavirus is the number of new cases in the past
week per 1,000,000 of population. This measure creates a strong relative benchmark: it allows you to make better comparisons of the extent of the virus between different sized populations...how pervasive is the virus on a per capita basis? More important,
it is not a cumulative measure, but is based on the situation in the past
week. In short, it answers the question how bad is the situation right
now?
As of this morning, consider the
"new cases, past week, per million of population:"
Brazil
1,354
United States
1,412
Florida
3,450
Mississippi
2,774
Arizona
2,518
S.Carolina
2,415
Georgia
2,384
Just for context: the comparable current number for New York State? 253. In Connecticut, it is 135. In Vermont, it is 83.
Italy is 26.
Fun fact: the five states shown here
are among the 18 in the United States that CNN does not include in their list
of states that "require people to wear masks when in public."
Yes, five of the states with the
most acute density of COVID-19 cases still don't think they need to take one of
the most simple, effective, and proven ways to contain the virus.
Indeed, Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia went to court to actively prevent Mayor
Keisha Lance Bottoms from implementing a mandatory mask order in the city of
Atlanta. Kemp claims that her order contradicts his own directive that no local
official could take an action that was "more restrictive" than
statewide policies, which do not allow local officials to mandate the use of
masks. Kemp based the statewide position on his desire to rapidly re-open
Georgia to commerce.
It's a curious and circular
argument. At the level of political theory, Kemp appears to be asserting that
because an individual has a right to make their own choice about wearing a
mask, the government cannot mandate the wearing of masks. But do individuals
really have that right? A great many states disagree.
And at a practical level, Kemp seems
to be saying that he needs to let his state and its commerce operate with as
few restrictions as possible in order to avoid economic catastrophe. Allow me
to point out that when a deadly virus is raging through your communities, it is
going to paralyze commerce. Interestingly, a large portion of the
population does not want to cruise the jeans section at the Gap if it could
result in the untimely death of Grandpa. Turns out that many, many people will
hold off on the bottomless shrimp at Red Lobster if it entails the risk of six
weeks on a ventilator. Sure, a portion of the population wants to go back to
the bars and restaurants regardless of risk, but the broader point is clear: a
local economy divided against itself will not thrive.
Governors, all you are doing by
prolonging your premature “re-opening" is allowing the people who don’t
care whether they have the virus or will get the virus to roam freely
throughout your lovely towns and cities, greasing the velocity of contagion,
prolonging and exacerbating the spread of the pandemic. This, ironically, further paralyzes the people who do care, do worry, and will not re-engage in
commerce until the risk is mitigated.
Allowing people to freely spread the
virus, Governors, is only fanning the flames of its contagion while it further
strangles your local economy.
Florida, Georgia, and Arizona are
three of the worst states in the nation for the density of contagion, yet these
three states have not issued mask orders. Yes, Governors Kemp, DeSantis, and
Ducey, it seems pretty darn likely that it is going to take more than masks --
perhaps going back to square one and locking down large portions of your states
-- to get your COVID-19 problems under any semblance of control. And yet you do
not even require masks in public places... perhaps the simplest and most
effective step you could take.
No, Governors, you can't hide in the
shadows and hope that the mask mandates at Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Kroger, CostCo,
Home Depot and other businesses do your work for you. Sooner or later you are
going to have take real action, in defiance of your anti-masker citizens and
your ignorant President. Might as well bite the bullet and get it over with.
Stupid isn’t pretty, and it’s certainly nothing to be stubborn about. That the
leaders of these states are ignoring science while trying to suck up to a
delusional President and his supporters all in the hope of retaining political
power is not just dumber than a box of hammers... it is political cowardice,
plain and simple.
It is cowardice because these governors are putting their citizens at risk in order to suck up to a President who wants the voting population to believe that he has the pandemic "under control." But it is also cowardice because these Governors are afraid of upsetting the anti-mask vigilantes in their states whose conservative views likely comprise enough of their electorate to jeopardize their re-election prospects. These states, and others, clearly contain a virulent anti-government segment that challenges the government's right to force them to take steps to ensure the health and well-being of the society as a whole. And these governors are afraid of them.
Yes, there is a question at hand
raging across America today, one that has carved out an entirely new front in
the political polarization of our country.
In towns and cities across America,
citizens are already pushing back against mask mandates, and pushing back hard.
They push back because wearing a mask is inconvenient, uncomfortable, because
they don't think the virus is all that dangerous and is really going to harm
them, and because they either cannot understand that a vital purpose of the
mask it to prevent spreading the virus to others, or they just don't care.
Can citizens can be compelled by
their government to participate in steps to arrest the spread of a virus? Can
they be forced to wear a mask?
Or, as we chose to frame the issue
today: do American citizens possess an inherent, undeniable, irrefutable right
to be stupid?
It would seem that at face value
(sorry, that just happened unintentionally), the wearing of masks in public
places would be one of the biggest no brainers since opting for the
Southwest flight instead of ValueJet. A U.C. Davis study released on July 6
concluded that “the risk of infection to the wearer is decreased by 65%” by
wearing a mask. Dean Blumberg, who is chief of pediatric infectious diseases at
UC Davis Children’s Hospital, phrased his conclusions with an elegance and
grace I cannot match:
“Everyone should wear a mask. People
who say ‘I don’t believe masks work’ are ignoring scientific evidence. It’s not
a belief system. It’s like saying ‘I don’t believe in gravity’… You’re being an
irresponsible member of the community if you’re not wearing a mask. It’s like
double-dipping in the guacamole. You’re not being nice to others.”
Ah, leave it to the medical
community in the greater Los Angeles area to find the perfect metaphor for
community spread of the coronavirus in a Mexican-style party snack. Hey, if the
only way to get people to understand the gravity of a global pandemic is to
equate it with improper hors d'oeurve etiquette at a tailgate party,
then bring on the Tostitos.
Consider that someone can have the
disease and spread it without having any symptoms whatsoever – a fact that
appears utterly incomprehensible to the under-30 population in the American
South. Will someone south of the
Mason-Dixon line try explaining this to your party-raging 20-something: if you
don’t want to wear a mask to protect yourself, wear one so you don’t
accidentally kill grandma, your sister who is a new mother to an infant, your
teacher, your coach, or the cashier down at Rite-Aid?
Yes, you do have an inalienable
right to be stupid.
But you do not have an inalienable
right to allow your stupidity to risk injury or death to others.
In my efforts to be as fair-minded
as possible, I willed myself to construct a defense for the unmasked
position. The best I can do is the following. Bear with me, because it is
painful.
In the past few weeks, there has been no shortage of Facebook posts that attempt to equate a requirement to wear masks with other examples of government "intervention" for a greater good. Smoking indoors, drinking and driving, taking
your collection of AR-15s to a room in a Las Vegas hotel and spraying innocent
citizens with machine gun fire… there are plenty of good examples of instances
in which an individual’s actions clearly violate the rights of and cause harm
to other citizens. But for all the Facebook posts, I don't get the sense that
many people are disputing that the government has a right to do that.
The unmasked vigilantes would point
out this in the matter of masks, you are not forbidding citizens from
doing a harmful action, you are requiring that they take the step of
wearing a prophylactic device to avoid doing harm to others. That is different.
They might be quick to point out that there is no law requiring that you wear a
condom when having sex if you know you have AIDS. While there are some state
laws that require that persons who have HIV must disclose their condition prior
to engaging in sex with partners, there are also states in which you can opt to
not tell your sex partner that you have the AIDS virus, effectively putting
that person at risk of a chronic lifetime disease or death without their
knowledge. In many states, there is no law against it.
Sounds a lot like having the freedom
to not wear a mask if the purpose of the mask is to prevent harm to others,
huh?
Further in the search for legal
parallels and precedents, there is the entire issue of requiring
children to be vaccinated against certain diseases as a precondition for
attending school. Hey, in my book, if you don’t want to vaccinate your kids,
that’s cool. Just home-school them. Don’t put my kid at risk
simply because you opt to be stupid. But this is far from settled law. The
anti-vaxxers will tell you that the government has no right to force them to
vaccinate their children.
And then there are the pro-active
steps that the government takes to prevent citizens from doing harm to themselves.
You are required by the law to wear seat belts, for example, and the number of
people who angrily protest against those decades-old laws is, uh, nobody.
However, you are completely at liberty to smoke, which Kurt Vonnegut
characterized as the “a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.” So it
is against the law for you to take a relatively small risk with your
own life inside your own vehicle, but it is just dandy to spend thirty years
addicted to a behavior that is virtually certain to cause health issues and
very likely death. Go figure.
You are not allowed to smoke at a
bar, but in that same bar you are free to consume quantities of alcohol with
the tacit expectation that you will sensibly limit your consumption so that you
can drive home safely. However, if you fail to drink in moderation, swerve into
the other lane and kill that nice young couple, there is a high likelihood that
you will live to be tried for murder... because you were legally required to
wear a seat belt at the time.
So there is your anti-masker view,
and the perspective has some merit: our laws are all over the map. It’s clear that the government can tell you to stop doing things that
hurt others, but perhaps a little less clear that the government can make
you to something you don’t want to do for the same purpose.
So when an indignant
rebel-without-a-clue insists that the government has no right to mandate
mask-wearing, you might want to attempt to engage in constructive dialog by
conceding that there indeed is significant inconsistency in our Federal and
State legislation regarding government regulation that attempts to constrain or
require certain elective behaviors in order to prevent harm to fellow
citizens.
If, however, that person wants to
engage you in a debate without wearing a mask, back off at least six feet and
look for signs of wheezing, coughing, and difficulty breathing. Be prepared to
run.
The nature of civil society is
grounded in a notion of social contract, which is often reduced to the notion
that your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. The social contract means
that if you want to reap the benefits of association with and participation in
a grouping of human beings, you better be prepared to accept that the collective
has the right to impose rules on individuals in order to protect the health and
safety of all.
Yes, you have the inalienable right
to be individually stupid – a right that frankly is being exercised by too
many people in these days of a pandemic -- but not the right to ignore the
social organism’s requirements for peaceful co-existence. By participating in
the social organism, you are tacitly agreeing to its right to set rules.
All of which is to say: the United
States government, and local governments, have every right in the world to
mandate behavior if it is judged to be crucial to the peaceful and healthy
co-existence.
If you categorically, absolutely
refuse to wear a mask, go join the Branch Covidians, where you can hide
out on a farm and grow your own food. God help you if you need to repair your
plumbing.
If you don’t want to wear a mask,
that’s fine with me. Just don’t walk down Main Street, don’t get on the bus,
don’t order a Big Mac, don’t relieve yourself at the rest stop on the
Interstate, don’t run in a crowded park. Feel free to enjoy not wearing your
mask at home and in socially-distanced strolls in your neighborhood.
And if you really want to make your
protest into a real, honest political statement, you can always resort to civil
disobedience. That means intentionally violating a law for the purpose of
making the point that you think the law is unjust. But there’s this one little
issue with civil disobedience: you have to understand and accept that you will
be arrested and punished for violating the law. You will go to jail. That is
the entire point of civil disobedience: that you believe so strongly in your
contrarian view that you are willing to go to jail to make your statement to society.
So, yeah… if you want to protest mask requirements by going to jail, fine. All
I would suggest is that you might want to bring a mask to wear in prison,
because the spread of COVID-19 in our jails is even worse than it is in Broward
County.
Yes, the government has every right
to require you to wear a mask in public.
All we need now is government that
has the guts to recognize that they possess this right. Come on, Florida. Get
with it, Arizona. And God help all of you in Georgia who elected the second
biggest moron in the country to be your Governor.
A mask mandate in a local town is
only as effective as the degree it is embraced by the entire population.
And in fighting a global pandemic,
our nation is only as strong as the state with the biggest problem. The
Northeast worked hard to wrestle COVID-19 to a draw.
It's unfair that states that don't
have the will to implement the full measures to fight this virus are going to
send contagious people all over the country and restart the pandemic
everywhere.
Many of the governors who refuse to
implement mask requirements claim that they think masks are a matter of
personal choice, and that they respect the right of the individual to make
their own choice. This is truly the apotheosis of circular idiocy: stupid governors
making stupid decisions and justifying them by citing their respect for the
right of the individual idiot to make stupid decisions.
Who in these states is defending the
right of citizens who simply seek to avoid being made ill or die at the hands
of careless, clueless, or reckless fellow citizens?
All we need now is state governments
that realize that they can stop of spread of the coronavirus in its tracks if
they just have the guts to take the steps required to stop the coronavirus in
its tracks.
All we need now is state governments
that have to suck it in, accept that they re-opened too quickly, too broadly,
and without any of the testing infrastructure in place to measure whether they
were able to keep the virus in check while re-opening.
That means we need leaders who
understand that they have to back to square one and start all over again. In your hard-hit areas, you must re-institute lock downs, sheltering-in-place, social
distancing, and mask... for 45 to 60 days.
Because I will defend each and every
American’s individual right to be stupid in the privacy of their own home.
But that is not a freedom we can
afford to extend to our leaders and our government.
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