Rob Horowitz: To Mask or Not

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

With apologies to the Bard, to mask or not to mask, that is the question -- at least for some Americans.

From a public health perspective, of course, there is no question. "There’s clear scientific evidence now by all the droplet experiments that happen and that others have done to show that a mask does prevent droplets from reaching others," coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.  “We need to be wearing masks in public when we cannot social distance. It’s really critically important,” she added.

Wearing a mask to limit the spread of COVID-19 is a major recommendation of  the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):  “CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”

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Additionally, wearing a mask provides some small measure of protection for the wearer. The main point, however, given that many carriers of Covid-19 are asymptomatic and as a result don’t know they can be spreading the virus, wearing masks and social distancing, reduces the possibility of infecting one’s neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens.

Yet, despite the public health benefits, for some commentators on the right, the mask has become as Rush Limbaugh refers to it a “symbol of fear”--an impingement on individual freedom and a sign that America is not yet ready to re-open.  President Trump both plays to this view and continues to encourage it through his vocal ambivalence about masks and his refusal to set a positive public health example by wearing one.  The president, for example, recently flouted a request from Ford’s Executive Chairman Bill Ford to keep a mask on at all times when he visited a Michigan plant where it is required.

This turning of even a common-sense public health step that -- if widely adopted --will help us re-open the nation safely into another battle in the culture war has real-world consequences.  One-in-five Republican men view wearing a mask in public around others as a “sign of weakness,” according to a recent/HuffPost/YouGov poll.  Even more to the point, only 36% of Republicans say they wear a mask always or most of the time, as opposed to 60% of Democrats who say the same.

Recognizing the public health implications of this view of masks, Republican governors are beginning to speak out forcefully. Governor of North Dakota Doug Burgum exclaimed, "I would really love to see in North Dakota that we could just skip this thing that other parts of the nation are going through, where they're creating a divide -- either it's ideological or political or something -- around mask versus no mask  This is a, I would say, senseless dividing line."

“If someone is wearing a mask, they're not doing it to represent what political party they're in or what candidates they support," Burgum continued. "They might be doing it because they've got a 5-year-old child who's been going through cancer treatments. They might have vulnerable adults in their life, who currently have COVID and they're fighting."

Similarly, Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press on Sunday that mask-wearing “is not about politics. This is not about whether you are liberal or conservative, left or right, Republican or Democrat, It’s been very clear what the studies have shown, you wear the mask not to protect yourself so much as to protect others. This is one time where we are truly all in this together. What we do directly impacts others.”

President Trump and his right-wing media enablers should follow Governors Burgum and DeWine’s lead, putting the health and safety of all Americans first and saving the destructive culture war politics for something that doesn’t save lives.

 

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.

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