Wearing a mask should be our new normal, not our latest political divide.
This past weekend I had to go to the grocery, and I was surprised by the number of people who weren’t wearing masks.
This past weekend, Baptist Health Lexington’s infectious disease chief Mark Dougherty had to go to the hardware store, and he was horrified by the number of people who weren’t wearing masks.
“It has to be the new normal to wear a mask,” he said. “It’s cheap, simple and common sense. I don’t think people realized how critically important the mask has been in reducing transmissions. We should be doing it now.”
Dougherty, who treated the first COVID-19 cases in Central Kentucky, says he thinks masks are what stopped healthcare workers at Baptist from getting COVID-19; and what could stop lots of other people from spreading it, too, because the infected are most contagious before they start showing any symptoms. A simple cloth mask can protect you from viral droplets, but more importantly, it can protect others from you if you’re infected and don’t yet know it.
Most of all, Dougherty said, wearing a mask is “not one iota” about politics.
Let’s hope he’s right. Because as we reopen in Kentucky starting May 11, Gov. Andy Beshear is requesting that everyone wear masks where inside people gather together. To prevent a second wave of cases, or until there’s a vaccine, we need people to wear masks in groceries and businesses, anywhere inside that you can’t properly social distance.
But already, we’re seeing pushback. There’s the horrific case in Michigan, where a Family Dollar store security guard was shot after he told a customer to wear a face mask. There are the protests against the quarantine in Frankfort, where only a few people wore masks. There’s President Donald Trump, who has announced that he will not wear a mask. We’re the land of liberty, but we’ve never quite found the right balance between personal freedom and collective responsibility. A much more valid concern is from black men, who worry they will be targets of racial profiling while wearing masks.
There has been mixed messaging. At the beginning of the pandemic, we were told not to bother with masks. Then the CDC changed tack and said we should wear masks when in public around other people. It makes sense, just as staying home means you’re less likely to get infected. While not as effective as never coming into contact with anyone else, masks are a small stopgap that allow us to start reopening the economy.
But not everyone agrees, and it appears to be that most typical of dividing lines: A new ChangeResearch-CNBC poll between March 11 and May 3 found that of the respondents, 90 percent of Democrats were wearing masks, while that number slipped to 66 percent for independents and 45 percent for Republicans. It’s political virtue signaling writ large; progressives will wear their masks like a badge of honor while conservatives show their bare faces with the same amount of pride.
Michael Cunningham is a University of Louisville psychologist and researcher, who’s working on a research project about personality and pandemic practices, such as, if you’re extrovert, do you have a harder time with social distancing? He says his research and real life observances tell him that people and businesses have a wide range of attitudes and practices toward COVID-19 prevention as we move forward. Recently, he offered a pair of vinyl gloves to the cashier at a fast food restaurant who was taking and giving back cash with her bare hands and she said “I have a pair but I don’t like them.”
“It’s really unfortunate when politics comes into play,” he said. “It just exacerbates divisions in society.”
The problem is, Cunningham said, that while Trump could be a role model in basic hygiene practice during a pandemic, he’s chosen to be a divider. “There are people who want to be liberated from the tyranny of not getting COVID-19, and he encourages them.”
It’s true that if Trump and Mike Pence wore masks in public, they could puncture this particular political divide. But let’s move on to more realistic scenarios, such as Kentucky continuing its really admirable practice in keeping down COVID-19 numbers. The next step is pretty simple. Wear a mask. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Mark Dougherty (who, by the way, says he leans libertarian).
“You don’t have the liberty to kill someone else indirectly,” he said. “It’s not going to work if we open up and people don’t change their behaviors. If we don’t wear masks, we’re going to be in trouble.”
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 9:13 AM.
