Messaging on masks is a failure of political and health leadership

It’s ridiculous that so many people still refuse to wear a mask when shopping, four months after COVID-19 became an unseen threat to us all. And it boils down to a lack of leadership.

The one area where our political and public health leaders have failed to show any consistency in their advice since the outbreak of the pandemic is in the use of face masks.

Initially we were told masks were in short supply and had to be reserved for front-line health-care workers, and for people working at businesses deemed essential such as grocery and drug stores. As supply issues were addressed, we were told masks still were not necessary in public, even when riding public transit or shopping for groceries.

Failing a lack of clear directions from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Doug Ford or top medical officials in their daily COVID-19 briefings, some grocers started asking customers to wear masks to help protect their employees. That practice spread as more Ontario businesses were allowed to reopen, including my neighbourhood hardware store, which also tells customers to use the provided hand sanitizer and will not accept cash for now.

Eventually Ford himself started urging people to wear masks, and the premier has often been photographed wearing one in public, but he refuses to make it a provincial regulation.

Public transit systems in Hamilton, Ottawa and Toronto urge passengers to wear masks, with some preparing to make it mandatory as ridership starts returning to pre-COVID levels. Transport Canada made masks mandatory for airline passengers, but who’s flying where? Guelph and Windsor decided to set their own rules, mandating masks when you enter a business, and in the process started a patchwork of conflicting rules in the province.

There may be some Ontarians who have fallen into the U.S. mindset, fuelled by Donald Trump, that somehow wearing a mask is a sign of weakness and an infringement on their freedom, but they would be a tiny minority. So I truly don’t understand the reluctance of Ford and his government to mandate masks in stores.

A group of doctors, scientists and epidemiologists called Masks4Canada want non-surgical masks made mandatory in all public enclosed spaces, in crowds and on public transit. And they wisely want a public education campaign, not fines for offenders.

A recent study found masks prevented more than 78,000 infections in Italy in one month and about 68,000 in New York City over three weeks. A German study found mandatory masks could reduce daily growth in infection rates by as much as 40 per cent.

We’ve all learned that masks do little to protect us from COVID-19, but they do help protect others from what we may possibly be spreading, even if we have no symptoms.

So refusing to don one before entering a business where workers are wearing gloves, masks and even face shields eight hours or more a day to serve you is just plain selfish, and arguing with store staff about the issue is beyond rude to ridiculous. Mask-up buttercup.

Unless of course you have a medical condition that prevents you from wearing a mask. A well-funded provincial public awareness campaign would help educate people about why some shoppers may need an exemption but that most should wear masks, something municipalities have no real capacity to do, and could never do as effectively as the province.

We all accept the rules so succinctly summed up on stickers on the doors of many businesses: “no shirt, no shoes, no service.” How could anyone object to adding “no mask” to that list as we start to reopen from a pandemic?