Wearing of a mask has been politicized; most do right thing
Jolie Brox lives in Milwaukee with her husband and four young children. The couple owns Fit4YouMKE, a mobile personal trainer and juice business. In a normal year, the family is out and about constantly — selling their products at community events and festivals and taking their kids to playdates and parties.
Since the pandemic, though, their home base is — literally — their home, where Brox and her husband take turns helping their kids with virtual school and doing the best they can to keep their business afloat with online orders and deliveries.
Kim Adcock lives in Twin Lakes. She is the mother of a 6-year-old son and the owner of a boutique called Adcock Farm & Co., where she sells handmade gifts, brings in local vendors and holds events; she also works part-time at her son’s school.
Adcock said she is worried about the future of her business and struggles to figure out which “rules” to follow around coronavirus prevention. “No one contacted us,” she said. “I don’t want to bash anyone or throw anyone under the bus, but no, I don’t have anyone to say this is what you should do to run your business.”
Coronavirus cases are rising — statewide and nationally — and disease prevention precautions are changing due to emerging science and court challenges. Add to that, masks became a politically charged topic during an especially divisive presidential campaign.
Brox and Adcock, like most Wisconsinites, want to do the right thing. But it isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
Wearing a mask is the ‘friendly thing to do’
Since May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been clear that wearing masks will reduce the spread of the virus. But initially, officials said masks weren’t necessary because there was a mask shortage and
public health leaders wanted to preserve masks for health care and other essential workers.
People were also told initially to watch out for a handful of symptoms, a list that grew as more information was gathered.
Some people see the changing guidance as proof that public health advice should not be followed, but Dominic Packer, a professor of psychology at Lehigh University, said that’s a misunderstanding of how science works. Scientists don’t automatically know everything from the beginning and their recommendations change as more is learned.
“(Science) is always accruative,”
Packer said.
Science clearly shows that wearing masks helps stop the spread of coronavirus. But Brooke Nichols, an epidemiologist with the Boston University School of Public Health, said masks don’t have to be worn all the time. Mask-wearing is about risk mitigation and assessing where transmission of the virus is most likely to occur.
“Being at home alone or taking a walk outside by yourself, you’re fine not wearing a mask,” said Nichols. “If you’re on a picnic and ... sharing the same bowl of chips. That’s a riskier thing you probably shouldn’t do.”
Until the virus is no longer a threat, Nichols said everyone should keep public health in mind. She calls it the “friendly thing to do.”
The politics of masking
The politicization of COVID-19 mitigation measures has muddied the waters as people try to figure out what to do, Nichols said.
“I wish it hadn’t become about wearing masks or not wearing masks based on what ‘camp’ you’re in,” she said. “How about everyone just says, ‘These are the situations when we wear masks and it’s based on science?’”
Packer, who studies group dynamics and behavioral psychology, said national leadership, political polarization and disinformation have all contributed to the confusion and haphazard support of measures like masking.
But the extreme politicization over masks that happened in the U.S. didn’t happen everywhere, Packer said. “I think (American) leaders had choices, early on especially, and could have made different decisions to highlight national unity and not play it as politically as they have,” he said.
The result? Two universes where some people take the precautions seriously and others do not.
Packer said the political nature of mask-wearing has become linked to identities, and as a result, some people see it as a way to broadcast their “team” rather than to stay safe.
“If a left-wing governor calls for more distancing or wearing masks, then the other group automatically rejects that.”
Still, his research shows that most Americans, regardless of political party, are wearing masks, social distancing and following other directions. The latest Marquette University Law School poll of Wisconsin voters showed that 64% said they always wear a face mask when they’re out in public and 20% said they wear one most of the time.
‘You’re damned if you do or you’re damned if you don’t’
Adcock said she has experienced mask-related backlash. One of her customers attended a fair Adcock organized and noticed that one — out of several vendors — wasn’t wearing a mask. The customer spread the word to people in her small town that Adcock wasn’t taking precautions seriously.
Adcock was devastated “I have a ton of vendors and I feel like that’s my moral responsibility, to make sure they’re keeping everyone safe,” she said. “I really do try to be super cautious about it. If (customers) come in without a mask, I can’t enforce it because they tell us not to enforce it in case they have health risks. Then we get the other people who say, ‘I don’t want to come to your business if you do that because this is a hoax.’”
“It’s like this whole process has been you’re damned if you do or you’re damned if you don’t,” she said.
Brox, who also makes her living selling products at events, canceled nearly all of them this year. The Broxes’ business has survived the pandemic by filling online orders, selling their wares at a few small private events, and partnering with a business at Sherman Phoenix, an entrepreneurial hub in Milwaukee that specializes in cultivating Black businesses.
Brox gets nervous when people at the events approach without masks; she even asks visitors to her backyard to wear masks if they can’t social distance,
“When I see people without masks, in the back of my head, I’m like, ‘Why don’t you have a mask on?’” Brox said. “But you never know people’s situations, and I don’t attack people if they don’t have masks.”
So far, Brox’s policy around maskless people has been to make sure she and her family are masked up and to keep farther away. “I really only have more control over what my immediate family and I do,” she said.
‘You’re putting everyone at risk if you try to act as normal’
Bobbie Rand, 77, spent nearly half a century working as a nurse. She gets particularly irritated when people come up with non-health-related reasons for why they can’t wear a mask.
“There are way too many people who say, ‘I can’t wear a mask, I can’t do it, I feel like I’m choking.’ “Rand, who lives in Delafield, said. “As a nurse, I have worn masks all day, several days in a row. A mask doesn’t kill you, no matter what you have. It won’t kill you.”
“From a public health perspective, Nichols said you can’t think only of yourself. If you get infected and your child goes to day care, or you go to the grocery store, or you’re involved in society in any way, it’s not just yourself you’re putting at risk,” Nichols said. “You’re putting everyone at risk if you try to interact as ‘normal,’ the way things were before the pandemic.”
Brox said she wishes more people had taken the pandemic seriously from the beginning.
“Earlier in the year when Governor Evers ordered the shutdown, it didn’t seem like there was a shutdown at all,” she said. “When we would go out to get groceries, it seemed like just a typical day with everyone still out there.”
And with cases on the rise, Brox said she wishes people would stay home when they don’t need to go out, practice social distancing and wear a mask. “I think there are too many stubborn people that are affecting those who do need to get out there,” she said.
“If a left-wing governor calls for more distancing or wearing masks, then the other group automatically rejects that.”
Dominic Packer Professor of psychology at Lehigh University