Wear a mask for the sake of strangers

Afew months ago, two seasons back, it was striking to spot someone on a train, in an airport or strolling down a supermarket aisle wearing a mask for health reasons. Our eyes have slowly adjusted to the sight, so that anyone whose face is now uncovered in public is truly unmasked as a nonconformist. Yes, cost can be a reality for some of the most vulnerable members of our communities. But by scorning masks, many outliers express disregard for the rest of humanity.

There will always be people who resist social norms and laws. Some dismiss seat belts, drink before driving, or treat speed limits as applying to those in the rear view mirror. Financial penalties are a harsh reality of trying to protect the majority of the population from poor instincts of the relative few.

So Gov. Ned Lamont is trying a similar strategy to steer the coronavirus in the opposite direction. Anyone not wearing a mask in Connecticut now risks a $100 fine. Participating in a large, unsanctioned event can put you $250 in the red. Organize said event and the penalty rises to $500 (crowds are supposed to be capped at 25 people indoors and 100 outdoors). Similarly, Metro-North is now enforcing a $50 penalty for mask-less riders.

These measure may seem ruthless, but actually show mercy. A fine is an infraction, unlike a misdemeanor that could result from an arrest.

For some, this takes things too far. Darien First Selectman Jayme Stevenson, a Republican, called fines a “tipping point of government overreach” and declared she would not enforce them.

Carol Platt Liebau, president of Yankee Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank, said Lamont’s “onerous” restrictions “bear little relationship to conditions on the ground.”

It’s precisely the conditions on Connecticut turf that summon such mandates.

More than a thousand high school football players, coaches and families huddled in Hartford so closely last week that they looked like they were trying to hear whispered signals for a fourth-quarter play. Yes, they wore masks, but their physical closeness represented the perfect argument — without words — that canceling the fall season is the right call.

It was revealed Wednesday that at least one of the football players at the protest has tested positive for COVID-19. Would the crowd have been as packed if participants had known that in advance?

There will always be extreme differences in opinion when it comes to policies such as these. Former Navy SEAL Carl Higbie, an elected official in Greenwich, proposed a town ordinance to leave decisions on wearing masks up to the individual. It’s likely to be dismissed as folly, but is a reminder that there are risks in every crowd.

The single goal everyone shares is to return to masks being the exception rather than the norm. For now, though, even cynics need to accept masks as a symbol of shielding strangers from this lethal pandemic.

More than a thousand high school football players, coaches

and families huddled in Hartford so closely last week that they looked like they were

trying to hear whispered signals for a fourth-quarter

play.