THE POLITICS OF A PIECE OF CLOTH
ARE ANTI-MASKERS THE NEW ANTI-VAXXERS?
Meeting the press after being diagnosed with coronavirus this week, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro answered some questions, then stepped back from the reporters and tore off his face mask with a thumbs up flourish, strangely triumphant for a senior citizen infected by the virus that has killed more than 535,000 people around the world in four months.
“Just look at my face. I’m fine, thank God,” he said.
The popular notion that people wear cloth masks not to protect themselves, but to protect others, is proving a hard sell, both intellectually and morally, among presidents as much as common citizens.
People were quick to realize that cloth masks did not protect them personally. That was easy. It seemed obvious that, unless you have a proper N95 with face shield, simply covering your mouth and nose with an old sock or a bandana is not going to reliably protect you in close contact with a coronavirus cougher. The public has been slower to embrace the concept of the asymptomatic carrier, who may feel no symptoms, but might still infect others and unknowingly spread the illness.
Masks are suddenly everywhere, not by choice anymore, or even mere recommendation, but by law. This week, they became mandatory indoors in Toronto and Ottawa, and reportedly soon to be Montreal, where they are already required on transit.
There was an outbreak of mask discussion earlier in the pandemic, but it was a technical argument that went unresolved. Partly this was over lingering uncertainty whether COVID-19 is truly airborne or merely spread by spittle flecks and contaminated surfaces. It was also partly due to conflicting messages from the Public Health Agency of Canada about whether masks might contribute to a false sense of security and makes things worse for the wearer.
But slowly, as summer arrived, the mask discourse escaped into the real world of the general public, with predictable results, including aggression, stubbornness and sanctimony.
The world, as usual, seems starkly polarized. Some people see mandatory masks as a sign that we are all in this together. Others see them as communist propaganda prioritizing collective good over individual rights.
Those “others” have lately become extraordinarily vocal, thanks to the new laws. Letitia Montana, for example, a far-right protester against lockdowns, posted a video of herself being refused service last Saturday at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Toronto, because she refused to wear a mask inside.
On Tuesday, she marched in Toronto with a group wearing “Hugs Over Masks” shirts, gave a speech linking masks to the worst atrocities of history, before entering the subway to violate the rule about masks on transit.
Similar confrontations and anti-mask dissent have taken place across North America, including a senior who refused to wear a mask in a store, protesting that she was an American citizen.
What unites them is an emphasis on individual freedom and a distrust for institutional authority.
There is a comparison to vaccines. In general, people do not get vaccines in order to protect others, although that is a consequence. They get vaccines to protect themselves and their children. Herd immunity might be a primary public health goal, but to the patient, it is usually presented as a secondary benefit of the jab.
But when people oppose vaccines and masks, they do it in similar ways.
There is no COVID-19 vaccine yet, but some of the more outlandish propaganda about the disease has focused on the notion of a vaccine as a vehicle for mind control, birth control, or other nefarious schemes, often with anti-semitic angles focused on George Soros.
Closer to reality, hesitancy about vaccines and masks is driven by a disdain for expertise, often with fears of corporate influence. Research last year in the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggested neither scientific illiteracy nor online misinformation were the main driver, but rather mistrust of scientific institutions.
That has been a major theme of the pandemic, with spokespeople taking the worst of it, including racist abuse of Canada’s chief public health officer Theresa Tam, and the smear campaign against her American counterpart, Anthony Fauci, nicknamed Dr. Doom by those trying to validate President Donald Trump’s reassurances that the American pandemic was going well. This week, the United States made formal its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, in the main because of China’s feared influence.
Like spiders, anti-mask conspiracy theories web out across the internet, connecting to other movements such as gun rights in America, or anti-lockdown protests. The mask is now intensely politicized.
Bolsonaro and Trump are not just the world’s leading anti-maskers, they are also the main avatars of a new nativist populism.
Trump has come around to masks, though, after weeks of mocking his rival Joe Biden for wearing one.
Bolsonaro wore a mask in public too, after weeks of refusing to. But for his protection it was too late, like trying to take back a sneeze. All he could do was protect others.