Masks not enough
Energy is wasted over face coverings when more is needed from us — and our leaders.
A man who was asked to put on a face mask at a barbecue restaurant in Kansas City responded by showing the teenage employee his holstered gun as evidence of his “exemption” to the statewide mandate. An argument over a patron’s refusal to wear a mask in a Michigan convenience store ended with the man stabbing a 77-year-old fellow customer and later being shot dead by police.
In Texas, GOP committees in eight counties have voted to censure Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for his order requiring Texans to wear face coverings in the face of soaring COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths.
Really, people? This is like arguing over who gets the TV remote control while the house is on fire.
Health experts insist masks help prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization now recommend cloth masks for the general public. Nearly 40 states have face-covering mandates. And if you don’t trust them, Walmart recently joined a slew of major retail chains and businesses in requiring customers to wear masks while inside their facilities.
The argument is over. Just wear the damn mask.
All this wasted energy over masks threatens to distract all of us from the grim reality that more — more from us and more from our leaders — is needed. And urgently.
A week has passed since Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, joined by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, asked the governor for authority to impose a two-week shutdown to relieve pressure on area hospitals that are pushing capacity on ICU beds along with strains on staffing and protective equipment.
After a brief dip in numbers last Monday, Texas has continued to set records for COVID-19 deaths, including three days in a row of more than 100 as of Friday.
Abbott, however, is not hearing those pleas. Or if he is, he’s not listening.
“It seems like I get this question a thousand times a day, and there seem to be rumors out there about a looming shutdown,” Abbott told Houston’s Fox 26 TV on Thursday. “Let me tell you: There is no shutdown coming.”
We wanted to ask him how he could so blithely disregard the urgent requests from the mayor and county judge of the state’s largest city and county, and home to its most alarming surge in COVID-19 concerns, but his office did not respond to requests from the editorial board for comment.
Abbott has said the answer is for everyone to faithfully follow his mask order, including the members of his own party, who call the mandate a violation of their constitutional rights.
“Many regions are running out of ICU beds,” Abbott told the state Republican Party convention during a virtual gathering last week. “And deaths have almost quadrupled, reaching more than 100 in one day last week. If we don’t slow this disease quickly, our hospitals will get overrun, and I fear it will even inflict some of the people that I’m talking to right now.”
Abbott has called the mask mandate “the last best chance” to avoid a statewide lockdown.
But, he is only half-right. Yes, the fight over the masks is foolish, and compliance would greatly help Texas get a handle on the outbreak. That’s not enough, though — and even one of the governor’s top medical advisers seems to agree. He said last week that the surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths in Texas is already bad enough to warrant lockdowns in at least the hardest-hit regions of the state.
“It’s clear that the state has not been on a sustainable course, and it’s worth considering a regional approach,” Dr. Mark McClellan, a physician and economist at Duke University and a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said in a Tuesday interview with Hearst Newspapers.
McClellan agreed with Abbott that if Texans were in perfect compliance with the mask order and other existing restrictions, they could suffice to reverse the surge. But perfect compliance is a fantasy, as the revolts within his own party show.
That’s why Abbott must act. He needn’t order the whole state to shut down. But he must grant Houston and Harris County’s request for a twoweek closing. Better yet, he could follow his own expert’s advice for a regional shutdown in those areas in the danger zones.
Masks are great, but they can’t cover everything.