Lawmaker: Why no masks to slow AIDS?

Arizona’s death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 16,000 this week, so naturally, the state House figures it’s time to allow businesses to ignore local mask ordinances.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Joseph Chaplik of Scottsdale, reasons that it’s a matter of individual freedom and besides that, society has managed to survive other viral outbreaks without having to cover their faces.

Take AIDS, for example.

“We heard about that in the ’80s,” Chaplik told his colleagues during a Wednesday floor debate on the bill. “Yet no masks were required.”

Chaplik’s bill passed shortly thereafter, on a party line 31-28 vote, with not a single legislator pointing out that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, cannot be spread through the air.

But then, no one will ever accuse the Arizona Legislature of operating on a high scientific plane.

Chaplik is a newbie in the Legislature, a real estate investor who ousted then-Rep. Jay Lawrence, a geniunely nice guy who was perhaps best known for saying really dumb things then having to apologize for them.

It remains to be seen if Scottsdale traded up.

Chaplik’s House Bill 2770 would allow businesses to decide whether to enforce local mask mandates. Customers then would have the option of deciding whether to go there.

“It’s about the individual rights of these business owners as Americans,” he said.

Other Republicans agreed.

“The bill doesn’t say ‘masks don’t work,’ ” said Rep. Travis Grantham, RGilbert. “The bill gives business owners ... the right to make a decision.”

I wonder if business owners also should be given the right to ignore, for example, county health requirements, if they serve food? Or ignore fire codes and sprinkler ordinances, if they pack in crowds to see movies or concerts.

Or ignore vehicle safety and speed limits, if they transport passengers?

I wonder if they believe government has any role in setting standards to protect public health and safety?

Or is it just that Chaplik is chapped about masks and to heck with trying to do whatever it takes to get this public health nightmare behind us?

Democrats tried to fight the bill, explaining that the pandemic is not over and that masks are one of the most effective things we do to slow the spread.

But Chaplik explained that masks don’t work because if they did, places like Nebraska and Mississippi “would have dead people piled up all over their state because no one else would be living because no one has masks on.”

Mississippi had a statewide mask requirement until Sept. 30 and masks

were required in counties with high COVID-19 spread until Wednesday, when the order was lifted.

And while Nebraska has had no statewide mask ordinance, Lincoln and Omaha, the state’s two largest cities with a combined population of just under 800,000 people, require masks.

Also here in the real world, the nation’s top infectious disease experts along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that masks, properly worn, slow the spread of COVID-19.

They are pleading with people not to ease up just yet lest we wind up with another surge that puts more people into their graves ... and, oh horror of horrors, requires Rep. Chaplik to put on a mask before entering Costco.

Meanwhile, in that parallel universe called the Arizona House, it’s just a proven fact that masks don't work because if they did, nobody would die.

“If they work, how are people still catching COVID?” Rep. Bret Roberts, RMaricopa, asked.

Your Arizona work.

Legislature,

hard

at