Deconstructing Face Mask Politics

The face mask has now become the “shiny object” of the Coronavirus pandemic – both a symbol and political statement.

Many on the Left believe all of us should wear masks all the time. This may be due to the fact that twice as many people on the Left are worried about getting the disease as those on the Right. I can’t explain that one. The Right thinks masks are appropriate, but fewer support them in polls, compared to the Left. Of course, there are many on the Right who wear masks all the time.

Before deconstructing mask usage, let’s go back and review how this issue evolved over the past few months.

Initially, the CDC stated, correctly, that wearing a mask does not protect you from catching the disease. Masks do not seal well and most don’t filter enough airborne material to offer adequate protection. Some politicians were concerned about the impact of a mask requirement on those who couldn’t tolerate wearing one, so there were mixed policies put into place Government leaders have to think about the psychological impact of having one’s breathing restricted and feeling closed in. Universal wearing of masks was not a part of the CDC recommendations.

Sometime later, mask use was refocused. Rather than worrying about protecting the person wearing the mask, it became more important to protect people coming in contact with that person. This logic was based on the fact that some people with symptoms could infect others, so mask use should be mandatory. Other people could be asymptomatic and infect others without knowing it, if they didn’t wear a mask. Makes sense.

Quickly, the mask debate got more heated and is now completely political. The Left criticizes those photographed without masks. Perhaps the assumption is these maskless villains are Republicans. But notice the CNN reporters at the White House who only wear masks when the camera is on. Or the CNN reporter commenting on lack of masks on the beaches Memorial Day. He had a mask. His cameraman didn’t. Trump is photographed golfing without a mask. How terrible of him, even though he’s outside and away from other people. Golf courses are open around the country and none require golfers to wear masks.

The public is riled up too. A grocery shopper in New Jersey was verbally attacked and driven out of a store recently because she wasn't wearing a mask. Whether you're social distancing or not, you better not leave that mask home. In this case, the customer was actually violating the governor’s order to have her face covered.

There are fifteen states that require masks while shopping, most of them in the Northeast. New York is a hair more lenient saying “wear a mask if social distancing is not possible.”

Let’s take the mask debate to its logical conclusion. If a person has COVID and knows it, or has symptoms, they should stay home. If they have to go out, they should wear a mask to protect others. Asymptomatic carriers are different story. Since we can’t know who is asymptomatic unless we test everyone for COVID or antibodies, how do we identify these people?

We might never reach a point where everyone is tested, which means all of us will have to keep wearing masks forever or stay home. Huh?

We should be using practical, rather than Draconian, rules. If you have COVID or have symptoms, you should wear a mask. Masks for the rest of us should be optional, unless social distancing is not possible.

The management of the pandemic depends on the commitment of the America people, so reality has to be applied to balance risk and behavior. Seventy three percent of COVID deaths in New York City involved people over the age of 65. Of the total deaths across all age groups in that same study, only .7% had no underlying conditions. If you’re older or have underlying conditions be careful and limit interactions with the public. Always wear a mask. Younger people with no underlying conditions have little to worry about.

Everyone should use social distancing as the primary method of keeping themselves safe. Masks are a backup.

It’s also important to follow the data. As summer heats up, the country becomes more open, and the graphs trend further downward, feel more confident about having your face uncovered.

Censorship in the Time of Pandemic

Censorship has become an important issue in America over the past two decades. It encompasses the news media, academia, and, lately, the Internet. Censorship impacts what we hear, what we read, and how well we are able to express our first amendment rights. Although it bears no relationship to the pandemic, the disease has become weaponized for political purposes and, in this election year, all things are political. One side provides information that the country should open and the other side says it shouldn’t. Even the president’s task force is not immune from bias because they are working for the benefit of the Republican Party.

For most of the history of our country, the first amendment stood as a measure of the value democracy brings to its people. Photos of flag burnings during the Viet Nam War were often cited as proof of this most fundamental freedom. The 1960s were a decade of the New Left attack on the establishment, which they said was out of touch and leading America in the wrong direction. Protestors fought for the right to speak freely and campaign against government misbehavior and censorship. A climax in this battle was reached, at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, when student protestors were attacked by the police.

The broadcast and print media have evolved in tandem with the growth of tribalism in the United States. As Left and Right split farther apart, the tone has sharpened between them. Because the Left controls most of the broadcast spectrum, we get exposed to views of the Left more than the views of the Right. Forty years ago, we received most of our news from three networks and newspapers. Most biases showed up on the editorial pages and not the headline news pages. As citizens, we couldn’t know whether the reporting was shaded, because there was no way to validate the content. Still, there were accuracy standards journalists applied to their craft.

That has all changed now, because journalists have become ideology advocates, who attack those who do not share the opinions of their employer. As a citizen, if your beliefs match the content of your favorite media outlets, you’re hearing the truth. If they come from an opposing news outlet, you hearing lies.

Academia has trended left over the past thirty years and most conservative professors have left the stage for retirement or think tanks. The political voice of our universities is solidly left, with no probability of changing. How ironic it is, given the Left’s advocacy for free speech in the 1960s, that universities now prevent conservatives from speaking. Their view is that the Right does not tell the truth because its narrative was created by white privilege or a white man’s corrupt aristocracy. Bigots once are bigots for all time. The university’s fault is not that they are actively preventing free speech; its that they are afraid to oppose their students. Of course, the faculty shares the political views of the students so they are very supportive.

Starting in the middle ages, universities advocated a fundamental right that all points of view should be heard. The basis of that intellectual freedom was “debate leads to truth.” If that debate is missing today, we end up with propaganda.

In the last ten or fifteen years, the Internet has extended its role as a major communication platform across the globe. Facebook, Twitter, and Google control a large percentage of the content we receive. These platforms began with noble intentions; the desire to create platforms mankind could use to communicate and share common interests. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for bad actors to start using these platforms for their own nefarious purposes. Skinheads, anarchists, pedophiles, human traffickers, and other groups appeared, who would not normally have access to the personal sites of millions of people. The social media companies responded to these “attacks” by allocating resources to automated and human filtering of content to block the bad actors.

At the end of 2016, Facebook started looking into presidential campaign abuses and discovered that Russia had created false identities for the purpose of influencing the American election. They also started to look at ways to identify fake news so it could be barred from their platform. In May 2017, Facebook created new policies for dealing with sexual predators, sexist, racist, and hate speech. These changes were appropriate given the potential for abuse.

Since then, Facebook and the others have stepped over the line regarding censorship. Complaints have recently started to surface that conservatives are being blocked. Others including LGBT and African-Americans also complained, but the conservatives have been the most vocal. A widely cited example is Prager University, which is an online conservative website. YouTube took down several of their videos because they portrayed harmful or dangerous activities. These videos included “Are the police racist?”; “Why do people become Muslim Extremists?”; and “Are 1 in 5 Women Raped at College?” Prager University sued YouTube in 2017 and lost the case. The court ruled that YouTube is not a public forum, so they are not a state actor for the purposes of First Amendment rights.

This is an unfortunate outcome because it means that YouTube has the ability to censor free speech based on their own rules – and their political views. If they lean Left, there is even less balance in political expression than there was previously.

Now we move on to a more egregious example. On April 22^nd, two California ER doctors, Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi posted a YouTube video discussing results from their own analysis of COVID patients. The opinion was that stay at home orders were excessive, the disease had spread further than reported, and they recommended that the economy more open. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were on board with the CDC strategy but had changed their minds after two months of experience with patients. They were expressing their opinion, not advocating a revolt. Soon after its posting, the video was removed by YouTube.

YouTube issued the following statement, “We quickly remove flagged content that violate our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local health authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance," said the statement. "However, content that provides sufficient educational, documentary, scientific or artistic (EDSA) context is allowed -- for example, news coverage of this interview with additional context. From the very beginning of the pandemic, we’ve had clear policies against COVID-19 misinformation and are committed to continue providing timely and helpful information at this critical time.”

How is this video dangerous when CNN can falsely report that Trump suggested people drink bleach?

YouTube is an extremely influential platform worldwide. Millennials say it is their number one source for news. To the extent that YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter censor content based on their own rules, these actions remove alternative viewpoints from public view so that only one side is heard.

Mark Zuckerberg was asked about Facebook guidelines in a recent interview. He said that Facebook was blocking all organizations trying to organize protests against stay at home orders because they oppose government rules. This is raw censorship. It assumes that the government always knows what is best for the public. Wrong. The government is supposed to be working for the public. What is the difference between censoring opposing opinions here and Nazi propaganda? Hitler won because the opposition was worn away to nonexistence.

Red State Versus Blue State Reopening

Its interesting to observe the difference in the red state and blue state opening’s, which are designed to carry the country back to full operation. I’m defining red and blue not by typical voting pattern but by the party of the state’s governor, who manages the response to the pandemic. Red state behavior shows a determined effort to move forward, while blue state efforts demonstrate a determined effort to stay closed. Why would that be? One might guess that part of the reason is due to blue states having large cities, which have concentrated populations leading to greater transmission of the disease. But that can’t tell the whole story.

Of the top ten states by population, five are red and five are blue. All have big cities.

Among the red states, twenty are open now. Five will open in mid-May, and one (Maryland) has no open date.

Among the blue states, five are open now, seven will open around mid-May, and the other twenty intend to open at the end of May or later.

Some of the behavior is logical. The Northeast is hit hard, particularly New York and New Jersey. Connecticut has a high commuter volume to New York. Massachusetts has Boston, and Rhode Island sits in the middle.

Likewise, one would expect the low-density states to be minimally affected and able to recover quite easily.

We can evaluate how well each state is doing managing the virus by dividing the population by the number of cases. That corrects for the size of the states. The ten best are Montana, Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, West Virginia, Maine, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Texas, and Kentucky. Six of these ten are open.

The ten worst states are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Louisiana, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, and Maryland. None of these are open. Big cities are certainly a factor in all except Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Some states have a strategy that makes them an outlier. Maine has been 6^th best at managing its caseload, and it has had 56 deaths since the outbreak began. It has a stay at home order in place until May 31^st. Maine’s opening schedule follows.

As of May 1, gatherings of 10 or more people are prohibited, and all people entering or returning to Maine must quarantine for 14 days. This constitutes Stage 1.

For Stage 2, tentatively beginning June 1, only gatherings with less than 50 people are allowed, and maintains the aforementioned 14-day quarantine for those entering or returning to the state. There would also be some degree of reopening for restaurants, retail stores, lodging and campgrounds (for those who have met the 14-day requirement) and more.

In Stage 3, tentatively beginning July 1, gatherings with less than 50 people will continue to be allowed but the 14-day quarantine for visitors continues. Also, there would be some degree of reopening for lodging, hotels, summer camps and RV parks for both Maine residents and visitors.

There is also a Stage 4, although the timeline is undetermined, that would allow for businesses and activities to resume with the appropriate safety precautions and lifting the previous restrictions.

Hawaii also has a very conservative approach, even though it is 3rd best at managing cases. Below is its epidemic chart:

Hawaii reached its peak in number of new cases on March 18^th. They have had 16 deaths since the outbreak. Hawaii has a stay at home order until May 31^st. Beaches can be used and some elective surgeries can be performed. Maui is putting together a plan to reopen, because they haven’t had any cases in a couple of weeks.

Texas and California are interesting cases, with very different approaches. Texas is 9^th in population case ratio and has done a great job. It has restaurants and bars open, with reduced capacity. Malls and movie theaters are also open. California has also done a great job, but has been closed up tight with a schedule to hold off reopening until May 31^st. It appears the governor is now reacting to pressure to get the reopening started, because he announced that some businesses could open on May 8^th. These include places such as book, clothing, toy, and sporting goods stores as well as music shops and florists. Still, a very conservative opening strategy.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are states like South Dakota, which never closed. It has experienced 800 cases and 21 deaths since the pandemic began. South Dakota is using Hydroxychloroquine in a clinical trial to treat the disease.

How is Georgia doing – the first state to open?

On April 20^th, Georgia reached its peak for the number of new cases added daily. That was four days before the open. Now 11 days into the open, the new case numbers are steady at a low level.

There is no question that we've reached one of the critical milestones of the pandemic; the point were open states will prove whether the disease can remain under control. Citizens of the states holding back will be watching closely. If things go well, there will be a stampede.

Are there politics at work here? Probably. It is an election year and the Left would like to postpone a strong economic upturn until after the election. The stock market is betting on faster versus slower. The S&P 500 lost 33% of its value in March, but since then has regained 21%.