To mask or not to mask — that is the question.
After the recent ruling by a federal judge striking down the Biden administration’s federal public transportation mask mandate, we’ve witnessed all sorts of reactions. Among the most prominent:
- Gratitude
- Rational concern
- Irrational fear
- Celebration
Let me not suggest that a sole response is the right answer. Let no other suggest it as well.
We have different circumstances — different physical conditions, mental aptitudes, and surrounding communities which make varied responses equally understandable. When we speak of mandating masking or not, valid, different approaches exist.
Unfortunately, as much of the national communication about what’s wise to do when has been ambiguous and inconsistent — and sometimes questionable if political motivations were in play in either enactment or delay — that leads to an even wider range of justifiable beliefs in regard to prudent individual approach.
With all due respect, the messaging has been messy.
One of the more thought-provoking analyses I’ve read on the end of the mask mandate — as the federal government appeals the decision — comes from Josh Barro in the Very Serious newsletter.
Barro wrestles with how this has situation has played out over the last two years — including that messy, multi-point intersection between government control, individual freedom, public health, and the definition of the common good.
Writes Barro:
“Mourning the rule we lost yesterday only makes sense if your interest in masks is more about how we should regard COVID than how we should prevent it. That is, if you just liked seeing people forced to make sartorial expressions like your own about how much they care about COVID, then yesterday was indeed a sad day for you.
But the transparent arbitrariness of mask rules was one of the main factors driving cynicism about and resistance to pandemic control measures — when the rules about masks changed from one situation to another with no apparent consistency or link to sensible cost-benefit analysis, of course people concluded that they were being ordered around for no good reason, and they stopped listening. (It certainly didn’t help that so many public officials were spotted breaking the very rules they had imposed.)
The public health establishment still has not grappled with the damage it’s done to its reputation by failing to respect the fact that members of the public have different values and preferences than their own, or to place any value at all on individual freedom. There is a cost to ordering people around all the time, and if you’re too obnoxious about it, your powers to do so will be taken away. This is part of why leaving the transportation mandate in place so long was such a mistake: The more capricious an enforcement measure looks, the more likely it is the courts will find some justification to throw it out.”
As said, when a judge found justification to throw out the mask mandate last week, some were grateful, rationally concerned, irrationally afraid, and some celebrated.
Let me make a case for none of the above.
Let me simply suggest that the values and preferences of the entire public matter.
And messy messaging matters, too.
Respectfully…
AR