With the recent surge of COVID-19’s delta variant, the prospect of mask mandates has returned. Should vaccinated people be forced to comply?
Summary
The latest poling in California suggests half the state would approve of a mask mandate being reimplemented.
- A mask mandate has been reinstituted for St. Louis, Missouri, set to begin Monday for indoor public places and public transportation.
- In Arkansas, one of the states hardest hit by the delta variant of the coronavirus, a ban on mask mandates has been in place, which state Democrats are asking to be rescinded.
- Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday he is urging residents to mask up and social distance, but “stopped short of issuing a statewide mask mandate” in response to the uptick in coronavirus cases.
- The largest questions is over schools: one Michigan Catholic school is suing the state over its now-rescinded mask mandate for schools while in Utah, local Democratic officials want “all children under 12 [to] wear masks indoors when school starts” this fall.
- The New York Times Opinion section published conservative writer Bethany Mandel who argued against mask mandates and for continued vaccination, saying the pandemic was “a mystery” at the beginning, and despite what we’ve learned, many are “still behaving as though it’s the early days of the pandemic.”
- Slate leaned into mandating vaccines for everyone, condescending on flyover country by characterizing anyone who is hesitant or resistant to getting the vaccine as a slack-jawed yokel or separatist militiaman.
- The Guardian (the British newspaper, not the latest baseball team) reported on Alabama’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey pleading with residents to get vaccinated, saying the vaccine is “the greatest weapon we have to fight Covid” and that the rise in cases is entirely the fault of the unvaccinated.
- OANN highlighted a lawsuit by parents against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, arguing mask mandates for school children aren’t following the science and that it is delaying a return to normal for children.
- The Daily Wire reported on an exchange on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, in which contributor Donny Deutsch said it will actually be easier to implement new mask mandates and engineer social behavior and “there’s an idiot percentage of this population that just needs to be told what to do.”
- Townhall.com focused on a NY Post op-ed excoriating any attempt to place mask mandates on school-age children: it’s counterproductive given the ridiculously low, statistically nearly nonexistent infection rates among children.
Author’s Take
By and large, children just don’t get COVID-19. It is a fact borne out in the data we have collected for more than a year. The desire by some on the left to impose these restrictions on children is disturbing, especially since they have spent the last year screaming “follow the science.” Yes, that is exactly what we should do, which means don’t mask up kids who don’t need it.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Bethany Mandel are right: vaccines are the key to ending the pandemic. The longer we continue with such a wide swath of the adult population unvaccinated, the longer we’ll have to deal with this uncertainty and demand from the left to mask up. We cannot join in with the left’s moving of the goal posts: the virus will literally never be fully eradicated and we shouldn’t wait for it to happen. The goal always was to properly mitigate and minimize risk. That is what the vaccine does.
As someone said on Twitter: “I got vaccinated. I am tired of being forced to wear a mask, stay in indefinite lockdown prison, and never go on vacation. The deal was I get vaccinated and I get my life back. I expect the gov’t to abide by that deal.”
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© Dallas Gerber, 2021
