After an alarming spike in the number of coronavirus cases here continued into the weekend, I spent most of Sunday on the phone, apologizing for intruding on Father’s Day and discussing with our public officials the merits of wearing masks in an effort to curb what appears to be a worsening pandemic.
Amazingly, while nearly all of them strongly encouraged the idea of wearing face coverings when venturing out in public, not a single one of our leaders was ready to make it mandatory.
Their collective response was extremely disappointing.
“I have real doubts that making it mandatory is enforceable,” said County Commissioner Bob Solari. “Do you call the sheriff if someone is not wearing a mask?” asked County Commissioner Peter O’Bryan. “If you make masks mandatory, it’s like telling your teenaged son he can’t go beyond the county limits,” said Vero Mayor Tony Young. “You know what’s going to happen.”
“I understand some people think it should be mandatory, but … we all just need to be responsible adults,” said Vero City Manager Monte Falls.
But it has become all too obvious in recent days that simply asking people to do the right thing isn’t enough.
County Administrator Jason Brown must step forward, and issue an emergency order requiring that everyone wear masks in public.
“It’s something we need to talk about, and I’ll discuss it with the board before making any policy decision,” Brown told me. “It’s much more preferable to have people wearing masks than to close things down again, but I’d prefer it be a voluntary thing and get good compliance.”
We’d all prefer that. But it currently is a voluntary thing, and we are not getting good compliance.
“We’ve kind of lapsed on what we were doing a couple of months ago – social distancing, wearing masks indoors, washing our hands, using hand sanitizer,” said School Board Chair Laura Zorc. “I think that’s because the public has stopped paying attention and is no longer taking the virus seriously. I’m not sure everyone knows the numbers are going up. We just need to use common sense again and take the necessary precautions.”
But we can’t simply do nothing and delude ourselves into believing this pandemic will miraculously disappear.
We must do what we can.
Several recent, credible scientific studies have found that wearing masks does reduce the spread of infection. Common sense tells us the same thing, but there is plenty of evidence to back it up.
If folks here continue to ignore the case counts and refuse to voluntarily wear masks in a collective effort to serve the greater good, then the county government needs to use its emergency authority to protect all of us.
“We can’t stay on this trend,” Brown said, adding that the consequences of not wearing masks in public should outweigh the minor inconvenience of wearing them.
The hard truth is: If the spike continues and the daily case counts start to regularly exceed 50, we could see another shutdown of the economy – not by the county or even the governor, but because people become too afraid or too sick to go out, or go to work.
Even if a mask-wearing mandate is impossible to fully enforce in a county with nearly 160,000 residents, Brown should follow the lead of administrators in counties around the state and issue the order, unless we begin to see the number of virus cases sharply decline, which isn’t likely.
If nothing else, the mandate would put masks at the forefront of our daily discourse, which could convince more people to wear them, which would make them more visible, which could prompt more people to wear them.
Especially younger people.
I don’t know how much the reopening of local bars has contributed to the spike, but my younger, bar-going friends say they haven’t seen many masks or anything resembling social distancing in local bars.
It’s puzzling that all local businesses – not merely bars, but restaurants, supermarkets and retail stores – haven’t already imposed mask requirements for both employees and patrons, though I suppose they might fear losing customers.
At the very least, Brown could impose such a requirement, which would protect people when they’re indoors.
The best way to avoid another shutdown – to keep our economy open while protecting our community from further spread of the virus – is to wear masks in public.
That’s what we should do, and we shouldn’t need an emergency order forcing us to do it.
Apparently, though, we do.
