Mask Mandates Are Illogical. So What?
They only need to align with communities’ goals.
About two-thirds of Americans have consistently supported the idea of a state or local mask mandate since August, when a bimonthly Axios/Ipsos poll first started asking the question.
The other 30-something percent of the American public likely includes people who have lost faith in mask mandates that don’t seem to make sense. The way for decision makers to earn back their trust, Kirk Sell told me, is by listening to each community, taking their needs seriously, and tailoring policies to fit them. A town whose top priorities are keeping schools open and local business afloat could mandate masks and testing in schools, but allow adults to go mask-free in bars, which students can avoid. A town that wants to avoid straining its hospitals might flatten the curve by enforcing mask requirements in high-capacity settings such as concert halls and sports arenas. If rules are going to be applied unevenly—with mask mandates in some locations but not others—the tightest restrictions should apply in buildings such as grocery stores, workplaces, post offices, and schools, says Anne Sosin, a public-health expert at Dartmouth College. These are not necessarily the places where the virus is most likely to spread, but elderly and immunocompromised people may not be able to avoid them as easily as they could a bar or a hockey game.
“I think that people have this expectation that everything has to be perfect, as far as how the logic works together,” Kirk Sell said. But no mandate is ever going to be perfectly consistent, and that’s okay. Mask policies can still make sense, so long as they serve a community’s shared goals.
