County Mask Mandates raise serious concerns

Yes, I believe that COVID-19 is an uncommonly dangerous virus. No, I don’t believe it is fake. Yes, I acknowledge that when I have my turn to combat it, I may die. No. I do not believe that the genie released from Wuhan, China onto the rest of the world will ever be put back in the bottle—not even by a vaccine.

Nor am I unsympathetic of those who have been affected by the plague. I, too, have had close family members and friends severely sickened by it. Some of them have had it twice already. I have watched helplessly as a friend died deprived of contact even from his closest family. I have personally been deprived of visits to my children, my grandson and my aging parents as cross-border travel was penalized.

It is simply not true that anyone who questions the prudence, legality and constitutionality of bureaucratic responses is simply a rustic simpleton and a science denier. I believe the simplistic thinking is, rather, on the side of those who can only see one threat at a time.

When driving down a highway, it is extremely dangerous to be overly afraid of the oncoming cars. Inexperienced drivers who do this veer ever closer to the edge of the road and often run into the ditch. Experienced drivers take both threats seriously, and so stay safely in their proper lane.

The same balance needs to be maintained when dealing with any response to COVID-19. Responses that take into account only the fears of epidemiologists, without considering the threats to spiritual and emotional health, economic health, and the health of the Republic itself will be wrong. They will, likely, do far more harm than good.

The need for a proper balance against every danger is the very reason for representative government. Our founding fathers were possessed of a healthy realism about human nature. They knew that no single person can know everything about any situation, but that whatever a person does know can easily crowd out every other consideration. “Give a young boy a hammer, and he will treat everything as a nail.”

America’s founders also knew that human beings always tend to relish power. Unchecked, they will wield whatever authority they have to impose their own ideas on others. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive,” said C.S. Lewis. He explained, “[T]hose who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

Governmental checks and balances are designed to prevent such excesses. Elected officials who are directly accountable to the public are given the task of bringing all aspects of a problem to the table and balancing them to the best of their abilities. The answers are never satisfactory for all, but they do take into account the perspectives of all.

When power to make policy is withdrawn from the general public and given entirely to the members of one profession, this oligarchy may satisfy itself with its answer, but it will be unsatisfactory to virtually everyone else. To dismiss those legitimate voices as the “ultra-vocal minority” who would never understand anyway, is to infuriate the very constituency it should be persuading.

This is precisely the situation created across the state last week. Approximately 15 different county health officers conspired to impose “mask mandates” in their respective counties. Although they discussed their plans with one another and with their county health staff, many made their plans without so much as notifying their county commissioners, or the mayors within their jurisdictions.

That is not right. I will let the lawyers wrangle about whether it follows the letter of the law. Regardless, it does not follow the spirit. Our own county health officer made his unilateral order in the hope that it would help our community come together. It did not. Rather, it further fractured our community.

First, county health officers that unilaterally imposed mask orders, later learned that many County Sheriffs and City Police would not enforce them. This would have been important information to know ahead of time. Without enforcement resources, new laws only create more difficulties for local businesses.

Uinta’s County health officer mistakenly thought that the order would help businesses. But the opposite is true. For months businesses have had the right to make and enforce mask mandates upon their customers. None have. Instead, many have merely requested their customers to wear masks. Now that Dr. Harrist has signed multiple orders, businesses are legally liable. Those that refuse to use force on their own customers face crippling fines and the threat of closure by the Wyoming Department of Health. How does this help businesses?

Second, the unilateral mask mandate was based almost entirely on an appeal to authority and went contrary to actual studies. The question is not whether there is a problem that needs to be addressed. The question is whether masks actually address the problem.

Aside from two bald statements and one recommendation from the CDC, the mask order cites only one scientific study. “Chu, et. al. found that Face Coverings could reduce the risk of transmission...” To strip constitutional rights based on the words “could reduce” is outrageous. This is especially so in that the study itself concluded: “Robust randomized trials are needed to better inform the evidence for these interventions.”

Guess what. On November 11, 2020, the New England Journal of Medicine published one of these necessary trials. “SARS-CoV-2 Transmission among Marine Recruits during Quarantine” was undertaken by two score researchers, followed 1,848 Marine recruits through 28 days of lockdown, strict mask protocols and sanitary practices. These were not haphazardly enforced as would be true among the general population. These were marine platoons--each with six enforcers tasked to ensure compliance.

After a 14-day quarantine before the trial, 51 (2.75%) of the participants tested positive during the ensuing 14 days. By comparison only 26 of 1,554 non-participants (1.67%) tested positive over a similar 14-day period. The extreme measures taken by the test subjects did not reduce the spread of COVID-19 by any statistically measurable rate. In fact, the raw percentages report that there was less spread among those who interacted without masks.

On the day that many county mask mandates were imposed, November 18, the Annals of Internal Medicine published “Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers.” This randomized, controlled trial was undertaken in Denmark by 22 researchers. Over 6,000 participants were randomly split into two groups: 3,030 were assigned to wear masks and 2,994 were not.

Of the masked group, 42 (1.8%) tested positive during the course of the trial. By comparison, 53 (2.1%) tested positive from the control group. This “difference was not statistically significant,” they found. The authors concluded, “The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use.”

If the county health officers of the state want to attenuate the spread of COVID-19, every single citizen is in their corner. But the sheer desire to see an outcome does not make a mask order effective toward that end. In a meeting of the Uinta County Commissioners on Friday, November 20, concerned citizens were given statistics about hospital beds, infection numbers and positive test percentages. They were not given any facts about the effectiveness of masks.

Rather, the Uinta County health officer twice repeated that a mask mandate was “easy to do” and that it would only be for an unspecified short time. “Easy to do” is not the same as effective and, “only for a little while” doesn’t mitigate the tyranny in the slightest.

Fifteen unelected health officers acted in unison not only to bypass county commissioners, but also to put pressure on Governor Gordon. I hope that he is wise enough to instruct his state health officer to lead with facts, rather than drive with power. Wyomingites will do the right thing if they are convinced it is right. Convince them.