Across much of America, people are masked by mandate and large events are shut down by decree. But, in South Dakota, things are different. You can be mask-free in the state that has avoided most of the coronavirus crackdown imposed in much of the rest of America. And, if you ride a motorcycle, you can ride and congregate freely with hundreds of thousands of bikers. The annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally starts Friday.
Wearing a mask at a store or other place where doing so is required of customers or visitors, or where there seems to be pressure either from the venue operators or the surrounding mask-wearers to do so, can be uncomfortable, even sickening. This can especially be the case for older and less healthy individuals for whom walking around while shopping can be a physical activity approaching or as strenuous as a younger, healthier person running a mile. The younger, healthier person can run a mile alright, but consider him trying to do so with his face and nose covered. He will surely run slower or be more exhausted in his masked mile run.
For months, much of the airtime at National Public Radio (NPR) has been devoted to interviews and stories that ramp up the coronavirus scare and advance all manner of draconian government action in the name of countering coronavirus. The effort can reach ludicrous extremes as it did on Sunday at the NPR show All Things Considered when show host Michel Martin interviewed Jessica Flanigan focused on this question: “Is there a basic libertarian view about public health measures like face masks?”
In May, Ron Paul warned in an editorial about the United States government pushing for the imposing of mask and social distancing mandates on children in schools that reopen for the fall semester, all in the name of countering the often over-hyped threat from coronavirus.
It is bad enough that many people across America are living, working, and visiting in places where state or local governments have mandated that people wear masks or, instead, have mandated that businesses mandate that people wear masks when they go about their daily activities away from home. The masks are mandated in the name of countering coronavirus even though there is no clear evidence they create a net reduction in coronavirus transmission from person to person and there is plenty of reason to believe they impair health.
Further, what people wear or do not wear on their faces is none of governments’ business to control. Will governments next mandate we wear big bubbles around us to protect us?
While the current mask mandates are terrible, things could be worse. There could be a countrywide mask mandate. Presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden, in a Thursday interview with Ken Rice at KDKA-TV of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, declared that, if he were president, he would support just that. Said Biden, “I would do everything in my possible [sic] to make it required that people had to wear masks in public.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbot, in an April 27 executive order concerning coronavirus, declared: “Individuals are encouraged to wear appropriate face coverings, but no jurisdiction can impose a civil or criminal penalty for failure to wear a face covering.” This executive order provision stopped in their tracks local governments that sought to enforce mask mandates as part of their coronavirus crackdowns.
Because of his stand against mask mandates, Abbott gained praise for defending liberty. But, on Wednesday, Abbot turned his back on liberty when, in a KWTX-TV of Waco, Texas interview, he endorsed local governments ordering stores and other businesses to require people at the businesses to wear masks.
Starting Friday, people ten years old and older who are indoors just about anywhere in Virginia other than in private homes will be required by a new executive order of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to “cover their mouth and nose with a face covering, as described and recommended by” the United Sates government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Further, the mandate even requires wearing such a mask when outside at a long list of places “if a distance of six feet from every other person cannot be maintained.”
Oh brother. Indeed, oh Big Brother.
Isn’t lifting the prohibition on reopening businesses that were required to close in the coronavirus crackdown supposed to provide greater respect for individual rights? It seems that that is not the view of some politicians, including Washington Governor Jay Inslee.