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I’m on the board of my apartment building. We voted to require masks when you’re in the building. I run jog (without a mask, out in the streets, more than six feet away from everyone) in the morning. But I carry a mask in my pocket: When I return to the apartment building and walk the thirty steps from the back door to the service elevator, I’m in public. I’m on the board, so I put on a mask for those thirty steps. It may be silly, but it’s only right.
For several years, I served as the chief compliance officer of my company. During those years (and some would say permanently), I was humorless. You look at the ethics complaints coming up through the system, and you realize that people take offense at damn near everything. As the chief compliance officer, you shouldn’t give offense. So I didn’t. I might have been boring but not giving offense was part of the job. (It’s slightly easier now that I oversee litigation. You’re still in a leadership role, but you can lighten up a little bit.)
So here’s what I don’t understand: The United States is facing one serious policy issue, about which reasonable minds should certainly differ, and one scientific issue, about which reasonable minds could not possibly differ. Why have those two issues become intertwined?
The policy issue is this: For how long should we shut down the economy to reduce the spread of COVID-19?
This is a very hard question. How quickly should we have shut down the economy at the outset? At what speed should we reopen? These are hard trade-offs to consider: If we leave the economy closed people will be out of work, people will be driven into poverty, domestic violence and alcoholism will increase, and so on. If we open the economy, we avoid those social ills — but people will die. How many deaths should we tolerate for how much economic and social cost? (Don’t tell me that’s an immoral question. Governments make those decisions all the time: Should the speed limit be 20 mph or 70 mph? It depends on how much inefficiency we’ll tolerate for how many deaths. How many safety precautions should we take when digging mines? How tall should we allow a building to be? Governmental decisions will inevitably result in deaths, but we make those decisions.)
Politicians will disagree about the speed with which we should reopen the economy, and both sides can hold reasonable positions. We should encourage that debate, make a reasoned choice, and then move on (informed by new data as that data become available).
The scientific issue, unrelated to the tough policy choice, is this: Should people wear masks in public?
This is not a policy issue about which reasonable minds could differ. There’s plenty of scientific evidence showing that wearing masks reduces the spread of COVID-19. Wearing a mask may be a pain in the neck, but everyone should tolerate a minor nuisance for the greater good of saving lives. This is not an issue as to which politicians, or anyone, should differ.
But somehow they do.
Democrats now generally favor wearing masks; Republicans do not. President Donald Trump says that some people wear masks “to signal disapproval of him.” That may now be true — but, if it’s true, it’s only because the government has already blundered so badly. It is Trump himself who refuses to wear a mask and who suggests that there’s a legitimate argument against wearing masks (by tweeting that there are “[s]o many different viewpoints” on the issue).
I understand that we live in a partisan time. But can’t we occasionally let an issue of universal public health remain nonpartisan?
Or am I wrong, and I can jog without that silly mask in my pocket?
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.