State Mandated Masks Isn’t Tyranny, It’s Basic Protection
If you haven’t been living under a rock throughout the entire COVID-19 pandemic, then you know the mass movement against the usage of masks. In moments of crisis, such as a mass pandemic, it’s quite worrying that some people don’t have the basic human decency to put on a piece of cloth that prevents you from killing people. In those cases, the government should be allowed to take action and protect the people.
States such as California, Kentucky and Maine have statewide mask mandates, meaning that this is not a partisan issue, this is a humanitarian issue. In order to understand why so many people oppose mask usage, it’s important to look at some of the basic arguments that anti-maskers use.
The main argument that you will probably hear is an issue of freedom and state control. Some have even compared the mask mandate to the Patriot Act, a ridiculous comparison to say the least.
The comparison is made on the basis that you surrender some freedom in order to gain protection from the state. It’s clear that comparing mass surveillance from the Patriot Act to having to wear a mask is very silly given that one is an abuse of human rights and the other is a minor inconvenience at worst.
Many who oppose a state mask mandate say that it’s because if we allow the state to take away a small portion of our freedom for protection, then they can do the same later.
The reason this argument fails is because situations each have their own severity and consequences. By supporting the state giving us certain protections, we are not inherently supporting other protections which limit freedom.
The state forcing citizens to temporarily put a piece of cloth on their face during a pandemic is not part of the evil plan to have all Americans being forced to wear Burkas by 2025.
If you look at any recent events, you would see that many simply refuse to wear masks either because they have been fed conspiracy theories about mask usage, religious fanaticism, or simply because they have the “I’m not like the others mentality.”
So, it’s clear that there is a sizable crowd who just refuse to wear masks and probably won’t unless forced to by an authority figure.
Now, as for the effectiveness of masks, many who oppose a mask mandate say that states with mask mandates were still brutally hit by COVID-19. This is true at face value, but that’s refusing to look at other factors.
The major examples are California and New York. California also has a lot of major cities, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. These two states are also major tourist destinations, meaning that they experienced a lot of travel before the pandemic.
It’s simple: major urban areas and areas with tourism will experience more infections than rural areas due to population density and a large movement of people. Comparing infection numbers in a state like Texas to those in New York is disingenuous to say the least,
Especially since Florida was pretty much the capital of Covid-19 for a large period of time.
In conclusion, the state mandating the use of masks should’ve been something that wasn’t even argued. Perhaps if this was done earlier, then we would not have to be wearing them today. Wearing masks is not an intrusion of freedom, but a basic protection from a deadly disease.