The Utah Mask Wars

The Utah Mask Wars

– By Howard Sierer –

Are you following the latest COVID-19 guidance? Are you sure you’ve seen the latest? Are you required to wear a mask in public places indoors? Does a mask protect you or are you asked to wear one to protect others in case you have the virus but are asymptomatic?

If you know – or think you know – the answers to these and related questions, you are better informed than most of us.

We’ve received a hodgepodge of COVID-19 messaging over the last two years. While frustrating to those of us trying to be careful and thoughtful of others, the ever-changing guidance has reflected scientists’ ever-changing understanding of the virus and, to an unfortunate extent, the political leanings of those offering guidance or mandating our behavior.

The latest dustup here in Utah stems from conflicting guidance from Utah’s governor and the Salt Lake County Council. The county imposed a 30-day mask mandate that applies to indoor spaces including schools in response to the then-surging Omicron variant. The governor encourages but doesn’t mandate mask-wearing and claims authority to override the county order in state-owned facilities.

I have a more fundamental question for both the county and the governor: Is the type of mask we’ve been wearing a waste of time?

The federal government has announced that it plans to provide 400 million N95 masks to health departments and pharmacies across the country which will be made available free of charge to all of us. These masks will be taken from the Strategic National Stockpile, a $7 billion repository of a variety of supplies that are intended to be used in response to a biological or nuclear attack.

This action raises the question: Why N95 masks and why hasn’t the government provided them before now?

N-95 masks were patented in 1995 and were manufactured in limited quantities prior to the COVID pandemic and used primarily by medical personnel.  They were recognized as the “gold standard” but since they’d been used in limited settings, they were in short supply for the general public when COVID burst on the scene.

If N95 masks are the best way to reduce COVID’s spread, why wasn’t high-volume production funded in the spring of 2020 for all of us? Why have they been “hoarded” in the national stockpile ever since rather than released to the public sooner?

With a surplus of conventional masks available today almost anywhere, why release N95s now? Is that because regular masks are ineffective? Have we been wasting our time wearing them? N95s are more expensive than the ones we’ve all been offered free at store entrances in the past but if they are the answer now, they were the answer in 2020 and 2021.

Omicron spreads so quickly that it will burn itself out this winter, running out of people to infect. Sending out N95 masks now is closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. Is their distribution now just a political gimmick to show that something is being done, no matter how futile?

I wear a regular mask in public indoor places although I remove the mask in restaurants now that I’ve begun to eat out occasionally. I’ve been COVID-19 vaccinated and boosted and shake my head when I read that the vast majority of today’s hospitalized COVID patients are unvaccinated.

These hospitalized “victims” are suffering from self-inflicted wounds, putting themselves in jeopardy, overloading our hospitals, and wearing down our health care providers. The rest of us can only hope we don’t have a heart attack or other medical emergency requiring hospital care that might not be available in a timely fashion.

Over a year ago, I encouraged Utah to “mask up and endure to the end.” I’ll continue to wear a mask, even a lesser mask than the N95, but I’ll wonder whether it’s doing much good. And I’ll see if I can get the three N95s that will be offered to each adult if only to get a head start on COVID’s next variation.

But lesson learned: elected politicians and bureaucrats, anxious to appear knowledgeable and in control by leading us out of the COVID wilderness, instead have been undercut repeatedly as the science evolved and hence been diminished in a skeptical public’s eye. A “day late and a dollar short” N95 masks are just the latest missteps.

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