The Return of the Mask Wars

‘Y es,” University of Texas epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina declared without hesitation earlier this month when PBS Newshour host John Yang asked if she would again recommend masking in response to a recent uptick in Covid-19 infections. “You should be wearing masks in crowded areas, especially during a surge.” But “what about at home?” or “when you’re walking on the street?” Yang asked. “So, certainly at home it works, if you want to reduce household transmission,” Jetelina replied. She did, however, admit that masking while “walking your dog” is unnecessary as long as you preserve your “distance” from the society around you.

This all might sound to most like a quaint artifact of the Covid era. But among those who pine for the restrictions on social and economic life that pertained during the pandemic, little has changed.

It was hard to avoid noticing that, by early August, news reports alleging an increase in Covid-positivity rates in tested wastewater lit a fire under a cadre of professional meddlers for whom the illusion of safety under Covid restrictions was vastly preferable to all the risks that attend liberty. Buoyed by the debatable but nonetheless widely reported evidence of a Covid surge, advocates of eternal masking returned to the public discourse with renewed self-confidence. The point of their activism was to nudge powerful and well-connected paranoiacs toward the conclusion that mask mandates were once again necessary to save the unwashed masses from themselves. They’ve had some successes with that message, too.

Morris Brown College in Atlanta announced that students and employees returning to campus this week will be required to wear masks, though staff are allowed to dispense with masks “in their offices while alone.” Students will be required to observe 2020-style social-distancing protocols, isolate and quarantine if they contract Covid, comply with contact-tracing efforts, and avoid large gatherings including social events. If the press is aware of any self-proclaimed public-health experts who regard this level of caution as excessive, their protests have not found their way into media reports on the college’s decision. Sure, such reports conceded, the pandemic is behind us. But that just means Covid has become endemic, like any number of common respiratory viruses. “This is what endemic means,” Dr. Jayne Morgan told CBS News. “It doesn’t go away.”

Morris Brown College’s beleaguered students can commiserate in solidarity with Rutgers University’s and Georgetown University’s. Both institutions “still require indoor masking” and demand proof of vaccination from enrollees. Two Upstate Medical University hospitals in Syracuse, N.Y., have followed their lead. Those institutions also require mandatory face-masking for all “staff, visitors, and patients” — a necessary precaution designed to preserve what one clinician described as “our capacity to care for all our patients” amid “an upward trend of Covid associated hospitalizations in our community.”

According to New York State’s figures, the central region of New York, in which Syracuse is situated, has experienced an uptick in Covid-related hospitalizations in August. Indeed, the state’s Covid tracker indicates that a whopping 40 patients are currently occupying hospital beds in this region as of this writing, with another six in intensive care — a marked increase from the 21 people hospitalized with Covid in the region on July 31.

Masking mandates have also been reimposed on employees of the Hollywood studio Lionsgate. A staggering “several” employees recently contracted Covid, prompting studio executives to reintroduce involuntary masking and self-screening protocols. “Employees must wear a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95) when indoors except when alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating, actively drinking at their desk or workstation, or if they are the only individual present in a large open workspace,” read the email to Lionsgate employees obtained by Deadline. The restored mandate applies immediately and until further notice.

To describe the ways in which this is abject madness is to waste my time. The college administrators, hospital managers, and Hollywood studio executives reimposing these mandates on other people in their general vicinity know full well that over 270 million Americans are at least partially vaccinated, and that vaccination is all but universal in their own curated social bubbles. They know vaccination reduces the severity of illness but does not prevent transmission. They may even be aware of the randomized controlled studies of the efficacy of masking during the pandemic, which found that “wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference” in controlling Covid-transmission rates. But these are not data-driven policies. And the commonalities shared by their adopters — a high-powered Hollywood studio, teaching hospitals, and a handful of liberal-arts campuses — are suggestive of the cultural forces driving the restoration of enforced masking protocols.

By the tail-end of the pandemic, masking had become a signifier of tribal identity and cultural tastes. As the pandemic waned, the medical establishment tried to rationalize the perpetuation of masking as, at the very least, a social convention. As late as December 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci flatly rejected the idea that Americans would ever travel maskless again. “I think that masks are still a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it,” he declared. “If it is not Covid, we still don’t want these other viruses spread around,” Dr. Emily Lutterloh of the New York State Department of Health told the New York Times at the time. This tenuous medical rationale for masking disguised what more honest proponents of a perpetual Covid-mitigation regime admitted was their true fear: the return of the horrible status quo ante.

As the pandemic receded, “normal” life loomed large — a terrifying prospect among a select few with disproportionate influence over American political culture. “Normal” is a privilege — a gift enjoyed by those who are not immunocompromised. “Normal” is what parents of small children cannot enjoy, given persistently low rates of vaccination among kids under the age of five. “Normal” described an America hollowed out by persistent inequities, racism, and cutthroat competition. “Normal” is the world that only the blind and callous get to enjoy — a stark contrast with the enlightened few who never fail to remind observers how exasperated they are by the indifference of their neighbors.

Of course, “normal” is what Joe Biden was elected to restore, but even his administration succumbs to the social pressure to comport with the demands of influential Covid hysterics. In June, the White House sent out guidance to prospective guests requiring the observance of face-masking and social distancing among the unvaccinated even though the guidelines contradict best practices outlined by Biden’s own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The reappearance of masks on the national radar is a taste of a nascent public-relations campaign designed to convince America’s institutional stewards to force a full-scale return to the bad old days. The executors of this campaign will not be satisfied by their reconquest of a handful of hospitals and college campuses. They are spoiling for a bigger fight, and the forces arrayed in defense of “normal” should be ready for them.