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.”
Watch Biden’s interview here:
Note how several times in the short interview Biden can be seen using his fingers to fiddle with and adjust the mask he is wearing. Medical experts have pointed out that this sort of touching of masks helps make masks counterproductive by contaminating the masks, aiding the transmission of coronavirus or other diseases.
Indeed, back before he suddenly turned on a dime to declare people should wear masks after having said they should not, prominent United States government coronavirus policy communicator and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci made just this point about masks in a 60 Minutes interview at CBS television. Fauci said one of the “unintended consequences” of mask wearing is that “people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.” Following up on this comment by Fauci, the interviewer asked, “and can you get some ‘schmutz’ sort of staying inside there.” “Of course, of course,” replied Fauci.
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity is a project of Dr. Paul’s Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (F.R.E.E.), founded in the 1970s as an educational organization. The Institute continues and expands Dr. Paul’s lifetime of public advocacy for a peaceful foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties at home. Visit http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org