Mask-Free At Last, But At What Cost?

 

As the Omicron variant wanes in the US and the COVID pandemic has begun to transmute into an endemic condition in the US, the public will once again confront informed information and distorted misinformation. The public will hear widely incongruous messaging from politicians, political parties, news media and non-news media entities, and from public and community organizations about what the ‘right’ policies now are, or need to be, for every aspect of American life. COVID tested America, and COVID changed America; or more accurately America’s society demonstrated its strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities in confronting an issue that literally impacted every member of the nation.

Masks were one of the earliest COVID phenomena. Masks were an early public policy response to dealing with a new pathogen that presented an ominous potential not just to individuals but to the entire nation. Early on, the public saw how rapidly and extensively something as unanticipated and unknown could disrupt the ‘normal’ day to day life of the nation. COVID also brought fear to the nation; and with that fear came many other malignant responses within American society. It’s not unusual for people to react in a wide range of ways when facing a crisis, nor is it unusual for some to seize the fear as an opportunity to seek personal advantage at the expense of a public cost. There are the hucksters and con-artists that will attempt to promote and sell various products and services that will ‘save’ you from the crises, some of these will come cloaked in the guises of professionals.

To protect the public from being preyed upon, societies and governments will (or should) establish institutions charged with the responsible for setting policies and processes promoting the best practices and policies for the public/nation and to prevent the abuses by purveyors of predatory products and services. Of course, establishing institutions to protect and serve the interests of the nation and public is fraught with challenges. COVID has demonstrated an ample number of examples related to such challenges.

To protect the public’s health our institutions must be reasonably trusted by the public. They must be able to conduct their work and carry out their responsibilities without bureaucratic or political obstructions and interference acting to prevent them from being successful. We have seen such interference during the COVID pandemic, and we continue to see it. The institutional failures have raised concerns about how adequate our healthcare entities are prepared for responding to the nation’s healthcare needs. But the political side of COVID has demonstrated the bigger threats and risks. Politicians and political parties have shown how their ideological, partisan, and self-serving interests can make a national crisis and make the crisis itself worse and simultaneously add additional problems and burdens upon the nation and the public. Does anyone think that the nation did not suffer more during COVID’s rampaging waves because of the politicizing efforts of our politicians? Each side contends that the nation was harmed by the actions, policies, and processes taken by the other side. But surely much of that harm and damage was a result of their own actions, policies and processes which collectively made things far worse than they needed to be.

In easing or removing the mask mandates, to what degree will this decision produce outcomes that are popular with some or most but remain a point of concern or contention with others? The decision(s) does not come free of consequences. Just as the imposition of the mask mandates had positive and negative consequences, the removal or reduction in the mandates will have consequences. Everyone can be tired of and frustrated with COVID, but the public’s emotional state and wishful thinking has the normal laws of physics impact that they always do. None.

It would be more helpful and effective to provide the public with a better understanding of the what the implications of the changes in policies are expected to produce by way of outcomes. Political leaders would thus demonstrate to their respective constituencies what they understood about their decisions, what they expected to result from those decisions and policies, and what they should be held accountable for. Take the simple questions of how their policy decision will translate into COVID results. Will more or fewer people become infected? Will more or fewer people require medical intervention or hospitalization? Will more or fewer people die? After all, we have heard repeatedly for over two years that our elected leaders are basing their policies “on the science”. These claims are made even when the decisions made by some politicians are completely in opposition to that of other politicians. This of course cannot be true. Both cannot be right. Even the majority of Americans can probably be expected to agree with the simple logic, the basic math, and the principle of “cause and effect” that require at least one of them has to be wrong.

So, in eliminating or reducing mask requirements what consequences are we all accepting from our politicians? Consider that masks requirements were imposed to accomplish two basic objectives:

1. Providing individual protection to an individual from transmissions from other individuals. For those who wore masks, the probability of being infected was reduced. This leads to a ‘fewer’ set of outcomes. Fewer infected, fewer requiring medical intervention, fewer hospitalized, and fewer deaths. We can presume that these are better outcomes compared to their alternatives.
2. Producing group protection from individuals who are infected and capable of transmitting the virus to others. Just as a mask reduces an individual’s consequences from infection, masks worn by someone infected reduces the probability of transmission to others. Fewer transmissions mean fewer negative consequences. We can presume that this also produces better outcomes compared to the alternatives.
3. Both situations: individuals wearing masks for protecting themselves and individuals wearing masks to protect others creates a more effective environment than each one alone. You get more than just adding the two individual benefits together.

Some very basic application of STEM-reasoning should obvious even to the less capable politicians who base their decisions upon “the science”. When mask mandates are eliminated / reduced there will be additional COVID transmissions. Everything that follows from those transmissions will thus be or should be expected. This is not to say that the public policies on mask requirements should not be changed. It just means that those making the decisions know that they are accepting those outcomes. Well, they should ‘know’ but they are politicians, so their understanding is not required by any law of physics. The public should also understand what the changes mean, and the public should hold the politicians accountable.

This is true for policies on mask requirements. It is true for vaccination requirements and policies. It is true for school policies, for businesses, for healthcare, for the economy, and for politics.

Now the decisions on any given issue, policy or societal area will not be isolated from the impacts that the decisions in one area have on other areas. Mask requirements effects all the other issues. This in fact has been clearly demonstrated throughout the pandemic and is as true now as it was from the beginning. All the political, partisan, and emotional division over mask-wearing was connected to all the other issues. There was/is the ‘personal rights’ versus ‘social responsibility’ dimension to masks. There was/is the impact to businesses, healthcare, and education also involving masking. There was the partisan politicization of masking that was perhaps the most idiotic of all. Removing mask requirements will have ‘Cause and Effect’ impacts just as imposing them has had.

While the mask issue has been divisive, the vaccination issue has perhaps far greater and more important consequences to the nation. Just as politicians should understand how their policies on masks affect their constituents, they should understand and be held to account for their policies on vaccinations. This is particularly true as the nation moves to an ‘endemic’ COVID period. In our attempts to return to ‘normal’ there will be implications from all the policies and decisions that are made.

How many politicians have understood that in moving toward a more ‘normal’ social environment the differences within the population will have predictable differences in the outcomes? This doesn’t mean that those different outcomes are not acceptable just that those making the decisions should understand them in making the decisions and those who will be affected by them ought to be made aware of the implications that could impact them directly or indirectly.

Just because the COVID pandemic is shifting to an endemic phenomena does not mean there are no consequences from decisions anymore. Mask restrictions are being lifted. Politicians are very eager to ‘return’ the nation, their states, their towns, and their communities to ‘normal’. Nothing wrong with that. A post-COVID ‘normal’ has to occur at some point whether it is done overtly or is just the product of the laws of physics, biology, and mathematics. As politicians reduce mask requirements there will be some change in infections/transmissions. It cannot be otherwise. So logically there will be more hospitalizations and there will be more deaths. It cannot be otherwise. We, via the politicians, are making a choice that some will suffer, and some will die because it is in the best interests of the public to achieve the new post-COVID ‘normal’. One could say that we will have achieved the endemic COVID stage of ‘herd immunity’. Only as many as we can tolerate becoming ill and as many as we can tolerate dying will be the accepted new normal. Absent a successful effort to eliminate the COVID virus from the world, it cannot be otherwise.

The politicians hopefully understand this. The public is much less likely to comprehend this new reality. This can be seen in the contradiction between what politicians promote and what the consequences will be. One partisan political group has taken the position that various COVID policies should be mandated and the other has taken the position that individuals should make their own personal choice about any policy. This divide has occurred over masks, vaccines, school policies, and policies for public and private businesses, and many other dimensions of our society. As a consequence of the decisions to remove the various policies and restrictions there will be different outcomes. For example, communities with high vaccination rates will experience lower health impacts and deaths while those with lower vaccination rates will experience more. Thus politicians who promoted or required the policies that were more effective will lose fewer constituents while politicians who advocated personal choice or even resisted successful policies will suffer higher loses among their constituents. Now, if these loses were randomly distributed among the population there would be no direct consequence to the politicians or their own interests. Except, the loses are not randomly distributed across the population. The constituents who follow and support a politician’s policies are self-selecting, self-organizing, and self-concentrating. The loses are thus self-selecting, self-organizing, and self-concentrating.

This means that some politicians are helping to cull their supports from the ‘herd’ at greater rates than that of those voters who do not support them. This is why the politicians ought to understand the consequences of their decisions, not for the benefit of their constituencies but for the benefit of their own self-interest. Likewise, there is the self-interest of the public to understand the decisions of the politicians because it is equally possible that a politician could accept the changes in public policies because of the consequences which advantage them and disadvantage their opponents. If one politician can harm their own interests by being uncomprehending of the consequences of a decision, then another politician can benefit from the exact same decision because their self-interests are served by those exact same consequences. Even the public receives this same duality of benefit versus cost. The public after all is not homogenous. There is a segment(s) of the public (population) who gain at the cost of the other segment(s). On a political dimension, doesn’t one party gain if the other party loses? On an economic dimension haven’t we seen shifts in the power that employers versus employees have because of COVID, and won’t this be part of the new ‘normal’? In the jobs environment don’t some professions and careers gain while others lose. This is just as true for businesses, some gain because of consequences that will come from the policy decisions that are being made and some will not.

We may all be frustrated with the COVID restrictions and be eager to return to a ‘normal’ life; it is very human and expectable. However, don’t fool yourself; there will be consequences to how we go about ‘returning to normal’. With every decision, on every aspect of our society, there will be impacts and interactions on what the outcomes are. When juggling more and more decisions, it doesn’t take to many missteps to cause the total process to fall into chaos.

I recall the sage advice handed down from antiquity: “Be careful what you wish for.”