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10A OPINION ®he £ntics gainesvilletimes.com Weekend Edition - July 18-19, 2020 Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. JAN FEB MAR ARP MAY JUN JUL AUG JIM POWELL I For The Times EDITORIAL Mandating masks We know they help, local governments need flexibility to make rules to keep public safe Not even the most insightful of prog nosticators could have predicted six months ago that one of the most divisive elements confronting the American people in 2020 would be the wearing of face masks. Who could have imagined that the debate over whether to strap on a face covering as part of a public health ini tiative would have sparked such rancor among the populace as to have ramifica tions in all walks of life? The concept of covering mouth and nose to potentially stop the spread of a virus that has destroyed lives worldwide has become a raging controversy that incorporates health, politics, American freedom, capitalism, social structure and a host of international conspiracies. Keyboard warriors of social media, amateur infectious disease experts, political grandstanders and finger-point ing zealots on both sides of the debate have elevated the mask issue into a struggle for control of the country. Were it not so deadly serious, it would be absurd. Some believe those who refuse to wear a mask are evil incarnate. Some believe those who do wear a mask are fools manipulated by omnipotent pow ers. Some are convinced the masks save lives; others think they are more danger ous than good. Experts in the health field say wear one, except for those who disagree. Poli ticians say wear one, except for those who say not to. And meanwhile, the numbers of COVID-19 cases are again on the rise, the hospitals again threatening to reach maximum capacity, and the nation still in a pandemic that shows no signs of relenting. The face mask debate is particularly heated in Georgia at the moment. Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday ordered that local governments in the state have no authority to mandate wearing of masks in public, and that the few such man dates that were in place were invalid. Only the state can make such a decree, the governor said, and the state is only willing to suggest the wearing of masks, not mandate such action. The governor said that the mandates are impossible to enforce, and in that he is right. They are largely symbolic, but sometimes symbolic measures can have great impact. Statewide measures limiting the numbers of people in bars and restaurants are not impossible to enforce, but are close to it. And yet they exist, as do a host of other orders that are unlikely to be enforced, such as manda tory cleaning of bowling balls. “It’s officially official, Governor Kemp does not give a damn about us,” said the mayor of Savannah, which along with other areas of the Georgia coast have seen a marked uptick in COVID cases in recent weeks. Savannah was the first of Georgia’s cities to require a face mask when in public, followed by others, including Atlanta and Athens. The legality of whether local govern ments have the authority to exceed what the state has ordered during the midst of a public health crisis is a topic best pur sued by lawyers and judges. But there seems little doubt the governor could have granted that authority had he cho sen to do so, rather than reprimanding local officials for the action they had taken. After all, in the very same executive order, the governor did grant to local school systems the authority to require masks in public schools for both work ers and students “to prevent the spread of COVID-19.” So mandatory face masks are alright for schools but not for city governments? They help stop the spread of the disease in a classroom but not on a crowded city sidewalk? Don’t waste a lot of time look ing for logic in that particular gubernato rial dictate. The governor has made it very clear he believes in masks, knows they help, and encourages every Georgian to wear them. He just doesn’t want an impotent mandate. It is also important to note that the ill- advised lawsuit filed against the city of Atlanta by the state on Thursday had as much to do with the city’s efforts to force the closure of businesses than it did whether face masks would be required. That is a different issue, though one interwoven into the same arguments over the authority of government enti ties. The lawsuit itself is yet another sign of partisan bickering over power at a time we need cooperative leadership. It should not have been filed. There are legal issues here that pre date the existence of the current pan demic. States and cities have for years argued over the extent to which individ ual cities can pass laws on a number of topics that are different from state law. Can a city set its own minimum wage, require private businesses to offer cer tain benefits to employees, have its own laws on discrimination, or other topics? The “preemption” issue as it is called was a hot legal topic before the first case of COVID-19 was ever diagnosed. Those are debates of legal theory and governmental principle that should be argued in an arena separated from the urgent immediacy of a public health crisis. While the governor has chosen not to make masks mandatory, a number of private retailers, including major companies like Walmart and Kroger, have announced that they will require face coverings on customers, setting off a different kind of protest from those opposed to wearing one. Social media posts were ablaze with comments about the loss of American freedoms, governments run amok and communist plots to take over the coun try. In fact, just the opposite is true. There is nothing more American that capitalism, which allows private com panies to decide how they want to oper ate and consumers to decide if they will patronize those companies. There is no better example of American freedom than free enterprise devoid of govern ment intervention. Don’t want to patronize a company that mandates mask? Then don’t. Shop elsewhere. Appreciate a company that promises all its customers will be wear ing face coverings? Then good, go there and shop in confidence. That is the American way. What’s totally inane is the face mask debate has become so embroiled in the heated emotions of politics and mis guided advocacy on both sides as to have resulted in threats, personal confronta tions, physical attacks and even deaths in various locales around the country. It is impossible to pretend that posi tions on the issue of face masks are not being influenced as much by politics as by science. The president wants the economy open, schools in session, and the general public thinking about some thing other than the pandemic. He does not want a reminder of the crisis visible on the face of everyone out in public. The president’s opponents on the other hand would love nothing more than to make political hay out of the health crisis, and face masks are a constant reminder that months into the pandemic, the United States has not fared as well as many other countries in “flattening the curve” and beating back the virus. If the governor is not going to make the use of masks mandatory statewide, we think he should give local govern ments the authority to mandate if they so choose, just as he has with the schools. Not all areas of the state face the same challenges; there are hotspots that demand drastic action. Regardless of whether face masks are mandatory or voluntary, we are con vinced, like the governor, that the evi dence shows they can help to slow the spread of the disease. We don’t under stand why someone would refuse to do something so minor as wearing a mask in a public place if by doing so they knew they may be helping to keep others safe. In a more controlled environment, like some workplaces where social dis tancing is possible and other measures of prevention are taken on a consistent basis, wearing a mask at all times may not be necessary. But decisions on whether to do so need to be based on public health concerns, not political allegiance. Few tombstones make note of the political party favored by the occupant of the grave they mark, though many extol the virtues of a long life, well lived. V irus leaves parents with no good choices There’s a plastic dinosaur wearing a neck lace, a stuffed Minion, a few Lincoln logs and some half-colored pages strewn across the floor next to my desk. Actually, there are a lot more things strewn across the floor, but I’ll spare you the full list. My kids aren’t even home full time right now. But I am. When the virus first infected our lives, every one was home all of the time. I found a separate space to work, whether it was the back deck or even the large master bath room - which most moms know is the only place you might be able to get away from your children. They were still noisy, but if I could get a couple of doors between myself and them, I could work while my husband parented. Now, I’ve got the whole house to myself. But I’ve also got the risks that come with the rest of the family working and learning in the virus- plagued world outside our house. And there’s no one here to clean up the toys but me. Come August, we can choose to send our old est back to school. Or we can choose to keep him home. Come August, perhaps the number of COVID- 19 cases will have risen even more, and what makes sense now doesn’t make sense just one month from now. It’s hard making decisions in this environ ment. Thankfully, school officials are preparing for all the possibilities. Here’s what that looks like in my house. Possibility one: We send our oldest to school. He drastically increases our family’s potential exposure to the virus. When we first began fostering a little more than five years ago, putting kids in child care earned us quite a few viruses. The kids bounced back quickly. We bounced back slower. With COVID-19, most recover. But spend ing time with older relatives or anyone medically fragile could now be a very bad idea. Mean while, he’s prob ably learning more academically and socially. Possibility two: We keep our oldest at home. We’re all safer, except that I’m home alone with him while he learns and I work. I know us well enough to understand that won’t end well. He likes to learn, until it gets hard. Then we scream at each other. Then no one is learning or working. Sure, I can try not to scream. Then I’m patiently parenting and not working. In most cases here, I’m not getting much work done. Possibility three: We send him to the inven tive noon to 5 p.m. classroom option offered to Hall County’s K-3 students. Now, we’re home alone together for just a few hours. Only they’re his best few hours, when he has the most energy — enough energy to chase his brother around the house with one of them pretending to be a tiger and the other a gorilla. Trust me, it’s a lot of energy. But by the afternoon, will he be too tired to give school his attention? And if he’s tired, will he learn? Will he behave poorly? Is the reduction in exposure worth the upheaval? So, there’s the dilemma of one parent with one school-age kid. Thousands across the county are thinking through these options. Many have multiple children. This column might be better if I had some advice for you. That isn’t this column. We’ll just have to settle on suffering through it together. In some districts, they’ve decided to start school virtually. For families with two working parents, what is the solution? Schools educate children, but they also pro vide a safe place for them to be during the day. Take that safe place out of the equation and we’ve got a problem. Then again, what’s safe with COVID-19 spreading through families and communities? Many wondered as we sheltered in place what kind of “normal” we wanted to return to as everything slowed from its frantic pace (note, I was not one of those people for whom the pace slowed). We’re deciding now. Only, any “normal” we find still includes COVID-19. Shannon Casas is editor in chief of The Times and a foster parent. ‘Schools educate children, but they also provide a safe place for them to be during the day. Take that safe place out of the equation and we’ve got a problem. Then again, what’s safe with COVID-19 spreading through families and communities? ’ SHANNON CASAS scasas@gainesville times.com (the (Times Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com EDITORIAL BOARD General Manager Norman Baggs Editor in Chief Shannon Casas Community members Cheryl Brown Brent Hoffman David George J.C. Smith Mandy Harris Tom Vivelo To submit letters: Send emails to letters@gainesvilletimes.com or thecontactformatgainesvilletimes. com. 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