Several state leaders of both parties support the requirement, citing science. The president says people need to \u201chave a certain freedom.\u201d<\/b>
\nThe nation\u2019s top public health agency argued in a medical journal last week that Americans need clear, consistent messaging to normalize wearing cloth face coverings to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
American political leaders apparently still haven\u2019t gotten the message.
President Donald Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday that he didn\u2019t support a national mandate for people to wear masks because \u201cI want people to have a certain freedom,\u201d even as a bipartisan group of governors emphasized the role masks play in slowing the virus and saving lives in their states.
\u201cAnd I don\u2019t agree with the statement that if everybody wears a mask, everything disappears,\u201d the president told Fox News host Chris Wallace in the interview, undercutting the messaging from his own government experts.
Several months into a global pandemic that has infected 3.7 million Americans and killed more than 140,000 people in the U. S., the nation still lacks a unified approach to handling Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, including the use of face coverings.
Cities, counties and states are taking their own approaches to dealing with the resurgent virus that has ravaged states across the South and West at a record-setting pace in recent weeks. Indeed, the lack of a clear strategy is playing out as both the entire nation and individual states set records on positive coronavirus cases and deaths amid pressure to fully reopen the economy ahead of the November election.
Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters on Monday that \u201cwe could drive this epidemic to the ground\u201d if everyone wore a face covering the next four to six weeks. In aneditorial published in the medical journal JAMA on Tuesday, Redfield and other CDC officials cited case studies affirming the effectiveness of face coverings.
\u201c[T]he public needs consistent, clear, and appealing messaging that normalizes community masking,\u201d they wrote. \u201cAt this critical juncture when COVID-19 is resurging, broad adoption of cloth face coverings is a civic duty, a small sacrifice reliant on a highly effective low-tech solution that can help turn the tide favorably in national and global efforts against COVID-19.\u201d
Trump, however, has provided inconsistent, mixed messaging on masks. The president called out Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams for recommending against the use of masks before the CDC recommended them in April.
\u201cEverybody who is saying don\u2019t wear a mask \u2014 all of a sudden everybody\u2019s got to wear a mask, and as you know, masks cause problems, too,\u201d Trump said in the Fox News interview, which was recorded on Friday at the White House. \u201cWith that being said, I\u2019m a believer in masks. I think masks are good. But I leave it up to the governors.\u201d
Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, began his \u201cMeet the Press\u201d interview with NBC\u2019s Chuck Todd on Sunday while wearing a mask.
\u201cI\u2019m going to take it off for this interview,\u201d Collins said, noting that no one was within 10 feet of him. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t want anybody to think that we take masks as something optional for people who want to protect themselves and people around them.\u201d
Collins called it \u201cbizarre\u201d that masks had become a political issue.
\u201cHow could it be that something as basic as a public health action, that we have very strong evidence can help, seems to attach to people\u2019s political party?\u201d he asked. \u201cThat virus is very sneaky and stealthy, and our best chance is for all of us to get together and do the right thing, and stop fighting so much about the divide between different political perspectives, which is just getting in the way.\u201d
Twenty-eight states \u2014 and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico \u2014 have statewide mask mandates, according to anABC News analysis. The list includes Arkansas and Colorado, whose governors sat for a joint interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week\u201d on Sunday.
Eight in 10 Americans said they wear a mask all or most of the time, according to aWashington Post-ABC News poll, including 66 percent of Republicans. And 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the president\u2019s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Only 38 percent approve.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican, said he didn\u2019t support a national mandate, but challenged \u201cour national leadership\u201d to set an example by wearing masks. Trump wore a mask in public for the first time last week during a trip to Walter Reed National Medical Center.
Hutchinson conceded that a statewide order was \u201cnot something I wanted to do,\u201d but he acknowledged that \u201cit\u2019s something everybody can do to relieve the pressure on our hospitals, to give us a hope to bring down those cases.\u201d
Arkansas hit its peak in coronavirus cases on July 9. The state averaged nearly 700 daily cases in the past week, and more than 450 Covid-19 patients remain hospitalized, according tohealth department data.
\u201cIt\u2019s not popular. It\u2019s not something we want to do,\u201d Hutchinson said of the mask mandate. \u201cIt\u2019s not the first lever we pull. But it is one that, when the data says it\u2019s necessary, we do it.\u201d
Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat, agreed.
\u201cThere\u2019s no governor that ran for office or gets up every morning saying, \u2018I want people to wear masks,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s why, you know, Asa had concerns about it. So did I.\u201d
But \u201cthe mask mandate was really an easy decision after I saw that data,\u201d Polis said. \u201cI think what\u2019s important for people to know is that this is not ideological. It\u2019s not partisan. It\u2019s science-based. Masks are a ticket to more freedom. It makes it less likely that businesses will be shuttered. It makes it less likely that people will die.\u201d
Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), who served as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton, told Raddatz that \u201cthe virus is out of control\u201d in her district.
Florida was the 34th state in the country to issue a stay-at-home order but one of the earliest states to begin reopening. And despite avoiding the early outbreaks that some experts predicted, the state is now experiencing a full-blown emergency. Florida reported more than 12,500 cases on Saturday.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Trump ally, has suspended drinking at bars in Florida. But he has said the state won\u2019t shut down again and opposed making masks mandatory statewide.
Shalala on Sunday took issue with those positions.
\u201cWe need to close down in Florida,\u201c she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve asked the governor to do that. And we\u2019ve even asked him to do the simplest thing, and that is to require masks for everyone. He has not done that. Luckily, our mayors in South Florida have done that. But that\u2019s just a small piece, because this disease doesn\u2019t know what county or what city it\u2019s in.\u201d
Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, warned that his state was about where Florida was a month ago.
\u201cWe\u2019re very, very concerned,\u201d he said on \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not just about masks, though.\u201d
DeWine said his administration would begin running television ads to promote wearing masks and that more mask mandates could come at the county or even state level.
\u201cWe\u2019re at a crucial time,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so this week, you may see a lot more counties under that mask requirement. So we certainly would not rule out going statewide. We\u2019re certainly looking at that.\u201d
Mississippi\u2019s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, said on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union\u201d that \u201cit\u2019s not about the words you write on the page\u201d or \u201cwords like mandate.\u201d It\u2019s about getting a majority of citizens to do the right thing, he said, such as wearing masks in public and maintaining social distancing.
\u201cThe best way to do that is to highlight those counties where it\u2019s most needed,\u201d Reeves said. \u201cIf I believed that [a statewide mandate] was the best way to save lives in my state, I would have done it a long time ago.\u201d
Redfield, the CDC director, also warned last week that this fall and next winter could \u201cbe one of the most difficult times that we\u2019ve experienced in American public health.\u201d Trump, however, said he doesn\u2019t think Redfield actually knows.
\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody knows with this,\u201d the president said. \u201cThis is a very tricky deal. Everybody thought this summer it would go away and it would come back in the fall.\u201d
\u201cThey got a lot wrong,\u201d Trump said of his administration\u2019s top health officials and experts.
After calling Fauci, the NIAID director, an \u201calarmist\u201d who was wrong when he said the virus would pass and recommended against travel from China, Fox News\u2019 Wallace told the president that he\u2019d made mistakes as well.
\u201cI guess everybody makes mistakes,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI\u2019ll be right eventually. I will be right eventually. You know, I said, \u2018It\u2019s going to disappear.\u2019 I\u2019ll say it again.\u201d
\u201cI\u2019ve been right probably more than anybody else,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n