Masks: Volunteering is not enough

It’s inspiring to see the students and teachers who are mask-wearers day in and day out this semester. I thought for sure I would be one of these people, but I really do enjoy going maskless.

Shout out also to the retail workers—for a while we called them “essential workers”—who still wear masks for the benefit of their customers. Somewhere, I still have a hastily printed document from early 2020 listing me as an essential worker who should be allowed travel privileges to and from work (I worked for a big-box store at the time).

Now that I have praised our mask volunteers, I feel the need to criticize them somewhat.

I assume these are people who think of themselves as making a virtuous personal choice. I think of them this way too.

However, I have to wonder if this isn’t really the case of a non-choice masquerading as a choice. Let me try to explain: we citizens have a spectrum of options regarding masks. In past times we could defy the mandates and wear no mask. Now we can defy the lack of a mandate and wear a mask. Each of these expresses things about ourselves as individuals and where we see ourselves in various culture wars.

Nevertheless, this really is beside the point. The question of public health is above our paygrade, it is not a decision we can fully make on behalf of those around us.

In order to fight the pandemic, we need to work together. This working-together cannot happen spontaneously and on a volunteer basis. It requires, above all—above even science maybe—leadership.

To confront the pandemic we need more than mere moralistic compliance with health mandates or volunteerism to do so without mandates. To battle with a pandemic, the most necessary thing of all is there are mandates to comply with in the first place.

The Chinese are the masters of pandemic leadership. Almost everything comes second to fighting the pandemic, even the Party’s goals of opening, reform and development. This is made possible by a politics that is paradoxically apolitical: pure governance.

Perhaps for the better, our government does not function in this way. In our case, to get more decisive pandemic leadership, it is up to us to demand our leaders lead.