The COVID pandemic lingers on, in varying degrees, and continues to bring out the latent epidemiologist in people of every political persuasion, insofar as there now appears to be an ideological aspect to contagious disease. The most disputatious issue at present seems to be the wearing of masks.

With everything else beleaguering civil society right now, it seems an awfully silly thing to get worked up over, on either side – and there is plenty of silly reductionism on both sides. A friend of mine recently framed the issue, I thought, rather succinctly on a social media post, observing, in effect, that for whatever reason both mask proponents and mask objectors appear quite unable to recognize any benevolence of motive in the other side. Virulent proponents of masking-up view the objectors as selfish disease-deniers who care not a whit for anyone’s health, while the objectors view maskers as Stepford-like sheep and busybodies who want to utilize the full force of government to enforce their personal neuroses. Surely both characterizations are a tad off.

Probably the most reasonable practical case for a mask mandate has been offered by chamber’s of commerce and other business groups, especially restaurant owners, all of whom are desperate to remain open in whatever capacity they can be, and paranoid (rightly so) of government jumping the shark and shutting their doors again. These businesses are willing to go to whatever length required for their survival, and many of them instituted their own mask orders within their premises. Everyone agrees that this is something which ought to be within their rights to do (along with other business decisions, e.g. for which occasions to design a wedding cake, perhaps.)

Alas, not everyone seemed to agree, and reports came in of employees being harassed, yelled at, assaulted, and even shot for trying to enforce their employer’s policies. So it is natural and understandable for businesses to look to the state for some back-up. Granted, such acts were already illegal, regardless of the motivation, and any miscreant who assaults a restaurant hostess or security guard ought to be arrested (by a police officer, that is, not a “community outreach official”, or whatever is proposed to replace them). Still, it is understandable that business owners grew weary of having their employees shoulder the burden and were within their rights to seek state relief.

There is mounting evidence that wearing masks in congested public spaces at least helps to slow the spread of COVID – notwithstanding earlier, equally compelling testimony from public health officials that public donning of non-medical grade masks had little, or even counter-productive, effect. I am willing to concede that science and evidence are, by nature, evolutionary. In any case, it is far more socially and economically sustainable for society to temporarily embrace wearing a mask rather than to shut down again. If wearing a mask is necessary for society to re-open, I’m in.

There is, of course, the ongoing issue of enacting laws outside the normal means, which is problematic on an intrinsic political level. More specifically is the question of enacting laws, like a mask mandate, which are unenforceable and likely to be widely breached.

Most responsible government officials concede the impracticality, if not impossibility, of enforcing a mask mandate. And the simple fact is that most of us, even those of us sympathetic with the motivation, will find ourselves breaking this particular law from time to time (you know who you are). The problem with a law that invites mass non-compliance is that it breeds within society a certain level of comfort with disobedience. The broken windows theory of crime control, which has been proven out time and again, is that when small things (like breaking a window) are allowed to slide, that contributes to a culture of disorder, and sooner or later the occasional broken window devolves, over time, into acts of greater vandalism, arson, theft and violence.

It is folly, of course, to suggest that a mask mandate in and of itself will lead to a crime surge. Failing to allow police to enforce existing laws is what is driving that. But it does serve to illuminate the complexity of the issue.

It is possible to recognize that most people on both sides of this ridiculous mask conundrum have good intentions, including the governor and the Douglas County commissioners. In the meantime, I will wear a mask in public, most of the time, and focus greater attention on the more important windows breaking in our society.