Anti-vax, anti-mask hysterics won’t protect community from COVID

Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021 | 2 a.m.

The destructiveness of the far-right’s misinformation and propaganda about COVID-19 was on display during a recent town-hall meeting in Las Vegas.

The purpose of the meeting, which was led by Clark County Commissioner William McCurdy II, was to gather community input on allocation of federal coronavirus relief funding, but instead it was hijacked and disrupted by a group of anti-mask agitators.

Residents who had shown up to offer constructive opinions about projects that deserved the funding instead had to watch as these idiots shouted in opposition to mask mandates and got in people’s faces, forcing the organizers to call Metro Police. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

These disrupters went so far off the deep end, though, that you’d need sonar to find them. One compared mask mandates to — brace yourself — slavery. McCurdy, who is Black, noted to Sun reporter Arleigh Rodgers that this jaw-dropping comment was made “in a room filled with impacted folks (who had) ancestors who were slaves.”

Let’s state the glaringly obvious: Being required to wear a mask is in no way, shape or form like being enslaved. It’s not remotely similar to being placed in chains, shipped across an ocean, forced into servitude and tortured or killed, or both, for disobedience.

Nor is it a form of tyranny, despite the rantings of several people who turned up at a recent Clark County Commission meeting to share their opposition to mask mandates.

It speaks directly to the irresponsibility of extremist Republican leaders and far-right media that groups of people here and elsewhere across the nation are willing to show up to public meetings and go hysterical about mask mandates.

This is more serious than simply being groups of kooks spouting conspiracy theories, though. They’re putting people at risk by creating a tense atmosphere where confrontations could easily break out, and by putting themselves and others in danger of being infected.

Witness what happened when hundreds of mostly unmasked people showed up at a county commission meeting in St. Louis in opposition to a mask mandate. There, health officials are urging attendees of the meeting to quarantine for nine days after at least one crowd member tested positive for COVID-19.

Fueled by the unvaccinated, Americans are getting sick and dying from COVID-19 at levels approaching the pre-vaccine months — or, in Florida, actually exceeding them. The right-wing rhetoric has become a public health emergency in and of itself.

Enough of this. Republican leaders in Nevada and elsewhere need to stop sowing lies, fears and propaganda about masks and vaccines, and instead focus on the basic truths that masks help control the spread of the virus and vaccines are safe and effective.

As far as masking goes, it’s akin to being required to wear a shirt and shoes in a restaurant. Or being barred from spitting on the floor in a public establishment. Or keeping kids home from school if they get head lice. Or driving within the speed limit, or scores of other measures we as a society have adopted to protect each other.

It’s about maintaining public safety, period.

And despite the lies and fearmongering coming from the ragged right preaching to a vulnerable audience, the latest science supports masking for both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Heres’ why: Studies show that the vaccines offer excellent protection from the delta variant of the virus, vaccinated individuals can contract the variant and carry an exceptionally high viral load when they are infected. This creates a risk of transmission to unvaccinated people, for whom the delta variant is particularly dangerous. Nearly all new infections and deaths from the coronavirus are occurring among unvaccinated people.

In the here and now in Las Vegas, masking up and vaccinating are the right things to do. These actions are critical to protecting ourselves, our loved ones, our neighbors and our visitors from disease, but also to maintaining our economic recovery.

As we’ve done many times in this space, we’ll again commend the responsible, moderate Republicans who are spreading a constructive message on the pandemic and encouraging people to do the right thing by vaccinating and abiding by public health advisories.

Unfortunately, the months-long deluge of destructive rhetoric and misinformation on the coronavirus is going to be difficult to overcome. Once you have incited a mob, it takes a while for torches to burn out.

When the situation is so out of control that people are comparing masking to chattel slavery or Soviet-style oppression, that’s an indictment of the far-right’s politicization of the coronavirus and its abject irresponsibility in dealing with the pandemic.