As the COVID-19 pandemic wears on across Colorado and the world, the new normal is coming into focus, and a path forward is becoming increasingly clear.
Right now, that path for metro Aurora and almost all of Colorado must include the mandatory use of face coverings in almost all public settings.
We now know that forcing people to stay home and away from each other greatly reduces the spread of COVID-19. We know from several places across the country and across the world that the uncontrolled transmission of the disease easily overwhelms the medical infrastructure of even very large, capable cities, creating chaos and risking the lives of heroic front-line medical and public safety workers.
We also know that hundreds of millions of people are being engulfed by financial ruin by shutting down cities and states. That’s creating its own untenable chaos.
Whether right or wrong, Gov Jared Polis has opened the doors to commerce and increased transmission of the virus by ending statewide restrictions. Polis is gambling on three things: people acting responsibly; insufficient testing and illnesses tracking eventually meeting the need; and the rate of COVID-19-related death and illness being tolerated by the public and manageable by the medical community.
We disagree that most of the state has the testing ability to manage the pandemic at this point, and we believe that too many people will act irresponsibly and dangerously if they are asked to do so rather than required.
You don’t have to look any further than your own grocery store to see how true that is.
In a best-case scenario, the disease will spread slowly for months, maybe years, and those who get sick or die will be an acceptable price for bringing as much “normal” as possible back to residents in greater Aurora and across the state.
The worst-case result of how the state is moving forward would be a massive surge in critically ill people, flooding the region’s hospitals and forcing the state to shut everything down again.
Numerous national experts say that’s not only a real possibility, but a likely one.
To avoid that cataclysm, and accommodate public commerce and interaction, Colorado must make every effort to keep COVID-19 infections manageable. The science is clear and consistent here: Social distancing and wearing masks not only makes a very real difference in reducing the transmission of the coronavirus, it makes a really big difference.
So far, Denver and a handful of other municipal governments have recognized those facts and have made face-coverings mandatory.
Aurora, Tri-County health and other metro-area governments should do exactly the same thing, immediately, before regional governments further open the gate on public interactions.
Every health and government official must immediately work to dispel the myth that the chief benefit of wearing a cloth mask or face covering is protecting the person who wears it. While disease experts say there is some self-protection, the biggest benefit is to those around you.
Because this disease can be unwittingly spread by people who aren’t sick or aren’t sick enough to realize they’re infected, everybody wearing masks in public will substantially reduce the rate of virus transmission.
Those are the undeniable facts. And less transmission means more continued public interaction and commerce.
It also means that we can help protect hapless people who must work in grocery stores, gas stations, and, soon, myriad other retail and service establishments.
There are no good arguments against face-covering mandates.
A shocking and embarrassing revolt in Stillwater, Oklahoma created by those refusing to abide by public mask laws exposed the myth that such requirements are unconstitutional.
No court has even raised the specter of such a charade. Being little more than an extension of “no-shirt, no shoes, no service,” the requirement is simply common sense.
We understand Colorado’s deep libertarian roots, even though most of the region’s greatest proponents transplanted themselves here to adopt them. But the true libertarian philosophy of not impinging on the rights of others is clear here.
No one has the right to inflict a deadly disease on others who choose only to shop or work alongside them in public.
Everyone in the state has virtually no choice but to allow public interaction in a way that will prevent an infection calamity. Since a vital part of that strategy includes social distancing and wearing masks, it’s critical to make that mandatory rather than a suggestion. The stakes are too high and the benefits are too essential for anything else.