Enforcement is an interesting issue in a situation such as the COVID pandemic, and one that was on the minds of the six Town Council members who discussed potential ‘mandatory face covering’ regulations during a ZOOM meeting on Tuesday evening.
We are listening here to Council member Mat deGraaf.
“Enforcement is definitely a big issue. If we’re going to put something out there, we have to have enforcement behind it. Otherwise, it’s meaningless. And I don’t know what that looks like.
“I already stated how I feel about us meddling in a business establishment and how they choose to do business, but what about the people on the street? Main Street is shoulder-to-shoulder people. Certainly, social distancing is not being practiced. If we’re going to put [a mandate] in place, then we need to back it up with some teeth, and I’m afraid of the perception that may create…”
I agree with Mr. deGraaf’s concerns about government “meddling” and the challenges of enforcement, but he might be exaggerating about the “shoulder-to-shoulder people” part. Yes, our downtown is more active than it was in the middle of April, but… here are pictures of Main Street and Lewis Street, photographed at noon on July 2, heading into what is normally the busiest weekend of the summer season…
Council member Shari Pierce continued the discussion about a potential face covering requirement:
“So, my biggest concern is enforcement, and I don’t see how we can possibly make it a mandate, and enforce it.
“We have had so many emails in the last few days, but [a local nurse] put forth a plan for a type of enforcement, and I really appreciate that. It’s an idea, more around education and I really like that. So I don’t know if we come up with a stronger statement than we did before, regarding social distancing and mask wearing. But we’ve talked about the [electronic reader board] signs, and how expensive they are to put at each end of town. But maybe those could be covered by the CARES funds?”
The Council had previously discussed electronic reader boards in use in Durango, informing incoming traffic that masks are required in that city. The estimated price quoted to the Town Council was $15,000 each, as I recall.
“Even if we don’t have a mandate in place,” Ms. Pierce continues, “we could tell people when they come into town, ‘Please wear your mask’. But I definitely agree with Mat; I don’t think we’re ready to pass anything tonight…”
Council member Rory Burnett stated he was encouraged by the 100 or so citizens who had logged in to listen to the Council’s ZOOM meeting, many of whom had also offered testimony ‘for’ or ‘against’ mandatory face coverings.
“My hope is that we can come together as a community with an understanding that we would not allow hatred or prejudice about these choices that individuals have made, nor ignorance of others’ opinions, because we all have opinions, and I don’t believe I have the full story of what is right, and what is true.
“Durango has come up a lot tonight, and I reached out to a few Durango locals who are in business there. The only people that we’ve really heard from are people who go and visit Durango for a day, and then come back and say, ‘Oh, it’s roses and daisies over there; we should do what they’re doing’. But the reality is that Durango locals have ‘weaponized’ that health order, and have used it to instigate hatred, rhetoric, confrontational experiences…
“Knowing the reality of what that order has brought about — the weaponizing of a community that is ‘against each other’ rather than ‘for each other.’ Every time I go to City Market or Walmart, at different times of the day, I’m paying attention, and I’m telling you guys, we have increased [mask-wearing]… This morning I counted, out of maybe 100 people, I think there were two that didn’t have masks on…
“People from Texas, as much as we like to rag on them, they’re dealing with the same thing…”
According to news reports, Texas continues to break records in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, rivaling hot spots such as Florida and Arizona as the new centers of the US pandemic.
From Governing.com, July 1,2020, a report by April Simpson titled “Virus Spikes While Local and State Officials Bicker Over Face Mask Mandates”:
As the situation escalates — spiking to a record 6,584 new cases Wednesday and adding more than 5,000 new infections almost every day last week — Republican Governor Greg Abbott has consistently touted the ways in which Texans can stay safe: Wear a mask, sanitize often, social distance. Last week, he encouraged Texans to just stay indoors, then said he’d put a pause on reopening businesses. By the end of the week, he ordered bars to close and restaurants to cut their occupancy from 75 percent to 50 percent.
Yet even as Abbott has warned that Texas will take further measures if the situation doesn’t improve, he has refused to allow local officials to penalize people who decline to wear masks in public. However, earlier this month he began allowing local officials to penalize businesses that don’t require employees and customers wear masks.
Here is the New York Times map of “Hotspots” updated this morning. The areas in gray are showing few or no new infections; and in light blue areas, the rate has been dropping. Yellow is “about the same.” The shades of orange and red are showing increased infection rates over the past 14 days, with the darkest red showing the greatest percentage increase. We note that La Plata County is dark red, with an average of almost four new cases reported each day — in spite of ‘weaponized’ mask policies?
The Council gradually came to an agreement not the mandate face coverings at the conclusion of their three-hour meeting, and Council member Maddie Bergon suggested that if messaging were to make use of “the current hashtag trend on social media” — #DoingMyPart — “it would be powerful, and would create some cohesion among Colorado communities as well.”
The decision was to assign Town staff with the job of re-writing Resolution 2020-X to reflect the ideas tossed around during the Tuesday meeting — specifically, to remove any wording that might indicate a ‘mandate’ or ‘enforcement’ or ‘penalties’. Council members were asked to email their suggestions to staff over the next few days, and are expected to take up some type of resolution next week at their July 7 regular meeting.
In the meantime, we will be celebrating — in some fashion — the Fourth of July weekend, along with hundreds of tourists from COVID hotspots.
From what I can gather, even the smartest medical experts don’t agree on how exactly COVID-19 makes its way through a community, but it appears that it takes an average of about 5 days for symptoms of a novel coronavirus infection to show up (according to this Annals of Internal Medicine report from early May). In some people, symptoms can occur anytime between 2-14 days following exposure… growing gradually worse in some cases, especially among older folks.
So we will want to pay attention to the San Juan Basin Public Health data dashboard over the next two weeks, to see the results of Independence Day celebrations in Pagosa Springs.