Mask Mandates - August 12, 2022 Windham Independent

Trust and Mask mandates

Politics is all about trust… but while most people think the question is which politician you can trust, the better question is if that politician trusts YOU. 

Politicians who don’t trust you (no matter how friendly and pleasant they are in person) will take your freedoms away and pass laws that attempt to control your life. Politicians who trust you will write the laws and regulations a society needs to function so they balance your rights with the societal need to impose those restrictions on your freedom, clearly identifying the problem that needs solving, explaining how the proposed law will fix it and how they will measure if it works.

Mask mandates are a perfect way to explain the importance of that trust: the New York Times published an article by David Leonhardt explaining that an apparent paradox first attributed to Dr. Shira Doron of Tufts Medical Center (“It is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not work.”) is no paradox - it is common sense.

Some good ideas only work when people are allowed to freely choose to adopt them - mandating those ideas will make things worse. Looking back on the last couple of years, if the government trusted us and stuck to providing credible evidence about the effectiveness of masks (good and bad), most people would have decided to wear masks, and we could have had all the benefits that masks can provide without all the divisiveness and polarization that mask mandates and the toxic political discourse around the mandates brought upon us. 

To quote from the NY Times: [“Airplane passengers remove their masks to have a drink. Restaurant patrons go maskless as soon as they walk in the door. Schoolchildren let their masks slide down their faces. So do adults: Research by the University of Minnesota suggests that between 25 percent and 30 percent of Americans consistently wear their masks below their nose.  …  “Even though masks work, getting millions of people to wear them, and wear them consistently and properly, is a far greater challenge,” Steven Salzberg, a biostatistician at Johns Hopkins University, has written.]

During my last trip to New York City (which has one of the strongest mask mandates out there enforced by a very authoritarian city government) I personally witnessed the complete disregard for the mask mandates there - almost nobody else wore masks in restaurants, hotels, even in Ubers… all of which were locations where masks were mandatory.

I trust you, my friends and neighbors, to know what is right for you and your family better than anyone else. I personally believe that masks can help when used correctly, and choose to wear a mask when I can protect myself or others, but given the growing evidence that COVID related mask mandates are a public policy failure, I will not support such measures if elected.

You can always reach me at (603) 267 4142 or at dpmwindham@gmail.com. I am grateful to all who put their faith in me in the past and hope to earn your support on September 13th.

Daniel Popovici-Muller

Republican Candidate for State Representative