Regarding the growing controversy of wearing facemasks in public, it is my understanding that wearing a non-medical mask does little or nothing to protect the wearer. What it does do is protect, to a large degree, people the wearer interacts with.
We should harken back to the mid-1990s when public smoking was being outlawed. At the time, smokers loudly protested, saying that their constitutional rights to smoke when and where they saw fit were being violated.
It seems to me that unmasked presence of asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers is in many ways analogous to the public smoking we all were exposed to before the bans. It is true that the noxious smells are not present, but I would argue that an unmasked COVID-19 carrier is “smoking a big, fat $2 cigar” in public and is a danger to the greater society.
I support the concept of “no shirt, no shoes, no facemask, no service.”
Wayne Wilson, West Jordan
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