Given the angry coverage from hostile media whenever politicians are caught not wearing a mask they should have been wearing (as if the rest of us never slipped up that way!), it makes sense that President Biden might decide to err in the opposite direction.
There’s no harm in wearing a mask outdoors, with almost nobody around but a camera operator 20 feet away. I agree that there’s little or no public health justification for the mask. But if you’re in the public eye, that in itself is ample reason for trying to avoid facing silly accusations of not wearing one, then having to explain why it wasn’t needed and sounding like you’re making excuses.
Taking an unnecessary COVID precaution is way down low on any reasonable list of political peccadillos.
I wear a mask sometimes when I believe there’s no real public health reason to do so, simply because I don’t want to be glared at by people whose understanding of the science is different from mine. Politicians get glared at a lot. Unnecessary mask-wearing when there are cameras around seems like a sensible way for a politician to cut down on the glares.
Joe Biden is 79 years old and President of the United States. White House safety protocols, including COVID protocols, are wisely much more protective than the “house rules” in normal houses. People around the president are usually masked and endlessly tested. With everyone else erring on the cautious side on his behalf, it would arguably be both rude and irresponsible for the president not to err on the cautious side himself as well.
The time may come when it will be useful for the president to doff his mask as a signal to the rest of us that the pandemic is well and truly over and we should all get over it. For Biden to seem to be sending that signal prematurely would be unwise both politically and medically – far more unwise than unnecessary caution.
If I had a chance to urge the president to change something about his mask-wearing, I wouldn’t tell him to take off his mask when it isn’t really needed. I’d tell him to upgrade his mask to an N95 or something equivalent when it is really needed. Wearing a nearly useless mask is a far worse role model than wearing an unnecessary mask.
Copyright © 2022 by Peter M. Sandman
