POV: It's time to make indoor masks mandatory in Hamilton - for the good of us all

KevinMacKayis a social science professor and executive director of a non-profit community development organization in downtown Hamilton. He is also the author ofRadical Transformation: Oligarchy, collapse, and the crisis of civilization.

Watch CBC Hamilton's live interview withDr. Catherine Clase, an McMaster University associate professor of medicine who has looked at a century of research on the effectiveness of cloth masks, at 12 noon today.

After nearly four months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario is finally seeing our infection rate fall the way we'd like it to. Our province has now entered "phase two" of the reopening process, and while many see this as a time to relax some of the important COVID-related public health measures, in fact it is time to do the exact opposite.Hamilton should follow other municipalities like Guelph, Kingston and Toronto and make it mandatory for people to wear masks when in indoor public spaces.

We have perfect examples of what happens when reopening is done with no protocols in place the soaring infection rates in Texas, Florida, and now California. We also have local evidence from the Kingston nail salon, responsible for 27 infections and counting. If we re-open without intelligent protocols in place, we will see a strong second wave and all that entails thousands of new infections, hundreds of preventable deaths, and renewed economic lockdowns. No one wants to see Hamilton turn into a graveyard of dead small businesses. We need to do reopening right the first time.

There are people who oppose mask wearing, arguing that masks are ineffective, or that wearing them is an assault on their rights. Regarding the first argument, the science is now beyond debate that masks impair the spread of COVID. This protection goes both ways protecting the mask wearer, but most importantly the people around them. Masks are being recommended by public health professionals and infectious disease experts around the world, and have been for months.

We know from research that the majority of people catch COVID through prolonged exposure to an infected individual in an indoor space. People are much less likely to catch COVID outdoors. Given this data, it is a logical step for people to wear masks when in a public, indoor setting. This includes shopping malls, grocery stores, pharmacies, public transit, airplanes, etc.

Making masks mandatory is an infringement on our civil rights, but this needs to be understood in context. Several laws limit our civil liberties for good reason. We obey traffic lights, wear seat-belts, refrain from smoking in public places, and don't drive after drinking. Each of these laws impairs an individual's ability to do what they please; however, we accept these limitations because of the negative impact individual behaviours can have on the people around them.

We have to look at the threat we are facing and the degree of infringement. The context of COVID-19 should be clear to everyone by now. It is a highly contagious infectious disease that is orders of magnitude more virulent than even the worstflu in the best-case scenario about 10 times more deadly, but possibly as much as 50 times. A significant percentage of those infected are asymptomatic, yet still able to spread the infection. In addition, there is evidence of long-term lung and heart damage from those who recover from COVID-19, and research suggests that any pharmacological silver bullet (vaccine, reliable cure) is nowhere on the horizon.

COVID-19 is a very serious illness. Yet how serious is the infringement on rights we are talking about? Wearing a mask for the 30 minutesyou may be in the grocery store, for the 15 minutes you may be in the LCBO,for the 20 minutes you may be on the bus? People are not being prevented from engaging in their regular behaviour. They are not being asked to ingest anything or being injected with anything (much more serious infringements on civil liberties that I would oppose). They are being asked to briefly wear a mask a few times a week.

Apart from the scientific reasons, wearing a mask while in public indoor spaces is also in alignment with our most deeply held values. I believe, in a spiritual sense, that we are all connected human and non-human beings alike. I am the keeper of the fellow beings I interact with and I have a moral obligation to protect their safety and well-being. In the midst of an infectious disease pandemic, wearing a mask does this, without question. As well, it especially protects the most vulnerable the elderly, the poor, those with serious medical conditions. It protects the workers who have little choice but to stand for eight hours in an indoor environment while they are exposed to hundreds or even thousands of customers who might unwittingly put them at risk of infection, illness, or even death. Is one's momentary embarrassment, or pride, or inflated, misguided sense of "autonomy" worth putting vulnerable workers in danger?

Finally, although mandatory mask wearing in public places should be immediately implemented, the edict should be tied to a timeline (determined by public health officials), with a clear sense of when the practice would be sunsetted. In addition, the city needs to make sure that washable cloth masks are available to all Hamiltonians, particularly those unable to purchase them due to financial, mobility, or other issues.

We've often heard during the pandemic that "we're all in this together."If we truly believe this sentiment, then it's time we each walked our talk, wore a mask in indoor public spaces, and did our part to defeat this virus.