SALT LAKE CITY — On a recent trip to the Publix grocery store near her home in Boca Raton, Florida, Josie Machovec was stopped by a young shop employee at the doors.
“You need to have a mask to come in,” he said.
Machovec, 35, who has asthma and feels stressed if wearing a mask, replied she has a medical condition and wasn’t going to wear one.
Yet even if she didn’t have asthma, she’s no fan of being required by anyone to put something over her face that she feels dangerously impedes her breathing and promotes fear and panic.
That’s why her kids don’t wear masks either, nor does her husband — although he did tie a T-shirt over his face to enter a Target in a neighboring city, where police officers were sitting outside the doors to make sure entering customers were masked.
“There’s crazy things happening all over the country,” said Machovec, who jokes with her husband to keep bail money handy. “I’m not going to do my grocery shopping wearing one.”
Just months ago, masks were innocuous — the background scenery of a doctor’s visit or part of a routine dental cleaning.
Today, amid a global pandemic that’s killing the vulnerable and crushing economies, some people see wearing a mask — or not — as a symbol and a statement.
Yet unlike a “thumbs-up,” which is easy to interpret in the U.S., masks as symbols are “messy,” says Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, an associate professor of political science at Purdue.
Is going maskless a rejection of science and the CDC’s recommendation that all Americans wear a mask, she wonders, or is it a push back against perceived media paranoia and government infringement? Or maybe it’s just confusion with the changing recommendations about why masks matter.
While people may have different reasons for avoiding masks, experts worry about the potential life-and-death consequences of polarizing public health guidance by turning face coverings into political statements.
Because once someone settles on an opinion, shares that opinion with their social group and incorporates that opinion into their sense of self, it becomes significantly more difficult to change it, even when faced with evidence to the contrary, says Jonas Kaplan, a cognitive neuroscientist and assistant research professor of psychology at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute.
“If that’s what mask wearing is becoming — a signal for social identity — then that’s going to be a very difficult thing to deal with,” he said. “Separating ourselves into mask wearers and nonwearers would be a bad idea.”
A politicized pandemic
While masks may be the newest sign of polarization in the country, it’s been clear for months that there have been markedly different approaches to talking about the novel coronavirus situation.
Conservative media outlets like Fox News initially claimed the virus was a “hoax” and an attempt to derail Donald Trump in the November election — claims that have sparked lawsuits against them. The TV news station has recently begun taking the virus more seriously by encouraging its viewers to socially distance.
Even the CDC’s most recent piece of advice — to wear a cloth mask in addition to social distancing and hand-washing — was delivered by a maskless President Trump who added the caveat: “This is voluntary, I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”
Last week, a maskless Vice President Mike Pence visited with staff and patients at the Mayo Clinic, despite hospital policy as of April 13 that requires all patients and visitors to wear one.
Politically motivated actions are nothing new, but there’s a big difference between sporting a pithy bumper sticker and picking ideological sides during a pandemic — the potential consequences are much higher now.
In a paper currently under review, researchers found that conservatives self-reported less adherence to social distancing than did liberals — because they didn’t see the virus as a significant problem.
“And that belief comes from their belief that the mainstream media is hyping the virus,” said lead author Hank Rothgerber, a professor of psychology at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky.
When asked about masks, the response was nearly identical: Conservatives were less likely to report wearing a mask for the same reason — they don’t believe the “liberal” media.
“It’s unfortunate that there became two positions, liberal and conservative, when really this should just be a public health position,” Rothgerber said. “Once it becomes politicized, it ignites the base and then reason and facts and information kind of go out the window.”
Why not a mask?
It doesn’t help that advice about wearing masks has been wildly inconsistent.
Initially, the CDC said masks weren’t effective against the coronavirus — except N95 masks, but those should be reserved for health care workers.
Now the CDC encourages cloth masks — not necessarily for someone’s own protection, but for the protection of others, by stopping large, potentially virus-laden spit particles right as they come out of someone’s mouth.
Yet this still contradicts advice from the WHO.
They say medical workers need masks — not healthy people — especially because mask wearing might produce a false sense of security and lead to reduced social distancing or hand-washing. They don’t know enough about cloth masks yet to make a recommendation.
Down in Florida, Machovec is tired of the waffling and confusion.
She’s decided to lean into her own understanding of how a healthy body handles viruses and is steering clear of anything she feels decreases her ability to get lots of fresh oxygen, which she feels would make her unhealthy and less able to care for her children.
“I’m not going to put myself at what I consider to be a risk to protect someone else,” she said. “I’m not going to light myself on fire to keep someone else warm.”
She let her parents set their own rules regarding masks when they visit — they voted not to wear them — but said if she and her husband visited his elderly grandmother, they would wear masks if she wanted them to.
While wearing a mask can be uncomfortable at first, it’s rare that someone without existing lung issues would be negatively impacted by wearing a cloth mask for 45 minutes at the grocery store, said Dr. Jeremy Clain, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist at the Mayo Clinic.
If people feel like they can’t breathe while wearing a mask, it’s most likely because they’re anxious about the mask, he says, and the anxiety is causing shortness of breath — not the mask itself.
Regarding the changing mask advice from medical professionals, they’re doing the best they can while learning about a new virus in real time, Clain says.
Yet this fundamental aspect of science — the unknowns, the real-time exploration — causes many people to be skeptical of it and can lead to belief in conspiracy theories, says Adam Enders, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Louisville who studies conspiracy theory.
Right now, about 30% of Americans believe in some type of coronavirus conspiracy theory, according to a peer-reviewed paper Enders co-authored in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.
Those conspiracy beliefs may lead some people may stop social distancing or not wear a mask, he says.
“It doesn’t take everybody to not do that,” he said, “for these sort of inactions to be impactful.”
Government overreach?
Kristen Sherlock, 37, has been wearing a mask out in public since early March — long before the most recent CDC guidance and not because anyone told her to.
It’s not a political statement, nor an attempt to spite a political opponent — something she’s been noticing more and more.
Instead, her bright orange cloth mask featuring tie-wearing foxes is her way of protecting her community.
“I’m doing my part to prevent the spread, should I catch it,” said the mom of four kids who lives in Farmington. “Because I could catch it, and wouldn’t it be nice if I catch it, and I’m near you in the store that I didn’t share it to you?”
Her feelings on masks are like her feelings on vaccines.
“I feel that everybody should do it, but I don’t feel like you should make anybody do it,” she emphasizes. “I feel like everybody should consciously want to help their fellow community (members) and build and protect one another, but I don’t feel like it’s right to make anybody do those things either.”
Yet, Connecticut, Hawaii and New Jersey are among a small handful of states where governments have mandated that masks be worn by people in public or those working and shopping in essential businesses.
Citing constitutional abuses, Texas doctor and Republican activist Steven Hotze recently sued Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo for requiring that all residents older than 10 wear face masks in public, maintain social distancing and avoid touching their face, with violators facing fines of up to $1,000.
“Today a mask, tomorrow a hazmat suit, where does it stop?” reads Hotze’s petition. “Every day Judge Hidalgo’s order is allowed to stay in place, the liberties of the residents of Harris County are trampled on.”
The application to block Hidalgo’s order was denied and the mask order is now in effect for the Texas county.
In numerous other cities, counties and states — including Utah — wearing face masks is encouraged, but not required. Utah will even ship masks free to residents.
“This is like when a doctor recommends that you lose weight, exercise more,” said Grant Stern, a co-founder and national spokesperson for Masks Now Coalition, a grassroots movement of volunteers making cloth face masks. “You don’t have to do it, but it could lead to a negative medical outcome.”
And in this situation, the negative outcomes could mean death for you or someone you love, he says.
“This is a civic activism campaign,” he said. “It’s not partisan, it’s not political, it’s patriotic.”
Finding common ground
Brain experts like Kaplan know that force isn’t effective in getting someone to change their mind, and aggressive arguing can even backfire, causing someone to double down on their original position.
Appealing to shared values can be an answer.
Right now, the best message may be about families and protecting our “collective health,” says Kaplan. After all, healthy economies need healthy consumers.
Maybe that requires walking back some earlier feelings about masks and mask wearing, like Lua K. Yuille did about six weeks ago, when she saw mask wearing as annoying and even superstitious.
Yet, she’s shifted her views, and now the law professor at the University of Kansas dutifully dons a mask anytime she leaves her home, despite a heightened level of anxiety and negative experiences that have come from wearing a mask as a person of color. (She’s twice had racial epithets yelled at her while wearing a mask — something she hadn’t experienced in her community prior to this.)
“What people need to do is give themselves permission to grow and evolve,” Yuille said. “We spend a lot of time telling people that changing your mind makes you weak. But give yourself permission to change your mind, and allow other people’s experiences to change your behavior.”
If others’ experiences just aren’t enough, find a way to make the decision to wear a mask something you can own — like how Matt Carl decided to make red masks emblazoned with “Trump 2020” and “Make America Great Again.”
He’d been hearing the buzz about masks from public health officials, as well as the resistance from those who are “much more aligned with the conservative side of things,” he said.
“A lot of people are misguided to think they don’t need them,” said Carl, who voted for Trump and also believes in wearing masks. “I thought this is a good way to help them actually wear a mask.”
He knows many conservative folks also have anti-establishment bents and chafe under instructions from government or public officials. He understands that but believes embracing that as a rigid philosophy “falls short.”
“The reality is, as a society you have more freedom if everyone wears a mask,” he said. “Less people die, less people are impacted. If you’re truly about individual freedom then you should wear a mask, then we’d all get out of this quicker.”