Mike Pence, the Mayo Clinic and GM: Are face masks really a blue/red issue now, too?
Here’s the thing, Mr. Vice President: Real men wear masks.
Not just those unmartial milksops like French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron, who believes in diplomacy, plays classical piano and can recite an alarming quantity of Molière from memory. Or like Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who after all lives in California, which is kind of the France of the United States. No, amid this coronavirus pandemic, some of the world’s most dedicated and dictatorial thugs have been seen in protective gear, including even the famously bare-chested Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Real women, too, of course, feel unthreatened by the need to show some common sense. German Chancellor Angela Merkel made masks compulsory in her country, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would probably like to.
Yet on a Tuesday tour of the Mayo Clinic, Mike Pence went in bare-faced, in violation of the hospital’s policy during this pandemic. He does get tested for COVID-19 regularly, and said that means he knows he doesn’t have it. (Which is not necessarily true, though why am I telling this to the head of the coronavirus task force?)
He also said he didn’t wear a mask because he wanted to be able to look those doing such good work in the eye when he thanked them. If that’s true, do you think he might be unsure how to wear one? (Nose and mouth, covered. Eyes, uncovered and hopefully open.)
Some off-script Mayo tweeter noted that Pence had been informed that the clinic requires everyone to wear a mask for safety’s sake, but that post was soon disappeared. Maybe because the hospital is at fault, too, for not enforcing its own rule. How much courage would it have taken to say, “Sir, it’s really important that you do this.” Though I’m not the vice president’s biggest fan, I really can’t see him saying, “To hell with your patients! My face was meant to be seen!”
I can, however, see him wanting to stay in sync with the president, who has said he just doesn’t want to wear a mask — doesn’t see himself in one, as if this were any other fashion statement, or a matter of personal taste.
“I just don’t want to wear one myself,” President Donald Trump said. “It’s a recommendation.’’
“Somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute Desk, the great Resolute Desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know, I don’t see it for myself.”
This is the same macho impulse as when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson bragged that he was going to keep right on shaking hands with COVID-19 patients. You know, right up until he became one himself.
Or for that matter, as William Henry Harrison coatless in the cold, looking so dashing at his March 4, 1841 inauguration, which as it turned out was held exactly one month before he died.
You know what’s just as contagious as the coronavirus? The attitude that wearing a protective mask is optional, signals weakness and is simply not a good look.
Here in Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson said the same thing the president did when asked about whether he’d be wearing one to keep others safe. He seemed offended by the question, and more than once, has said that the current guidance on wearing a mask is this: “It’s up to the individual what they want to do.”
No, it isn’t. The current CDC guidance is that if you have to be in close contact with others in places where social distancing is not possible, you should wear one, to protect them in case you have it yourself and are asymptomatic.
To do otherwise is just plain selfish, because again, the main purpose of the mask is to protect other people. And for anyone who is supposed to be a role model, such self-indulgence is inexcusable.
More than a million Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and more have already died of it than we lost in Vietnam. If our leaders can’t put up with even so minor an inconvenience as a mask in response, then the message is that we have no real responsibility to one another.
On Thursday, Pence did wear a mask as he toured a General Motors/Ventec ventilator production facility in Kokomo, Indiana. General Motors also requires workers to wear masks, and it’s heartbreaking to think that GM might be less obsequious and more serious about public health than the Mayo Clinic.
Karen Pence said on Fox News Thursday that no one at Mayo ever told her husband that he needed to wear a mask. They should not have had to tell him, but if that’s true, our health care system may have been politicized beyond resuscitation.
A version of this column originally appeared in USA Today.
