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As experts call for nationwide mask mandate, anti-maskers stab guard 27 times [arstechnica.com]:

As US coronavirus cases dramatically shoot up to the highest peak yet in the pandemic, prominent public health experts are calling for a nationwide mandate to wear masks to try to drag down disease spread.

The call comes as violent clashes over masks continue in places that already have face-covering requirements.

In a Wednesday interview [youtube.com] with the Journal of the American Medical Association, top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci called for a national mandate. “We’re not in a good place,” Fauci said, referring to the ongoing, record-breaking rise in daily case numbers.

The current seven-day average of daily new cases is over 74,000, the highest it has ever been during the pandemic, and daily case numbers are still climbing. Hospitals in many states are strained as beds and intensive care units fill up. More than 45,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Wednesday. The number is expected to rise, and a devastating uptick in deaths is likely to follow.

Fauci noted that, according to data from countries better off than the US, masking and other “low-tech” efforts, such as physical distancing and avoiding crowds, are effective at controlling the virus. “There’s no doubt,” he said. “It makes a difference.”

Fauci also addressed concerns about future lockdowns. The idea is almost “radioactive” now, Fauci said. “Well, If you don’t want to shut down, at least do the fundamental, basic things,” he said.

Fauci’s points were echoes of those made by former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who on Sunday called for a nationwide mask mandate [wsj.com] in an oped in The Wall Street Journal.

“The inconvenience [of mask wearing] would allow the country to preserve health-care capacity and keep more schools and businesses open,” he wrote. “Studies show widespread use of masks can reduce spread. But even if masks are only incrementally helpful, they are among the least economically costly and burdensome options for reducing spread.”

Divisiveness

In implementing such a mandate, Gottlieb said fines and law enforcement involvement are not necessarily required. “States should be able to choose how to enforce a mandate," he wrote, "but the goal should be to make masks a social and cultural norm, not a political statement… Mandating masks has become divisive only because it was framed that way by some politicians and commentators,” he added.

That divisiveness has continued to spark violent clashes around the country. The day Gottlieb’s oped ran, a shoe-store security guard in Chicago was stabbed 27 times after asking two sisters to put on masks and use store-provided hand sanitizer. Illinois has a statewide mandate to wear masks in public and while working.

The attack, which was caught on surveillance cameras, occurred after the sisters refused the public health measures and the guard asked them to leave. They allegedly hurled a trash can at his head, stabbed him repeatedly with a “comb knife” in the back, neck, and arms, and also kicked him in the head and body. The guard broke free and was able to keep the pair in the store until police arrived.

Police arrested the sisters, who are being held without bond on charges of first-degree attempted murder. The guard was transported to a local hospital where police said he was in critical condition [washingtonpost.com], according to The Washington Post.

Nationwide outbreak

Other employees at the shoe store were reportedly told not to speak with the media, but the Chicago Sun-Times spoke with the manager of a nearby clothing store [suntimes.com], who said:

I’m kind of wary because we often have to tell customers to wear their masks, and they get irate and don’t want to do it. We had a customer the other day that didn’t want to wear a mask and we needed to call the police. It’s crazy.

The stunning attack on the security guard is just the latest in a string of violent encounters over masks, The Washington Post notes. In September, an 80-year-old man died of blunt force trauma to the head [washingtonpost.com] after being shoved by a maskless man during a dispute over masks in a New York bar. In August, a Michigan man died after being stabbed [lansingstatejournal.com] by another customer at a Quality Dairy store, who refused to wear a mask when confronted by a grocery store employee.

In July, police in California charged a grocery-store security guard and his wife with murder after a fight with a maskless customer [latimes.com]. The same month, a maskless woman in New Jersey broke another woman’s leg [nbcnewyork.com] at a Staples during a mask altercation. And in May, the security guard of a Family Dollar store in Michigan was killed [washingtonpost.com] after telling a customer that her child had to wear a mask to enter the store.

Reckoning

The violence and countless other confrontations over masks around the country are down to politics, Gottlieb and Fauci suggested.

“We’ve got to get away from that,” Fauci said Wednesday in the JAMA interview. When asked how exactly to get away from that divisiveness, Fauci suggested some hard reckoning.

“Well, we get there by looking at the consequences of what happens when we don’t,” he said. “We have to sort of shake each other by the collar and say, ‘Take a look at what’s going on, look at the data, it speaks for itself.’ We’re in a very difficult situation… Let’s put aside these extraordinary excuses for not [wearing masks and distancing].”

As cases and hospitalizations continue on a frighteningly steep climb, the US has already recorded more than 8.86 million cases, and nearly 228,000 people have died.

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