Hot off the press! Boston Globe reports the Governor has issued an order requiring everyone in the Commonwealth to wear a face covering in public. The Globe story can be found here. The Order goes into effect on Wednesday.
We Don’t Need to Wait for the Mayor, Governor Baker Orders Everyone to Wear a Mask in Public –
by Amy Sangiolo | May 1, 2020 | Newton | 27 comments
There’s a gigantic “if”, which means this order doesn’t have much teeth.
Charlie hit the green on the first shot, but then missed the short putt.
Require everyone to have a mask with them and to use it inside or out when social distancing is not possible.
Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.
“Governor Charlie Baker issued an order Friday requiring everyone in Massachusetts to wear a face covering in public — including in businesses, outdoors, or on public transportation — if they’re unable to socially distance themselves from other people.”
This is not a requirement to wear a mask. If anything it adds confusions because theoretically the IF applies to businesses and public transport as well
WBUR has different sentence structure, Ted and Claire, i.e. saying always in those indoor situations:
“Massachusetts residents who venture out of their homes will soon have to do so while wearing a cloth face covering.
Gov. Charlie Baker said the order would require anyone over the age of 2 to wear masks while outside and unable to maintain the proper physical distance needed to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. Masks will be required at all times while inside grocery and retail stores, and on public transportation.”
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/05/01/coronavirus-mask-order-massachusetts-baker
The actual order is here: https://www.mass.gov/doc/may-1-2020-masks-and-face-coverings
WBUR had it correct.
Seems reasonable – this is different from the Somerville/Brookline/etc… orders in that it only requires masks to be worn outside when social distancing is not possible while requiring them at all times when inside grocery/retail stores and public transportation (including taxis and ride share services).
So in clear language
Masks always required when in retail store (including grocery stores )and on public transit
Masks required outdoors IF you can’t or won’t socially distance
Why is it so difficult to offer clear verbiage?
It appears Charlie sank the putt. Thanks, Paul.
Kudos to Governor Baker. It is tragic how many Massachusetts residents have been sickened and/or killed by this vicious virus. We clearly have not been doing enough to “flatten the curve” so it is reasonable to step up our actions so that we can protect our residents and also get people back to work and school as soon as possible.
For those interested, I made significant improvements to the tracking app this weekend. You can now click on a “summary” checkbox and see how MA ranks vs. the rest of the country on 16 different metrics, as well as see where our numbers are forecasted to head. http://app.jackprior.org
The key thing I noticed once I had this functionality in place was high our ratio of deaths to hospitalizations is (60%). Almost 2x higher than the higher states in the rest of the country. More info on that here:
https://covid19.jackprior.org/2020/05/02/covid-19-hospitalization-patterns-by-state/
Wow – this is amazing Jack!! Thank you!!
I would disagree somewhat with Councilor Norton’s assessment that we aren’t doing enough to flatten the curve. The Governor himself said we are succeeding a few days ago. I think compliance is relatively high, especially in places like Newton. The fact is that we have truly essential workers who will continue to be exposed, and their social contacts are not zero. We also have communal living spaces like retirement and nursing homes where residents and staff are facing great threat.
We would be in a far worse situation were residents and businesses not doing such a great job. We should be cheering people on so that we can keep this up for a while longer. Let’s be thankful we have not overwhelmed our hospitals, thanks to compliance and amazing healthcare professionals.
As for masks, changing indoor policy now makes sense. There’s more virus in the community than there was 50 days ago. We have a better (but still not adequate) supply of masks in medical and institutional settings, so we have more masks for the public. People have had some time to make protection for themselves and even start a cottage industry selling or donating masks. We are for the first time realistically able to require face coverings in essential indoor locations like markets and pharmacies, as well as on public and private transportation.
I expect that these requirements will remain constant from now through recovery. They will be required so that people will have confidence to return to businesses, whenever that happens.
It is also important to remember that flattening the curve means a long tail. We are still buying time, time for better treatments, cures, and vaccines. It’s an irony of good compliance. We simply don’t yet know what that means for the rate of opening things up.
Thanks to everyone. When faced with major challenges, we really can do what would have seemed impossible (even if our approach is imperfect and flawed, and for many families across our country tragically so).
@Mike Halle – thank you for your thoughtful post. I think I understand what Emily means but I worry about giving people a false sense of our choices here.
We have flattened the curve and have been about as restricted as we can reasonably expect in a free society. Increasing the pain for non-essential workers who are already locked down is not going to prevent cases in Boston.
Walking around Newton on public streets does not guarantee social distancing. And I am tired of being forced into the street when walking (with a mask) because the 20 somethings in groups of 2-6 can’t go single file on the sidewalk while bouncing a ball. I am forced into the street (once nearly getting hit by an Uber driver who was on his phone). I am tired of watching the “young” people hang out with friends on the street with a football. I am trying not to pass my germs in my breathe cloud. But nearly every other person I see on my walks, will move over to one extreme (the grass, the street, the other side of the street), but the small groups of 2-6 can’t be bothered to move while letting me pass in their breathe cloud.
Yes, we are outside.
I haven’t seen my friends at all in person. I want to save the health care workers from treating more patients.
I am sorry for being petty, but I am annoyed at the 2% of people who don’t care about others, and only think about themselves. They annoyed me before COVID19, but now more so.
@NewtonMom-
I don’t think you are being petty in the least. I too witness what you describe and worse on a daily basis. While we are doing more testing which is good, we are still consistently seeing close to 2,000 people give or take newly diagnosed every day! If we want to see some semblance or normal, those numbers need to go down. Thus far it has been frustrating to see the tallies – every time it looks like we might have turned the corner the numbers jump back up again.
It’s not enough to flatten the curve- we need the numbers to decrease if we want to see the stay home orders lifted.
@NewtonMom: I experience what you describe on my walk seven days a week. I also experience joggers (not wearing masks) suddenly sneaking up from behind me. I have a very acute sense of hearing, and yet I’m unaware they’re approaching me until they’re maybe six feet away and I hear a leaf rustle on the sidewalk or the jogger takes that moment to cough (yes, cough…with no mask on).
After I’ve darted onto someone’s front lawn or into the street to get out of their way, I’ve taken to calling out, “Next time announce yourself, OK?” Then I realize they don’t hear me, because they’re wearing earphones. I’m baffled by their behavior. Why do they feel comfortable being in such close proximity to other people when we’ve all been told to observe social distancing? For all they know, any person they pass could be the COVID-19 equivalent of Typhoid Mary.
Wearing masks. Just do it.
I just came from Sandwich Works in Newton Centre. I wanted to order food but there were 2 guys in there ordering without masks, a man eating at a table in the corner and an employee around food without a mask.
Typical Newton “enforcement”.
Someone has to say it:
https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2020/05/08/jobless-rate-spikes-to-14-7-highest-since-great-depression
The original intent of the closing of the economy, as stated to us by government leaders at the time, was to save the Healthcare system from collapse. Absent a cure, the virus is with us, and we need to be careful but realistic in returning to normal, like in every previous pandemics occurring about every 10 years. Did we save healthcare? https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/05/08/cape-cod-healthcare-furloughs
As painful as it may be to see virus counts rise, the loss of jobs and homes will have a destructive effect on families that we cannot repair. Tax burdens that we have just placed on our younger members of society will drastically change their quality of life going forward.
Time to go back to church/school/work.
Jim, I have to disagree with you here. Yes, we are in uncharted territory from an economic viewpoint. But every community, every state, every nation faces the same problem. This is a “no fault” situation for those who have been hurt. I don’t believe that “this has gone on long enough, we have to start spending + earning money even if people die” is the right kind of enough for this unparalleled situation.
At some point taxes and debt all become incredibly distorted. Our existing last-ditch mechanisms for fixing things, like declaring bankruptcy, won’t work. Why should people go bankrupt because they lost their jobs or had high health insurance costs for a disease that affected everyone and was unavoidable (“no fault”)? How would the bankruptcy court system work with so many claims? And what about workers? Should they be forced to back into potentially risky work situations, because they lost their unemployment coverage? What if they are high risk, or taking care of high risk individuals? Where’s the fairness, or even the practicality, of that?
Standard market and economic measures fail in this situation. Utterly fail. That’s why we’re loaning money at no cost and handing out checks to everyone in a panic. But even that isn’t going to work. Even a mad scramble back to “the ways things were” isn’t going to fix the damage. That’s why economists are even talking about an “economic jubilee”, which involved wiping out all debt like this whole thing was a bad dream, effectively resetting to zero rather than taking a decade clawing our way back.
I’m no economist, but I know that the markets favor certainty as much as they favor good news. There’s no certainty in “let’s open and risk a second or third wave”. There’s no certainty in “we opened but people are too scared to shop”. There’s no certainty in happy talk that’s not anchored by sound, trusted scientific and medical judgement. We live in a society built around the idea that the places where we live and work and shop and play are not potentially fatal risks to our health and life. Many people simply will not go, and should not be forced to go, to places of undue risk.
I also want to clarify another point of yours: we aren’t just trying to stay under hospital capacity. That’s important, but it is just one story of one graph. Here’s what we are waiting for.
We are waiting out a better understanding of the disease, which allows us to make better decisions. More time with the disease suppressed by shutdown buys us time which buys us knowledge and experience. We’ve learned a huge amount from Asia and Europe already. I read the pre-prints every day.
We are waiting out better treatments that reduce the risk of death in hospital, which eases the healthcare burden and reduces the risk of our public health and public policy choices.
We are waiting out a cure, which will keep most people who get sick out of the hospital, allowing most non-urgent healthcare to return to its pre-pandemic state.
Finally, we’re waiting out a vaccine, which will shield most of us from the risk of this virus, but will take an unprecedented effort to reach everyone who needs it.
This is a new world. We have no wise elders to consult. We have no experience to rely on. We have to think outside our limited circle of experience and chart our own direction based on where we want to go.
But we have to get our priorities straight. Accepting that more innocent people need to die so that our economy can survive is a false, limited, and shallow choice. A world where all of us together can live our lives in safety without threat of disease, poverty, physical safety, and threats to our rights and liberties is the same world where economies – and more importantly, societies – grow, thrive, and prosper.
Well stated, Mike.
Economic jubilee – lol nope.
Patrick, why is debt forgiveness any less worthy of consideration than anything else? It was used in Germany post WWII and has been credited with contributing to that country’s post war recovery and low debt rate.
In a world where every debtor and every lender has been affected, a blanket solution to reset the scales may be only viable answer. Think of it as simultaneous no fault group bankruptcy.
What was funny a year ago might be the cheapest and most expedient solution to a hugely complex economic and social problem today. You may lol, but what’s the workable alternative ? This isn’t hypothetical. Most other arguments are significantly more socialist (government payouts to keep people afloat).
Mike, because it is an unserious idea and a waste of time to discuss. There exists no mechanism to action this idea. Legislation would obviously be hopeless. I won’t spend any more time on it.
Patrick, people, businesses, and governments simply can’t repay money they don’t have, by way of losses beyond their control. Everyone’s in the same boat. Bankruptcy and dent forgiveness are common financial tools. This just expedites the process, acknowledging the unique nature of this global problem. It could be implemented at any number of levels.
Fine, call it crazy. What’s your alternative?
Mike as usual always provides a well thought out response and one that should be acknowledged for its depth and value. I’m happy to have the discussion on this and hopeful that we can get up and running soon. I’m a financial advisor, by day, working at the client facing level on the very personal topic of family risk management and estate planning. I can say with experience, that very seldom will a person elect the bankruptcy option no matter their situation. The stigma carries and is also very personal to hard working people that never ask for anything except the ability to work.
On the health risk, we have learned a lot given the huge international experience, and healthcare focus now needs to focus on the highest risk populations , an obvious failure of this 1st wave. Although controversial, healthcare professionals need to focus more on curing underlying conditions such as obesity, promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors, and less the medical habit of piling on medications without solving the real problem.
There will not be a general relief of personal debt so it really cannot enter the present conversation, making the option to be one of returning people to work, but not necessarily back to normal.
Hi Jim, thanks for your insight. I agree with the traditional stigma of bankruptcy, even when bankruptcy is the most rational financial choice.
But doesn’t that stigma change when we are talking about losing a job, or health, or business, or even a loved one in the face of pandemic? No one can say it is because of personal failing, or bad financial planning. This is beyond rainy day funds, even for people who have the luxury of them. This isn’t like people overspending their credit cards, or even facing a single overwhelming crisis like medical bankruptcy. This is systemic failure precipitating personal loss.
Now multiply that by maybe 15 or 20% of people in the US. And add on a big chunk of businesses. And governments. Formerly solvent and viable entities brought down by pandemic. Is the best answer really how to squeeze more money out of them? It seems unfair and impractical. You can allow these people, these institutions, to become wards of the state, or you can lift the burden of debt and let people move on.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Without the ability to live and work healthy, our losses, of all kinds, will continue to accrue.