When highly-visible people like the president refused to wear masks and made wearing masks a political issue, their supporters were less likely to wear them.
More than 5 months into the
Covid-19 pandemic, the evidence for masks keeps getting stronger.
One study in Germany found that mask mandates reduced the growth of infections by about 40 percent.
Another estimated that mask rules in 15 US states and Washington, DC, may have prevented as many as 230,000 to 450,000 cases.
Wearing a mask is a simple action that almost anyone (excluding very small children and people with certain health conditions) can take, and most experts agree it can help slow the spread of the virus. Masks are a big reason why other countries, including those more densely populated than the US, have done a better job than the US at controlling the virus.
Yet even as the COVID claimed more and more American lives throughout the spring, Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and others in the administration routinely appeared in public without masks. For Trump in particular, the longtime refusal to wear a mask became part of a larger message that ignoring the risks of the coronavirus was the tough or strong thing to do.
When highly-visible people like the president don’t wear masks and make wearing masks a political issue, their supporters are less likely to wear them.
When the president said people were wearing masks as a way of showing their disapproval of him, that’s a pretty clear signal, not just that he wasn't modeling responsible behavior, but that he viewed it as a sign of disloyalty. That does definitely further politicize the decision to wear a mask or not.
The full article is available
here
