If your only goal is to ensure that our hospitals are not overloaded – and that was in fact the initial goal – then SC Governor Henry McMaster’s decision to revoke his mask requirements in restaurants and state government offices and summon remote government officials returning to these offices is defensible.
But if your goal is to save lives and reduce exposure, it is not.
Certainly not when your justification is that you just let practically everyone line up for a vaccine. What we can all get … in the next two or three months. Probably.
It’s like standing in front of a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner when the mission has not really been completed. Only worse. It’s like doing a victory dance on the 1 yard line. Perhaps McMaster’s team – which would be South Carolina – still scores the touchdown; we certainly hope so. Or, God forbid, maybe the other team – COVID-19 – take the ball out of your hand and run to the other side to score your own touchdown.
If the governor’s goal is to boost the restaurant industry by eliminating the requirement that employees – and others who walk or wait for a table – wear a mask, he didn’t really think about it.
Ah, it will be well received by people who never thought that masks were necessary – and who never stopped eating in restaurants, except when they closed them for a brief period. But these are not the people restaurant owners are concerned about.
Restaurant owners are concerned about all customers who have stopped eating out because they did not consider it safe. Now, the governor has taken away the small guarantee that we had that at least the team would be masked.
Responsible restaurant owners will still demand this, but how many people who are on the edge of eating out will take the trouble to track each restaurant’s policy? Perhaps the governor will send restaurants to spend money they don’t have on advertising campaigns to guarantee us.
However shortsighted the decision about the restaurant may be, however, the governor’s latest decisions about state government officials fall into a totally different category. He was able to argue that almost all of his previous decisions, not to impose restrictions or withdraw them prematurely, were aimed at taking the government out of business with companies.
Decisions about state government officials relate to the type of employer he chooses to be. And your choice is deeply disturbing.
As CEO of the state government, Mr. McMaster has just ordered remote workers to return to their offices and share the space with people who refuse to wear masks. He just ordered remote workers to return to their offices and interact with the public who refused to wear masks.
To be clear: we have no objection to Mr. McMaster demanding that state employees return to the office, although we expect the state government, as well as private companies, to find the right balance between having employees in their offices where they can collaborate and allow flexibility. Our concern is to refuse to do anything to protect them from people who don’t understand or care that the main purpose of wearing a mask is to protect other people.
It is true that we did not see the attack of COVID-19 lawsuits that were feared because even the plaintiff’s lawyers concluded that it is really difficult to prove where you got that infection that made you sick and killed your mother, who was still waiting for the vaccination appointment. next month. So putting public officials at risk is unlikely to subject us to a lot of litigation. But it is a really bad way of treating your employees.
The saving grace is that most state employees work in Columbia, Charleston and other cities that still have mask orders that are likely to still apply to government offices. That is, as long as local governments keep their masking mandates in place.
Instead of using the governor’s actions as a reason to revoke their own mask requirements, as some places have already done, we urge city and county officials to consider this as yet another reason to put into effect what really is health care. protection, pro-business and pro-employee protection requirements.
And for state employees whose offices are in communities with no mask requirements, well, we just hope they can get their vaccines before one of their unmasked COVID denying colleagues infects them.