The failed justifications for refusing to impose a mask mandate

Last week some members of the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo signed a letter calling on the university to reinstate its mask mandate. Today, the President of the university responded to our letter. I will reprint his email in full here, in italics:

Thank you for your email.

Public health decisions are based on data, evidence and sound ethical principles.  One of the most significant principles guiding public health decisions is that coercive actions, such as mandates of any kind, should only be taken when no other options are available. 

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve. In early 2020 this was a new virus. We didn’t know what we were dealing with and there was limited knowledge of how to prevent or treat the virus.  Faced with dire consequences for society, the most coercive measures were imposed, such as stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, and when they became available, vaccine mandates to ensure adequate uptake in the population.  

The situation is quite different today.  We have knowledge about who is most at risk from COVID-19 and how best to support them. Vaccines are available for all age groups. There is a high level of immunity in our community. This evolution in our population, preventive interventions and treatments for the COVID-19 virus means that we no longer face the dire consequences which justified the use of coercive measures. 

We do continue to prioritize the health and safety of our community and strongly encourage that all members keep their vaccination status up to date, encourage masks in crowded indoor spaces, and maintain enhanced ventilation and cleaning procedures.  We continue to closely monitor the current status of COVID-19 in our community.  We will not hesitate to reimpose any measures if they become necessary to reduce risk to our community as we did late last semester. As always, decisions will be based on scientific evidence and epidemiological data and following guidance from public health officials.

We continue to encourage masking and respect the right of individuals to choose to wear a mask when and where they see fit. I encourage you to share your reasons for wearing a mask and to ask your students to consider them when making their own decision about mask wearing in your classroom.

Kind Regards,

Vivek Goel

This response is an embarrassing display for a purported institution of higher learning. Worse still, it is completely inattentive to the evidence and current context surrounding the pandemic. The idea that mask mandates raise ethical concerns (as opposed to failing to impose them to protect the community!), is deeply troubling. If “coercive actions” have such a high bar what does the President think about indoor smoking rules or seatbelt laws? It is overwhelmingly clear that any incident of exposure to COVID is far more dangerous than any incident of exposure to second hand smoke. Studies now show that reinfections dramatically exacerbate risks, even for otherwise health people.

The President’s statement reminds us that in 2020 we hardly knew anything about the virus. But this part of the statement reveals a dramatic logical failure, as it skims over the fact that the more we learn about COVID, the more concerned we should be. COVID damages internal organs, and increasingly the evidence suggests that it damages the immune system, making subsequent infections (whether COVID or RSV or the flu, etc.) considerably more dangerous.

The statement also implies the university is using an evidence-based assessment for dropping the mask mandate, and suggests evidence will inform decisions about whether to reinstate it in the future. What it does not explain is what has changed since November or December to justify dropping the mandate for the second time? Transmission remains high - in fact, currently as severe as ever. Since January 2022, transmission has been consistently higher than the highest previous peaks of the pandemic. Hospitals remained completely overwhelmed - indeed, on the very day the university announced its appalling decision to drop the mandate, our local hospitals were publicly pleading with people not to come to their ERs.

The only thing that has changed in a positive direction since 2020 is the availability of vaccines. And guess what? In part because the province (and the university!) dropped vaccine requirements, booster and bivalent rates are deplorably low. People relying on the first two doses they got well over a year ago are no longer sufficiently protected.

From an evidentiary standpoint, the President’s email wouldn’t get a passing grade if it were a policy memo.

Another thing the President’s message does is rely on the “public health guidelines” (the university has consistently fallen back on this empty talking point), as if the provincial health guidelines were satisfactory. But they aren’t. In fact, they’re essentially non-existent. The university is relying on a public health context that represents the greatest policy failure of our lifetimes.

In addition to ignoring the scientific evidence on transmissibility, risks, and efficacy of mask mandates, the President also ignores the social scientific evidence. Making a policy a “recommendation” instead of a “rule” sends a message to people that it is safe to not wear a mask when it isn’t. This is precisely why we have “coercive” policies around smoking, seatbelts, and other basic health & safety measures. People follow rules, and will avoid inconvenience when they perceive certain actions as unnecessary. In this important regard, the President fails perhaps the most basic leadership test imaginable.

Being required to wear a mask indoors is a low cost, highly effective measure that helps to mitigate transmission of a dangerous disease, one that not only continues to kill over 80 people a week in Ontario alone, but that also is causing untold indirect deaths as a result of reduced hospital capacity, delayed and cancelled procedures and tests, and even deaths from overwhelmed ERs. It is insulting to even imply that wearing a mask is some type of burden, the imposition of which somehow raises ethical issues. In fact, the President’s rhetoric gives credence to the radical anti-public health premises of the far-right convoy protest movement.

This institutional response deserves nothing less than our moral condemnation.