mask mandates – Go Retire Psychiatrist

I wonder how many baby boomers remember those TV cigarette commercials featuring an actor holding a smoke, sporting a black eye and saying “I’d rather fight than switch.” I guess they ran those ads from the 1960s to 1981.

I think of those commercials when I read the news. There are a couple of Iowa news items about a University of Northern Iowa (UNI) professor requiring his students to wear masks or suffer the consequences to their lab grades. He’s suffering the consequences because he’s going up against policies of the state Regents and UNI, which prohibit mask mandates. He’s doing it to protect others from COVID-19 infection. It sounds like he’d rather fight than switch.

The Governor of Iowa has signed into law a ban on applying mask mandates. However, Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague has just extended “until further notice” a city-wide mask mandate that started August 18 and was set to expire today. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller has been studying the situation for weeks and has apparently made no decision, despite the Governor’s office saying the mandate is “illegal” and “unenforceable.” I guess Mayor Teague would rather fight than switch.

There has been an executive order by President Biden to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for the many hospitals which have over a certain number of employees and are paid by Medicare and Medicaid. Headlines indicate there are many who would rather quit their jobs than get the jabs, which would not make patient care any easier. I guess they would rather fight than switch.

A man in Germany recently walked into a convenience store to buy beer and when the clerk asked him to put on a mask, the man left angry, came back wearing a mask and shot the clerk dead. I guess he’ll do the rest of his fighting in prison.

There a few songs about fighting and switching. I don’t remember Ruby Johnson’s version of “I’d Rather Fight Than Switch.” There was another version done by a group called The Tomboys, a group of female vocalists I’ve never heard of who were also performing in the 1960s. It looks like country star George Jones did a reversal of it with “I’d Rather Switch Than Fight.”

I wonder how things would be if people would start saying “I’d Rather Talk Than Fight.”

The mask and vaccine mandates for COVID-19 have been in the news a lot and there has been plenty of controversy about them, which is putting it mildly. I’ve been thinking about the mask mandate that Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague issued August 19, 2021 and scheduled to expire on September 30, 2021. I agree with it, just to get that out of the way. Johnson County is a high transmission area for the virus, as is most of the state of Iowa, according to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker. Hospitalizations and deaths are increasing from COVID-19 infections. The CDC recommendations and rationale for interventions to control the spread of the virus make sense to me.

On the other hand, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is investigating whether or not the mandate is legal based on the conflict with the Iowa law passed in May 2021 by Governor Kim Reynolds. It’s sort of an anti-mandate similar to others I’ve seen in the news. I think it’s based on the state law which says that municipalities cannot adopt an ordinance requiring an owner of real property to implement a policy relating to the use of facial coverings that is more stringent than the state’s policy.

I have no idea what the difference is between persons who are owners of real property and persons who are just plain individuals. I thought they were the same—unless you consider homelessness an important factor. Would that make someone who is homeless a non-person? Just because they’re often treated that way is beside the point—isn’t it? I’m just kidding, sort of; it looks like the owners of real property might be understood as business owners and the like. And everyone knows they’re not real people.

Does Mayor Teague’s mandate apply to the University of Iowa? Not if you believe that the virus expressly avoids University of Iowa property; so at least that’s settled. The sticking point is that the Iowa Board of Regents and the Governor are the authorities over what happens on state-supported university property, unless it’s connected to beer.

AG Miller has plenty of time to consider the matter because there is no provision for enforcement of Mayor Teague’s mask mandate. By the way, the city of Coralville also has a mask mandate that was issued by Coralville Mayor John Lundell, effective August 11, 2021. I don’t know if Mayor Lundell’s mandate provides for enforcement if it’s not followed, but I suspect it isn’t. I’m not sure why AG Miller is not investigating Mayor Lundell’s order to see that it’s legal or not. I thought we were an equal opportunity state. University Heights has not had a mask mandate since August 18, 2020, unless there’s a typo on their website.

Many people are not aware that Coralville, Iowa City, and University Heights are separate municipalities. If you blink, you might miss the transitions between them.

I’m not sure how you’d enforce the mandate. I’m pretty sure police are not going to tackle you and secure a mask to your face using a county-approved staple gun. I’m also wondering what legal consequences there could be if AG Miller finds that Mayor Teague’s mandate is illegal, especially since it’s unenforceable.

I’m not sure what you can do to enforce such mandates or anti-mandates. Without enforcement, the mask mandate is a strong recommendation. In addition to the science, it has little more than common sense to back it up, although common sense is not commonly used.

You wonder how aliens (who are almost always idealized as being very advanced and superior to earthlings) would look at this situation and what they would do about it to help the human race. I’m reminded of what Agent K says to Agent J in Men in Black (MIB) as he shows Agent J a universal translator (one of the many gadgets MIB holds patents on, making them independent of governmental oversight): “We’re not even supposed to have it. I’ll tell you why. Human thought is so primitive it’s looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies.”

Maybe aliens are vaccinated against us.